Italian Roots and Genealogy
Breathing Life into the Italian Immigrant Story with Joe Orazi
Imagine uncovering a family history so rich and impactful that it propels you to pen an intriguing tale about Italian immigration to America. That's precisely what our guest, Joe Orazi, author of L'America, did. In a heartwarming conversation, Joe shares his personal experiences growing up in an Italian family in Pittsburgh and how these experiences shaped his perspective on culture, identity, and heritage.
Uncover the hidden gems of Italian immigration as Joe takes us back to 1915 through his book, L'America. He meticulously researched to craft an authentic and emotional storyline that details the journey of three different Italian families who established their lives in America. If that isn't exciting enough, prepare to be thrilled as we explore the potential of bringing this rich narrative to life in a mini-series with Little Studio Films.
But there's more than just a captivating story to our conversation. We delve into the complexities of Italian culture, the impact of the mafia, and foreign influences on Italy. Joe insightfully discusses the unique blend of being both Italian and American, shedding light on his own feelings of dual identity. As we wrap up this enlightening discussion, we reflect on the importance of understanding our roots, urging you, our listeners, to delve into your own histories. Don't miss out on this intriguing journey with Joe Orazi!
Preceding WWII, hundreds of thousands of Italians came to our shores this is their story.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Imagine uncovering a family history so rich and impactful that it propels you to pen an intriguing tale about Italian immigration to America. That's precisely what our guest, Joe Orazi, author of L'America, did. In a heartwarming conversation, Joe shares his personal experiences growing up in an Italian family in Pittsburgh and how these experiences shaped his perspective on culture, identity, and heritage.
Uncover the hidden gems of Italian immigration as Joe takes us back to 1915 through his book, L'America. He meticulously researched to craft an authentic and emotional storyline that details the journey of three different Italian families who established their lives in America. If that isn't exciting enough, prepare to be thrilled as we explore the potential of bringing this rich narrative to life in a mini-series with Little Studio Films.
But there's more than just a captivating story to our conversation. We delve into the complexities of Italian culture, the impact of the mafia, and foreign influences on Italy. Joe insightfully discusses the unique blend of being both Italian and American, shedding light on his own feelings of dual identity. As we wrap up this enlightening discussion, we reflect on the importance of understanding our roots, urging you, our listeners, to delve into your own histories. Don't miss out on this intriguing journey with Joe Orazi!
Preceding WWII, hundreds of thousands of Italians came to our shores this is their story.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hi everybody, this is Bob Sarrantino, from the Italian roots of genealogy, and I have the perfect guest today for this Columbus Day Week and yes, it is Columbus Day Joe Orazzi, the author of Lul America. So welcome, joe. Thanks for being here. Hey, thanks so much for having me Now, my pleasure, my pleasure. So certainly want to talk about the book, and I know you have plans for many series. But before we do that, what's your family history, your roots and where did you grow up?
Speaker 2:I'm originally from Pittsburgh, pennsylvania. My lots of my ancestors settled in Pittsburgh when they came here. My grandfather on my mother's side, giuseppe Fusca, came from Calabria and settled in the Pittsburgh area, as did many of well, all of his brothers and sisters I think there were like nine in total who came in the late 1800s, and I grew up there in a very large, active, loving Italian family, typical Italian family that spent a lot of time around the dining room table and a lot of time telling stories about the old country and actually, if truth be known, that was me sitting at the feet of my grandparents and great aunts and uncles in preparation I didn't know it at the time, but in preparation for writing this book. But we eventually moved to. My family eventually moved to Southern New Jersey.
Speaker 2:The same year I went away to college and went to Villanova and at Villanova I studied at double major English and theater and I stepped up my writing in earnest. I wrote ever since I was young, but I stepped up my writing in earnest at Villanova and ended up following that doing a lot of theater, some television and some film. And you know, it's funny if I could sum the reason for all of this up into one word, it would be passion. I grew up in a family of passionate people and in the mid 50s, early 60s, we spent a lot of time, as I said, around the dining room table, and I remember in particular my grandfather this, giuseppe Fusca. We would cram ourselves into his dining room, eat and drink for hours and inevitably the mandolin came out and there would be singing and laughter, and as I watched my grandfather's face, he would turn redder and redder. Now, admittedly, some of that might have been the whiskey, but his eyes would well up and he would sing and the tears would start flowing.
Speaker 1:Passion- yeah, I know exactly what you mean, because that's why I do it. I mean I discovered my passion later. I mean I was researching my family for about five years before I retired. But then, since I retired, I mean this is what I do try to interview people authors like you, but just regular people with their stories because they're also interesting to me. So now you're family with the Pittsburgh. They came before the turn of the century, then they came pretty early.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, my grandfather emigrated in 1898 and all of his brothers and sisters came right around the same time, a little bit later. Our family, like I said, is from Calabria and our name is Fusca, f-u-s-c-a and there's an accent over the C, so that is Fusca. Well, when he came in they wrote it right in Ellis Island, but his other brothers and sisters, when they came over they thought that was an F-U-S-I-A, that the C with the accent was an I. So most of my family call themselves Fusca and my brother and sister and I call ourselves from the Fusca family and every couple of years we have a family reunion somewhere in the country and there's a battle between Fusca name and the Fusca name.
Speaker 1:But that's not typical for Calabria to have that accent over the C. So were they originally French or something?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know that. I don't know that Because there's also a lot of people, fusca, f-u-s-c-o, and that's also Fusca, I mean.
Speaker 1:I've heard all different things, so that's quite interesting. So do you know what industry brought them here? Were they doing something in Italy that they did when they came to America?
Speaker 2:It was the industry of poverty, as much of southern Italy endured Back in the peninsula of Italy, was broken up into many city states in the 1800s but beginning in 1815 and going to 1871, they created a one kingdom of Italy and Sicily. There was unification and with Rome as the capital and there were some civil wars and the Mezzo Giorno, which is the area south of Rome, among which is Calabria, they tried to, they tried piedmontization, they called it. They wanted to northernize and they redistrict lands and took some land away and poverty ran rampant, particularly in Calabria, where you know they would live in two-fold limestone huts that were built into the side of, built into the side of mountains, and they had a walkout basement and that basement also served as a stable for livestock. They lived above the livestock, think about that and they had a one-room house. It had a fireplace that ran spring, summer, fall and winter. In the winter and fall it was for heat, in the spring and summer it was so the smoke would keep the mosquitoes away and they would have a piece of meat about this big maybe every six weeks and they made do with a lot of vegetables. And it's funny because the stories I told you that you know, my family should sit around the table and tell stories and tell stories about the old country, but they never talked about this. They never talked about the poverty. They never talked about why they came over.
Speaker 2:But later in life, when I had the fortune to be hired as a writer and associate producer for a documentary called Prisoners Among Us, I started to really research my ancestry, all of our ancestry, and started to learn the truth of the exodus, why 4.1 million Italians left Italy and what they endured, so that you and I can sit here right now. And it was eye-opening for me. While I thought I knew the history of my ancestors, I had no idea and it's really the reason I wrote the book. But before the book was the documentary which is Prisoners Among Us. It's about Italian American immigration, assimilation and the largely unknown events leading up to World War II.
Speaker 2:You can, by the way, you can watch it free on Amazon, directed by my good friend, michael Delaro. Michael Delaro is a brilliant documentarian and I was introduced to him by my brother, chris, who owns a recording studio and he does a lot of radio, tv and film soundtracks and he produces People's Albums and he's a composer and arranger. He introduced me to Michael. He had worked with Michael and in fact they both won Emmys, and that's when I began to understand what my ancestors actually endured and I know I get on my soapbox, but it's really important for us, for all of us, to understand our history. We need to understand our history. We owe that to our ancestors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. And you know, funny, you mentioned the caves because we were in Matera a couple of weeks ago and visited you know a cave dwelling there and it just blew us away that the people you know the way you described it they were living like that in 1958.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah 1958.
Speaker 1:It's just so, so incredible to think that people will live in, like you said, with the animals, with one room for the animals and one room for the people. And you know, thankfully, the Italian president at the time moved them all out. And now, you know, now Matera is becoming a rich and now it's becoming a place for rich people more than it is for poor people.
Speaker 2:Well, it's kind of funny because I have some friends who just got back from a trip to Calabria, going to the beaches and the villages and the mountains, and I saw some pictures on Facebook and it was spectacular.
Speaker 1:It's so incredible.
Speaker 1:It's so, so incredible. I mean, I had no idea. When we made our trip last year, my grandmother's, father's family they actually they were nobility, they owned land in Calabria and then Naples and places. But we went to the two towns and the mountains there and it's just spectacular. And you know the people there are so much different than us. I mean, they're in these small towns, they're very happy, they enjoy life, they enjoy food, the food is fresh, it's nothing comes in a package in most places. Now, have you been back to? Have you been to Calabria? I'm assuming that you probably have.
Speaker 2:Yes, as a matter of fact, when I was in my freshman, sophomore and junior years in high school, which they we wrote horses to school back in those days and it was a long time ago put it that way.
Speaker 2:But but freshman and sophomore years we lived in London. My father worked for a management consulting firm and took advantage of the offices in Europe. So we lived in London for a couple years. But junior year, in high school, we moved to Milano in Italy for for that year and while we were in Italy we did a lot of traveling, including Calabria. But back in those days, you know, everybody in the in the towns we went to were related to us, you know, and I can remember going into one town and we were driving a Ford Fairling, you know which was an oddity, and and the whole town, it seemed, was like coming behind the car and we would go to the largest garage next to a house in the town where they put out tables and we must have 50 people there eating and and and singing, and it was the. The electric was turned off at five o'clock in the afternoon and they went to the well for water. But they were the happiest people in the world at least. Back in.
Speaker 1:That was 1966-67 and but you know they, they still are. When we went to, when we went there, they put out a spread. We went to two towns. We went to Fasado and Montabello, and Fasado, they set up this whole picnic with, you know, tables, and, like I said, everything was everything was made there, from the olive oil to the cheese, the tapocola I mean, everything was made by them, the wine, of course, and it was just super. And, like you said, they spent the whole day with us singing and dancing and showing us games that they played 300 years ago. And you know we actually did.
Speaker 1:We were on the land that you know was once owned by my family. It's now owned by somebody else and you know it's a big Palazzo and a current owner won't sell it and they wanted to buy it. But I said to them, I said, doesn't the owner mind that we're doing this on this land? And they were like, ah, you know, he may come out after a while and he did. And then he actually asked if we wanted to go inside.
Speaker 1:And then I said, of course I want to go inside, but it was said in a way, because that place is, you know, just like a lot of places in Calabria and some of these small towns. Nobody lives there. It's in disrepair. You could see what it once was. And then when we went into the town, the whole street was empty but there was still furniture and stuff in there in the houses. So you know it was sad in a way. You know it was right, but it was also sad. Right, I must have been really. I mean, I know going into these towns now was an adventure. I must have been something else going back 40 years. It's a 50 years it was.
Speaker 2:It was. You know, my, my parents were um, um, or were visionaries of sort to to take their kids. Yes, to to Europe for that expense. Extended period of time. Interestingly enough, after our year in um in Milano uh was 1967 we were scheduled to go to Tel Aviv. Oh wow, for my senior year. But that was the breakout of the war yeah and we had.
Speaker 2:We had an apartment rented, uh, and we were to come back to the states for a little bit and then and then go start our my senior here in uh in high school in Tel Aviv yeah, you know, we lived.
Speaker 1:We lived in England in the mid 90s for two years. We lived in, we lived in Bournemouth. Uh, that was, you know, a great experience. I mean, my son was a baby and my daughter was a poignant, but uh, it was such a great experience because you don't know. And it must have been great being in Milan, because you don't know what it's like. Uh, living someplace else, visiting is one thing you're a tourist but when you live there, you're not a tourist anymore, you're you're a resident you know totally different.
Speaker 2:You know when, when we were in England I don't know, we want to talk about Italy, we want to talk about the book and stuff but when we lived in England, in the first apartment that we had flat that we had is a little upstairs flat um, the electric ran on a meter, uh, that you would put shilling. Yes, I heard that. Yes, okay, I found that, and we'd have a little bowl with a bunch of shillings in it next to where the meter was, and and and you'd feed it. You know, but if you forgot it'd be sitting there watching television or whatever you're doing, you hear a click and everything goes out so you can scramble around and put the shillings in. And we had what they call paraffin it was kerosene paraffin heaters in each room for heat in the winter, you know. So, yes, you, you, you appreciate, or should appreciate, all the abundance, even in, uh, even in in in lower situations that we have in this country yeah, and it's, it's fine.
Speaker 1:We didn't have that, but you know, we we did have to get the tv license and I remember them asking me do you want to call a tv license or black and white? Because the price was different and they were driving around in trucks, but uh.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned the book. Let's talk about the book, um. One of the things that I found interesting about it is it's set in the year um that both my grandparents came over. I actually made my paternal grandfather came, probably a little bit before my grandmother, um, but she came in 1915, and my mom's family came in 1915, um, and my mom's family came mainly because my grandfather had served, uh in the italian army during the libyan war. Yep, and my grandmother said you're not going in the, you know, go fighting again, um and uh. So they came over and I think they intended to go back because they left my uncle there, but they never did um, so, yeah, so that's what I found really interesting, and the book is about basically three families from three different parts of italy that went to three different parts of america, right?
Speaker 2:right. Um, the, the, um, the book is a book of historical fiction. Um, the, the, the three families um are composites of my family people in the documentary um other uh, reading and researching I did um, I'm a fanatic about historical accuracy and um, the book actually took 12 years to write, the reason being, without exaggeration, 10 of those years for research. While the characters are fiction, the events, the descriptions, everything in the book is absolutely verified and historically accurate, to the point that you mentioned 1915. Yes, they both, they all, three of these families uh, who don't know each other, one from uh, well, it's a stowaway teenager from colab, from uh, from uh, palermo, uh, a family from colabria and a family from naples end up on the same steamship, traveling to united states in 1915 and um, they travel um in steerage uh, which is the belly of the beast, it's down next to the next to the engine compartment because they couldn't afford anything else.
Speaker 2:Uh and um this again, my family never told me me, uh and and uh, there were rapes, there were murders, um, deathly sick for 13 days of brutal passage, um, it it was. It was an awful ordeal, and then, once they got here, the streets weren't paved with gold. Once they got here they had to actually dig the streets. They had to actually shovel out the sewers. Some of them in new york became rag and bone men. Never hear of a rag and bone man I've had a.
Speaker 1:I know about the ragman, but I didn't know what. I don't know about the bone part, a rag and bone man.
Speaker 2:What they did was they had these big carts um that they would pull around the city streets starting at five o'clock in the morning and they have bat wicker baskets on their backs and the sticks like the guys along the highway have, and they would pick up anything rags, they would pick up metal, broken bottles and dead animals and they would, at the end of the day, dump them down into a basement and the people would sort them out to see what they could repurpose. And usually the person got paid five cents for the day. By the way, the reason they were dead animals is because they would use the bones to make knife handles. Oh wow, those were the kinds of things, um, our ancestors endured. And so one family settles in new york city and he's a tailor. One family settles in cleveland, uh, and he's a. He's a construction guy. So he starts out as a stone cutter in cleveland and the stowaway um eventually hooks up with his uncle in monoray, california, who is a sardine fisherman. By the way, I know more about sardine fishing in 1920 than any man needs to know. He's thinking of research, but but, um, the the interesting thing about the book is that, as you said, they're from three different parts of italy and they settle in three different parts of america and um. I think that's important because they have different vocations, um and uh. They explore their assimilation in this country from different perspectives and um, and it's actual. This is actually book one. It goes from 1915 to um 1927 when um, with the it ends with the execution of sacco and van zeddy, which was a seminal moment in um italian american history, which is why I ended there.
Speaker 2:I'm working on book two. I'm about 17 chapters in and that takes these families and their descendants to 1946, 47, whenever year the all-star game was in wrigley field and there's a reason for that. But um, uh, I guess I'm like 16, 70 chapters in. I keep promising book two, but the development of um, possibility of this becoming um, a television miniseries, um has has gotten in the way, um, but the um. The thing that is important to me, like I said, is that our children and our grandchildren understand their history, understand um, uh, where they came from. We I don't want to get political but we do not study history, it's it. It is really a sad void um, uh these days, and so you know, I I want to try and um and get this book into the hands of many, many italian americans so that they can see what their ancestors endured. So they can, they can honor them for the sacrifices they made. Uh, like I said, so that this is a bob and joe can sit here, you know yeah yeah and and um.
Speaker 2:By the way, you can get the book on amazon, um, yep we'll put the links out there yeah, okay, it's el apostrophe, america.
Speaker 2:And uh, the reason it's called lamarica is because that's what the italians used to say they were going to lamarica, and uh, I'm pretty proud of it, as I am proud of the documentary. The documentary goes into great detail, uh, about, um, immigration and assimilation and, I said, largely unknown events leading up to world war two. Um, and those events are uh, uh, uh, when italy sided with the axis powers, um, at the start of the war, things changed for the italian in america, yes, uh, significantly. First of all, italians were conflicted. They loved their new country, um, uh, and they loved their old country, um, and some of them thought that musolini was the best thing since slice bread.
Speaker 2:You know the old saying you made the trains run on time. Others considered him a fat clown, um, and so there was a lot of conflict. But the? Um, the government, was concerned that there might be a fifth column in this country of italians, germans, japanese, um, who were working undercover to overthrow the government. And so, uh, 600 000 italians who did not get their american citizenship were labeled enemy aliens. There was my grandparents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have the cards. I still have the cards with their photos on it yeah, there was a proclamation issued, uh by um rooseville.
Speaker 2:Uh and uh, they had to be fingerprinted. They had travel restrictions, they had curfews, um and some of their houses. If they suspected they were fascist sympathizers, just because they had a picture of musolini on their dining room wall, or um, because they retained their fascist card. Some of them, um, uh, they would break into their homes. Fbi would come unannounced and um take their flashlights, their radios and their cameras for fear that, uh, you know, they would use these tools um to undermine the government. In worst case scenarios, some were interned, uh, yes, yeah, there were many internment camps around the country.
Speaker 2:One of them, ironically, was ellis island. So in picture this you have the italian who comes to america for a renaissance through the great hall in ellis island and then years later, he's on a cot in ellis island as a prisoner I didn't know that, I didn't realize that, that thing is ellis island wow, you know my grand my grandpa, my mom's parents.
Speaker 1:They had, by the end of the war, they had four sons in the service, but they, you know, they were at the beginning. They were branded enemy audience so so.
Speaker 2:So that happened. Another thing that happened at the start of world war two, as they decided you know what, um, these italians may signal subs off the coast of california, and so so they set up lines of demarcation that were outside the urban areas of California. They would draw a line and if you were an Italian without American citizenship and you lived west of that line, you were relocated. And when I say relocated, I use that term loosely. You were told to relocate, go across that line east of that line, board up your house. How you live is up to you and if you have any reason to cross that line, for a doctor's appointment or whatever, you had to call the police station, and you'd have to be accompanied by an officer to be able to cross that line, do your business and then go back across. The fishermen in California owned fishing boats and this is in the book. As I said, the guy from the store away from Palermo ends up in the fishing business but they confiscated their boats and retrofitted them so that they could patrol the waters off the coast of California, and so these people were left without a means to make a living. They were given a little stipend, but it was nothing.
Speaker 2:Here's an interesting and important point when I was writing the documentary and I was excited about it, I was talking to my aunt, my mother's mother. My mother had died when she was in her early 60s and my aunt, her sister, became my mother. So I couldn't wait to tell my aunt, tina, about the documentary Prisoners Among Us. And so I was telling her about all this stuff and telling her about internment and relocation and the boats and everything, and she was stone-faced. She just looked at me and I thought what's going on? And then she pointed to me and she said Italians aren't complainers, don't make a movie about complainers. That stuck with me and I went back and rewrote so that the documentary and ultimately the book and the miniseries are stories of victory.
Speaker 2:Not, oh, woe is me. Not. We need reparations. Not look what happened to us, because, if truth be known, what happened to us happened to everybody. Yeah, like the Native American, your ancestors came from somewhere. They endured the same mistreatment in different situations, different experiences, but they endured a lot. As a matter of fact, the poster for the miniseries, the tagline, is it's not just their story, it's your story too. This is really. I remember when we screened the documentary at the New York Independent Film Festival, which it won, by the way. We had a booth and people would come up and talk to us after the screening. And there was an Asian couple who came up to me when I was in the booth and they said look, I know you're Italian and I know this is about Italians, but this is about us too.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, it's true, it's absolutely true, but it's amazing, speaking of Italians and our ancestors, of what, as I said, they endured and never spoke about it when we were doing the documentary and we had, I don't know, maybe 200 hours of interviews in the can, but when we were doing that documentary, we were using crowbars to pry these stories out of the Italians Very proud people, very proud people, and that's not important. Yeah, okay, we were relocated, but it was only a short period of time. We rolled up our seats and went back to work.
Speaker 1:And that's why it's so important to hear these things. I know my friend, anthony, in the 70s Anthony Riccio when he had the wherewithal to interview people that had come in the early 1900s. They went in their 70s and get their stories about Italy. What it was like growing up, and that's my biggest fear is that we lose all of this. For example, I have no idea about Ellis Island myself and I've been around for a long time, but the younger people, they're not exposed to that, like we were talking earlier, what they see on, they see the Sopranos and good fellows and I think that's our history and it's not.
Speaker 1:On the way back from the trip, a couple of weeks ago I watched the documentary that Billy Crystal did on Yogi Berra Fascinating. I was glued to this because I grew up with Yogi Berra right and I actually got his autograph, probably in 2010 or something. It was after he made up with Steinbrenner and it was like meeting the Pope Sure. I walked up to one of the baseball you know Mr Berra could sign it. I mean literally that's the feeling I had. I was meeting a God, because growing up, yogi Berra Mickey, you know. But because he was Italian, of course, he was special, you know right.
Speaker 2:Little little inside information about the book too. I mentioned that it ends in 40s I think it's 47, which is when the All Star game was in really field. Well, joe DiMaggio's parents were Sardine fishermen in. Monterey they're in the book and Joe, as a young boy, hated Sardine fishing. He got nauseous at the smell of fish and he always ran off to play sandwap ball. But he befriends Paolo, who is the guy who becomes a Sardine fisherman from Palermo because DiMaggio's work from Sicily as well.
Speaker 2:He befriends him and they? Well, I just say that the Wrigley Field All Star Game enters into the end of the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's interesting and yeah, you know, they went into that relationship with Berra and DiMaggio and DiMaggio was, you know, the handsome, you know tall for Italian type of guy, and it was. You know, one of the sad things about Yogi was and I didn't realize this growing up but they made him a clown, which was, and he went later on. It was very, very sad when I saw that. I was really bummed about that when I was watching this thing and he was a major talent.
Speaker 1:Oh, super, I remember growing up you know I must have been, you know 7, 8, 9 or whatever and he would hit a ball that was at his ankles, you know, double, you know, down the right field line or something like that. He couldn't hit and he talked about it. He could hit anything.
Speaker 2:You know and that's right out.
Speaker 1:He never struck out.
Speaker 2:I mentioned. That did I mention, or maybe this is when we were talking before we started. There are certain elements you have to satisfy to get to, and we'll talk about the mini series. But the pilot has written for the mini series and worked with a guy in the name of AJ Ferrara who wrote the pilot, and AJ wrote a screenplay about Joe Pepitone, which is really interesting. You know there are many prominent Italians in the world of baseball. You know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Pepitone was a wild and crazy guy.
Speaker 2:Well, that's obviously one of the reasons for writing the film.
Speaker 1:He liked to party you know Well, yeah, and I forget which book. It was about the Yankees where he got well. Actually, with two stories I remember telling about Mickey Mantle. The first one was he was a rookie and they were out partying one night and they were supposed to play an exhibition game at West Point and they woke up late, you know, and they were out all night. They woke up late and Mantle told him, don't worry about it, I'll get a car. And he gets his limousine and he tells the driver, pick up two quarts of vodka and two quarts of orange juice. And he drives right up on a field.
Speaker 1:And then there was another story where Pepitone got him high on marijuana. He gave Mickey before the game, yeah, and he said normally when Mickey would strike out he'd throw the helmet, he'd throw the mat, he'd throw things. And he says he struck out on three pitches one, two, three. He said he took off the helmet, put it down, nice, put the bat down. And he said he came over to me on the bench and said if you ever give me that again, I'll kill you.
Speaker 1:That's funny, that's funny. But yeah, like I said, there was so many. But I always remember Yogi as that guy clutch hits. One thing that they said in the documentary was Jeter was talking to him and Jeter said something to him about, well, it's a lot harder now to get playing 10 World Series, there's more teams in this, playoffs and this like that. And he said Yogi said to me that's fine, tell me when you get 10 rings. Yeah, we'll talk. Right, and he was just a fascinating figure that we grew up with. So now you mentioned you hope to turn us into a documentary, which we would do, or mini series.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mini series yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I don't even know how they found me. But and look, you write a book and it gets some I mean some notoriety, some good reviews and that kind of thing. And so people start emailing you, people start calling you. You know they're gonna get your book in a thousand bookstores and they're gonna do this or that for you and a lot of it is unnecessary.
Speaker 2:But this company called Little Studio Films and Beverly Hills, contacted me, Said read your book and really like to talk. And it's actually a company that's owned by an Italian woman. And she contacted me. She emailed me and I thought add some other skin. But something told me, let's, let me get back to her. So I did get back to her and we started talking and I researched her and Little Studio Films is a legitimate player and does a lot of global film, and so I signed a contract with them to develop America into a television mini series which, yes, on a number of levels is very exciting.
Speaker 2:First of all, everybody else's story has been told, but the true story of Italian immigration and assimilation has not really been told. We are not just mafia. We don't just own pizza joints and off people. That's not who we are. We have returned volumes of heritage and culture and artistry, and on and on and on, to the landscape we call America and that story has to be told. Our children and grandchildren have to hear that story and this is a way of doing that, obviously. So I'm excited about that.
Speaker 2:I get on a soapbox, you know, when I talk about my heritage and I get my back up a little bit when you know people wanna turn it to mafia and look, the truth is the mafia existed and exists and there were different forms of mafia. In fact, in my book, the Camora, which is the mafia in Naples, are the reason why the family from Naples leaves Naples and goes to Cleveland, and the mafia the Cozinostra in Palermo is the reason why Paulo in Palermo stows away and goes to New York. And in fact when he first goes to New York he's interested in the black hand and thinks he's gonna get in the black hand. But that doesn't work. He ends up with his uncle in California. But I'm actually going out to LA again at the end of this month for a series of meetings to try and get a deal done, and it moves slow and there's certain elements that you have to satisfy in order to get to a seat at the table with the big boys. We've done that and so we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, like you said, there's so little real stuff written about that and also the history of Italy too. Like we were talking earlier, they've made tons and tons of movies about Spain and France and England, which is all fine, but nothing about Italy between 1861 and Rome Very little. I mean, there's tons of stuff about Rome, but people don't know about the French being there, the Spanish being there, the Australians being there and how Italy became, the culture of Italy became Italian. It's just nothing about it. I mean, look at Sicily, how many times it was invaded and taken over by people. And I always laugh when people say I'm 100% Italian and my DNA says I'm this, that and the other thing. Well, yeah, of course, because everybody had a piece of Italy at some point in time. But it's not told, we don't know about it.
Speaker 2:By the way, I will never have my DNA checked. I'm 100% Italian, from my head down to my feet. I know that I don't want somebody telling me I got too much.
Speaker 1:Well you know. I say to people. I said well you know, there's DNA and then there's culture and heritage. I said and it's two completely different things. I mean your culture is your culture and your heritage, of course it's Italy. That's where your family's from. You know one very interesting thing about my mother's family from. They were both from Torrito and Barri, and my mother's, my mother line, is like 97% from the Caucasus. Just, I found that so incredibly amazing.
Speaker 1:And the other thing, and some of that shows up in France, and I remember my mother telling me that my grandmother, her mother, used to say that the family was originally from France. But you know who knows? I mean who knows when how why they got there, but they came from this little small town in Puglia, which I had the best piece of sausage I ever ate there a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's actually. Everything tastes better in New.
Speaker 1:York, that's right.
Speaker 2:It's just gonna be the same recipe, the same food as in New York City, but it tastes better in Italy. And actually I'm gonna share a little. You know, I told you early on passion. Well, I know I'm a hundred percent Italian, because I cry equally hard when I land there and when I take off the gun. Yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:I was interviewed while I was there by, I think, latitia, I think they were. They're trying to, you know, give up tourism and everything. And I don't speak Italian. I wish I did. I mean, my vocabulary is, you know, like a two year old. But they asked me a question. They said when you're in Italy, how do you feel, do you feel Italian? And I said well, yes and no. And so they said well, what do you mean? I said well, I feel Italian while I'm here and walking the streets and everything I said. But when somebody asked me a question and I can't answer, I said I feel like an American.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know it is. I do envy. Now, I used to speak Italian much better when we lived there. You know, sure, yeah, yeah, we had to, and I wish I spoke to that level today. But if I'm going to Italy, I want to. You know, I want to bone up a little bit so that, so that I can hold my own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. You know you're kind of sort of catch on. I mean, there's so many words that are similar and when I was talking to somebody over there they said the toughest thing about Italian for Americans or I guess anybody who speaks English is conjugating the verbs. And they said don't worry about that so much. You know, we have problems with your language because you have so many things that are spelled differently, that mean the same thing and vice versa. But they said if you, if you, you know, if you say you mind and you don't use the right verb tense we understand.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is is there? There are so many dialects? Oh yes, you know, and I my mother's family's, from Calabria. Calabres is like nowhere near real Italian.
Speaker 1:I asked last year. I asked them, they sang a song and I wanted to learn to play it. I said, could you send me the words you know? And they sent it to me and I was like, oh my God, this, certainly this is an Italian.
Speaker 1:But, then, just you know, when we were there a couple of weeks ago and the we're going to pull you in, the driver, you know we were talking about Bades and Italian and he, he would say something in Italian and then say it in Bades and it was like not even close. I mean, you wouldn't know that. That's what he was talking about.
Speaker 2:Hey, is it at the start? You know because you read it. But at the start of each chapter in the book I have quote from some source. And one of the one of the chapters is about when the people from Steerage on the on the steamship were. They had had a lot of bad weather and they were finally able to get up on deck when the sun came out. They get up on deck and they break out their bread and whatever biscuits or things that they had brought for the trip, and they break out the instruments and start playing.
Speaker 2:And there is a Calabrian folk song that they sing on the deck of the ship. And so part of the quote at the, at the beginning of that chapter, is is like four lines, a verse or something from. It's called the Calabrian Maiden, and I had an Italian read the book, or, and, and she came back to me and said you know, I'm sorry that you published this, but that's not real Italian in the book, you've misspelled words and you know, I don't even know what this is. You need to make this book accurate. You know, and and I'm trying to tell her, it's more accurate than you think. You know, this is when, when, when the Calabrians are up on the deck singing a song. They're singing their dialects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and, like I said, it was like you know when, like when they were singing and because you know, my brain was in Italy, so this may be Italian, it sounded Italian to me, but when they sent me the words I was like who? This is something else completely. And you know, and, and the driver told us he said when he was growing up I guess he was, I guess in the late fifties, early sixties, something like that he said when he was growing up, they weren't allowed to speak the dialect in school. They hadn't, they had to speak Italian. But he said now it's starting to come back, this is starting to bring it back and you know teach, you know kids and people want to, you know, want to understand it and things like that. So, before we go, I know you mentioned it before, but where could people find the, find the book?
Speaker 2:You can find the book on Amazon. It's El Apostrophe America, la Merica. Now you'll find another La Merica. I forget what it is and I think there's a Doors song called La Merica, but but it's on Amazon. It's also on Barnes and Nobles website, but most people go to go to Amazon. I would, I would love any Italians or or anyone listening or watching this podcast to go grab a cotton, because it's it's it's important history. It truly is, and I'm not saying that in any boastful way, but it's important for you to learn what's in there and and and it's a situation. Oh and, by the way, if you do that, and you do it on Amazon, I would love to see, see a review.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah absolutely and and you know it's, it's certainly important to give it to the, you know, the the fourth and fifth and sixth generation Italian Americans, because they, you know, they don't know, they don't. I mean, we know because we lived with the grandparents, we heard the language, we heard the stories, but, you know, they think that they don't realize the hardships that our ancestors went through.
Speaker 2:And I didn't. I called myself a proud Italian American, but I didn't. I didn't know this stuff. You know I didn't know about steerage. You know I didn't know about the what they call the buttonhook men on Ellis Island who turned their eyelids inside out looking for Tacoma. I didn't know about about a psychopathic pavilion that they built. A four story psychopathic pavilion was built on Ellis Island Because when you came on the island, if they saw any sign of dementia, you were in turn in that building until you were deemed fit to get on the city street.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, they actually and they actually you know, because I watched that documentary about Ellis Island, they actually had pictures of people with with you know, like moron and you know next to that. Very disconcerting when you see that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:And I mean, try that today. You know, you know they would give. They would give these poor old people a five piece wooden puzzle that was supposed to be a man's head, and they had a certain amount of time. When they came into Ellis Island they had a certain amount of time to try and make this head, you know right. And if they didn't, they were, they were deemed moron.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I know, Incredible incredible.
Speaker 2:That's that. There's an episode in the mini series that deals with that Ellis Island experience.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we need to get all the Italian Americans to stop pressuring them to actually do this mini series.
Speaker 2:So however you can get the word out, we do that. Okay, I keep telling them. You know I'm getting older and older and older. You know the the fast forward on my remote is is pushed the entire time in my life now. So I don't have much time. Let's get this done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I know what you mean. I know exactly what you're talking about. Well, listen, joe. This has been great fun. I really appreciate you taking the time and for people listening. Make sure you go out and get this book. It's a great book.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate it. Bob, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:You're welcome.
