Essay - Italian American Book Review and Critique Schiavelli, Vincent. Bruculinu, America....

Italian American

Book Review and Critique

Schiavelli, Vincent. Bruculinu, America. Remembrances of Sicilian-***** Brooklyn, Told in Stories and Recipes. Houghton Miffl*****, 1996.

Food, folks, and a belief the evil eye that can cause sickness in a young, vulner*****ble nine-year-old boy—all ***** *****se various elements figure prominently in Bruculinu, America. Remembrances of Sicilian-American *****, Told in Stories and Recipes. ***** Schiavelli presents a memoir of his life in which he writes in his introduction th*****t "the stories may not always contain the strict facts, but they certainly tell the truth," stressing that 'facts' such as ***** comforts ***** pasta, eggs, and cheese on a rainy day are more important truths than exact dates. (119) Again, and again, the author stresses the importance of ordinary mythology in t***** memoir ***** ***** Italian-American experience in Brooklyn. The Italian-American experience is about myth as well ***** truth, and the ***** argues from his own ***** that *****e must understand the beliefs of the community and its practices, as well as look at the Sicilian-American experience ***** a purely objective fashion.

Schiavelli suggests th*****, for his ***** family, the truth of its history is less important in understanding early experiences ***** America than ***** intense closeness of the various members, the importance of folk religion and wisdom, and the ***** ***** food, health and illness that revolves around most of his memories. He is more interested in *****tory as how it is remembered, rather ***** cutt*****g p*****t such ***** tales to find the real truth. ***** title of the book refers ***** ***** extraordinary and implausible tale that the Brooklyn community was so close-knit that when a letter ***** Sicily in 1905 w*****s sent to his gr*****mother from Sicily ***** 1905, it only *****ed her name, Carolina Vilardi, and the words *****, America. Once it arrived upon *****n shores, everyone knew exactly where a Vilardi lived—Brooklyn, and in L*****tle Italy, of course! Early on in his *****, Schiavelli ***** ***** a loc*****l witch cured him of a sickness, r*****ther than the doc*****r, as this witch relieved the young Vincent of the influence of the evil ***** that w***** causing his malady. This is not so extraordinary given that miracle was reputed to have saved h***** Uncle Salvatore Calogero from dying ***** pneumonia, ***** that Nana Caterina was in the habit of saying Mass on days of inclement wea*****r, sure that "God would understand" the difficulty of braving the *****. (13)

These strange incidents and neighborhood practices, statements belief in common-place miracles, the ***** of the masses rather than the hierarchy of the church, and the family's ***** closeness, strive to make ***** Sicilian-Americans seem ***** *****eign to the reader, *****habitants of an Old Country, even if this Old Country is merely a Italian ***** located in New York. However, the commonness ***** much of the food chronicled by the author is also a profound reminder of how ubiquitous Italian-American food and thus Italian-American people have become part of overall American culture. As a community gro*****