This past May I read a book review on A.P. Gianinni. It was subtitled “The People’s Banker.”
I am Italian American by osmosis as their culture was absorbed by my Dad growing up in South Philadelphia and passed on to all of us. Long before Americans were eating Chef Boyardee (awful), we ate my Dad’s Italian cooking as the neighborhood grandmothers taught my Dad, James, how to cook.
You see, it was a two-story row house. Both of my grandparents worked in factories. My Dad and his one-year-older brother were charged after school with watching their two baby sisters and the house cleaning. Dad had the first floor so that included the kitchen. He prepared the family’s dinners.
No one made better Pasta e Fazioli than my Dad. Cheap but exquisitely seasoned with awesome pork bone broth, small meat pieces and beans, crushed tomatoes, carrots, onions, celery and garlic with salt and pepper to taste. This old Italian peasant meal could fill many young tummies in a healthy fashion.
Anyhow, my knowledge of Italian Americans was expanded in my later years by Philadelphia author and lawyer, Lisa Scottoline’s mystery series.
Did you know that Pacific Coast Italian Americans were essentially quarantined, their fishing boats commandeered and taken and family members separated? At the same time during the war that first and second Japanese Americans were interred with their children, FDR was considering doing a wholesale move of Californian Italian-Americans into camps also. Fortunately, an aide (Ickes, if I recall correctly) asked FDR, “Sir, what will you tell the American people when they hear you have interred Joe DiMaggio’s mother?”
The biography of Gianinni by Francesca Valente places his life in our history at so many crucial or interesting times. And, of course, it is full of political intrigue, dirty tricks and even some surprises.
Actually reads like now. After all, politics ain’t softball. We humans have great capacity for good and evil. So, if you want a little distance from contemporary events but a good read, I recommend this book.
Marguerite Willis is a resident and Selectboard member in Charlemont.