In
January 2018 I sent an email to Mary Jo Bona, asking some questions
about an essay she wrote about me and Gianna Patriarca, “Learning
to Speak Doubly,” which appeared in VIA. I never received a
response. I sent it again more than a month later. I never received a
response.
I
sent her the same email almost a month later. I haven’t received a
response to that one, either. It’s been more than a month. (When I
first found her essay, I got all excited and wrote her an email to
thank her. She found the time to respond, very quickly, to that one.)
These
are the questions I sent her:
1.
“In her title poem, ‛The Wop Factor,’ Rose Romano takes the
joke made against her. . .’ ”
What
joke? What makes you think it was a joke?
There
was no joke. The man didn’t say “wop.” He said “whap,” an
innocent word that has nothing to do with Italian-Americans. I wrote
“wop” because that’s what I heard. He was just oblivious to
Italian-American issues. I don’t think it’s too much to expect a
critic who works in Italian-American literature to know our situation
well enough to be aware of the bigotry caused by ignorance and
insensitivity.
2.
“Willing to join her namesake, Santa Rosalia. . .”
Why
do you call Santa Rosalia my namesake? And if she was my namesake,
what relevance would that have?
Rosalia
(Rosalie) and Rose are two different names. Santa Rosalia is
obviously not my namesake. (Try Santa Rosa da Viterbo.) I chose Santa
Rosalia because she was a hermit who lived in a cave, which makes a
lot more sense in that poem (“The Family Dialect”).
3.
“. . . willing to be literally flayed . . .”
What
makes you think I’m willing to be “literally” flayed?
I
am not willing to be “literally” flayed. I don’t even like
being “figuratively” flayed. Sometimes I wonder how many speakers
of both English and Italian know what the word “literally”
(letteralmente) means because, although it’s not an intensifier,
many speakers of both languages use it as if it were.
4.
“. . . Rose Romano believes that poetry is not
a luxury . . .”
What makes you think I
believe that poetry is not a luxury?
I
very strongly believe that poetry is a luxury. Necessities are
the things we do in order to stay alive. Enjoying the luxuries that
we prefer, such as poetry, is the reason we want to stay alive. If
you must know, I think I might have killed myself a long time ago if
I weren’t pretty sure that you have to be alive in order to write.
And I think that anyone who sits in her or his nice home, with her or
his belly full, reading poetry and calling it a “necessity” is
extremely insensitive to the problems of those who can’t get enough
food, water, or adequate housing. A while ago I found out that,
according to some critics, I don’t have the right to define myself
(I identify as Neapolitan, not Sicilian.) and now I’m finding out
that I don’t even have the right to decide what my own opinions
are.
And
whatever happened to expressions such as: “My impression is. . .”
“It seems to me. . .” “No one really knows for sure, but. . .”?
Why does Bona simply declare “Rose Romano believes that poetry is
not a luxury” when I have never told her that, wrote it to
her, or wrote it in anything I’ve ever written? Is it just because
it fits in with what she wants to say in her essay?
5.
“. . . Romano’s ex-husband, Donald, asks forgiveness for having
left the poet and their daughter.”
What makes you think that
Donald left me and my daughter?
There
is nothing in the poem she refers to (“Final Stages”) that says
that my ex-husband left me and there are statements that clearly
indicate that I left him. The only reason I can think of for her to
have said that my ex-husband, who was black, left me is the racist
stereotype of the black man who abandons his family. But why would
Bona prefer a racist stereotype when there are statements in the poem
that contradict that?
6.
“. . . their separation (because of abandonment, race difference,
and illness). . .”
What makes you think that we
were separated because of abandonment, race difference, and illness?
As
I said, my ex-husband did not abandon me and our daughter. To people
who look closely, there aren’t that many differences between the
races. (The differences are only in our cultures and histories, not
in us.) If you step back and look at the big picture, you can easily
find similarities in our “differences,” even in the poem Bona was
writing about. Belonging to different races was something that
brought us closer; this was made evident in the poem. My ex-husband
was diagnosed with AIDS years after we were divorced—that’s made
evident in the poem. It should be clear to anyone who reads the poem
carefully, that we didn’t separate because of abandonment, race
difference, and illness. So why is Bona “interpreting” this poem
based on racist stereotypes and cliches in spite of the fact that
they’re contradicted in the poem?
I
still miss him and it hurts me that his memory should be maligned in
this way.
I’m
also confused by her statement that one of the reasons we were
separated is abandonment. Isn’t abandonment a type of separation?
Is she saying that one of the reasons we were separated is that we
were separated?
Bona
seems to be one of those critics who think that whenever a poet uses
the first person, she’s referring to herself, and that poetry is
autobiographical. This lack of sophistication might be acceptable in
an ordinary reader but it’s not acceptable in a literary critic.
They
say I cause trouble. I don’t cause trouble. I complain about the
people who have caused me trouble. If you want to know a secret,
there are only two groups of people who say I don’t know how to get
along with people: 1. those who have stolen from me, lied to me, lied
about me, used me, abused me, and cheated me, and 2. those who have
never met me but accept the first group’s gossip about me and allow
those people to do their thinking for them. People who know me and
treat me with even the minimum of courtesy and respect that anyone is
entitled to as a human being think I get along with people just fine.
I
remember years ago being with Bona and two (self-)important men in
the Italian-American literary community. A third man came along and
they all introduced themselves and then walked off together, after a
few words with Bona, and ignoring me completely. I took a step
forward and muttered, “I’m not here.” Bona grabbed me by the
arm and cried, “No, no, no.” No, no, no what? Why does she think
it’s okay for people to be rude to me and it’s not okay for me to
object to it?
Do
Italian-American critics write this way about other people? Do the
other people accept everything the critics write because they have
little self-respect and are desperate to be remembered after they
die? Do Italian-American critics think they can write anything about
my books because they’re out of print, and no one will be able to
read the poems that the critics write about, and I’ll probably
never find out about what they’ve written? Are they counting on the
fact that so many people in the Italian-American literary mafia are
happy to think I just don’t know how to get along with people and
will accept whatever a critic says?
But
it’s been like that for me from the beginning: treat me like shit
and if I complain about it, tell people I’m a bad person and I
don’t know how to get along with people, and no one will believe
anything I say, and your problem is solved.
They
say I disappeared. I didn’t disappear and I know a lot of people in
Italy who can back me up on that. I’m actually living a life here.
“Not seeing” and “disappearing” are two different things.
What you see is not what determines what is visible.
I
know of only two people in the Italian-American literary community
who understand anything I’ve written and write about it with that
understanding. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re
both writers and damned good ones.
When
I left the US I had no doubt I would be forgotten. I never suspected
that irresponsible critics would take the opportunity to write
unsubstantiated crap about me just to further their own careers as
critics.
In
Edvige Giunta’s book of essays, Writing with an Accent,
she quotes B. Amore as saying “What is not remembered is
forgotten.” Taken out of context like this, it doesn’t seem too
profound, even it it’s profound enough in the book. I mention it
because I’d like to make my own similar quote: What is not
remembered correctly is forgotten.
So
I’ll continue to complain about the irresponsible critics. Not only
does it give me things to write about but, with any luck, the
irresponsible critics will get fed up and stop writing about me.
