One thing about literary
critics that has always disappointed me is that they very rarely
write about the craft in my work.
All literary critics ever
talk about is what I say and never how I say it. I busted my butt
writing those poems. If you like them, don’t you think maybe
there’s a reason, besides just what I’m saying? Don’t you think
maybe I know what I’m doing? Don’t you think it’s not just
chance?
But those days are over. At
least, I like to think so because I found, on the internet, an essay
that mentions my work.
It’s called “Italian
American Poetry Today: An Appreciation in Prog-ress” and was
written by George Guida, one of the few literary critics I know of
who actually knows how to read. And I mean read and not just
correctly recognize words often enough to satisfy a third-grade
teacher.
Although he starts off with
the usual stuff about what I said in my poems, he seems to be aware
that how I said it contributes to the meaning of what I said because
he goes on to talk at least a little about my “skill.” He says:
“The range of the poem [“Wop Talk” originally from my book The
Wop Factor, now included in Neither Seen nor Heard, both
published by malafemmina press], and of Romano’s Italian
American poetry in general, is remarkable, as is her skill
(especially with line breaks in this poem) . . .”
I copied his essay off the
internet and put it on a word document in my computer. I read it at
home. I’d been waiting so long to see someone write about how I
said it and not just what I said. And of all things, he chose my line
breaks! If I spent five hours writing a poem, at least one full hour
was spent on the line breaks alone. They’re very important to me; I
use them as a form of punctuation; as a way of putting an emphasis on
what I’m saying; as a way to allow for two or more interpretations
of the same word or expression—not to confuse, but to increase the
meaning by including different aspects of that meaning.
If other literary critics
don’t know that, well, what are they talking about when they talk
about what I’m talking about?
But George mentioned my line
breaks and when I saw that, I cried.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t
stay that good. Sometimes it gets a little less good.
Now we go down a notch or
two.
Mary Jo Bona’s essay
“Learning to Speak Doubly: New Poems by Gianna Patriarca and Rose
Romano” is a little difficult for me to write about because it’s
well written and makes it obvious that Bona read at least some of the
work and understood some of what she read. Ask any-one who knows me;
I like to complain. Even pairing me with Patriarca makes me feel as
though Bona has a better understanding of my work and I’m really
happy to share an article with Patriarca. But I’m going to give
writing about Bona’s essay a shot anyway because there are a few
things I don’t understand, one of which hurt me.
Bona starts with a brief
introduction that mentions my poem “The Wop Factor.” She says,
“In her title poem, ‘The Wop Factor,’ Rose Romano takes the
joke made against her—‘when you slap the magazine on the table—.
. . / it goes WOP!’ and revises the meaning to suit her purposes as
a poet: ‘and when you slap us down we make noise.’ ”
This is the whole poem:
The Wop Factor
So when I brought the
magazine
over to the printer
I asked him can I save a
little money
by using a thinner paper.
He said well, you know, not
much,
a little, but not much. But,
you know, he said, you want
that extra weight, a
magazine
as small as this, to give it
more
substance, make it good and
heavy, give it what you call
your wop factor.
I said, I beg your pardon .
. .
How was that again . . .
He said, you know, when you
slap
the magazine on the table—
and he demonstrated—
it goes WOP!
So I’ve been thinking
about that
a lot
and I think maybe
la bella figura
should be enhanced
by the wop factor—
we want that extra weight—
prose of substance,
good and heavy poetry
and when you slap us down
we make noise.
Although Bona got the point,
she reads ‘wop,’ probably because that’s what I wrote, and says
the guy made a joke against me. He didn’t make a joke against me.
My own experience with
anti-Italian bigots is that most of them are oblivious to
Italian-American culture and experience. They don’t even recognize
Italian names as Italian and some of them think that “pasta” is a
word coined by American yuppies, which makes sense, according to
them, because, according to them, most pasta dishes were created by
American yuppies. They don’t see anything insulting in anything.
After all, Italian-Americans are all short, dark, hairy, stupid
criminals, and lazy good-for-nothings. A lot of the anti-Italian
bigots either don’t know the difference between culture and
stereotypes or they think that Italian culture is oppressive and
should be changed to suit what they think is right. Besides, stating
simple facts is not bigotry. This makes it really difficult to fight
anti-Italian bigotry because you can’t just fight anti-Italian
bigotry. First you have to convince the bigot that he’s a bigot.
And bigots don’t like that.
And I don’t think that’s
changed since I left the United States to live in Italy more than
fifteen years ago. A few months ago, I got onto an internet forum,
used mostly by Americans, to ask whether anyone might happen to know
of a lawyer in Italy or maybe an organization of lawyers so that I
could get some legal advice. No one really knew what to tell me but
they all, with one exception, seriously tried to help me, suggesting
sites that I might look at or write to or people I might ask for
advice. Only one person left a message saying that, in Italy, you
don’t use a lawyer. You use the Mafia. He then proceeded to list
every cliché found in American Mafia movies. I really don’t
believe he knew he was being offensive. The tone of his message
seemed gleeful, like a little boy who thought he was impressing his
mother with his ability to accept and memorize information. I think
he thought, very sincerely, that he was being witty. Bigots aren’t
known for being too bright.
Then there was the time I
got onto a forum for writers with a message that used the word “wop.”
The message, which asked for submissions for an anthology I wanted to
do, was removed because it was found to be insulting and one of the
moderators sent me a private message to explain that the word “wop”
is offensive. She suggested, this woman who knows so little about my
culture that she didn’t even recognize the name Romano, which I
used in the message, as an Italian name, that if I didn’t know that
“wop” is an offensive term, I should look it up on Wikipedia.
As it happens, I figured out
that “wop” is an offensive term when I was six years old and
standing in a schoolyard. So, wops were censored once again, not by a
regular bigot but a jackass bigot.
The point that this
moderator missed is that when someone outside a group uses an
offensive term for that group, it’s offensive. When a member of a
group uses an offensive term for her own group, it’s a term of
endearment.
Bona makes it clear that she
understands this. She says: “Riappro-priating the negative word,
giving substance to insult is a gesture of re-fusal to be named
hurtfully, a powerful tool of minority cultures in their attempt to
maintain their integrity.”
But I still don’t see why
Bona thinks that’s a joke. I don’t think he was making a joke. I
think he was an oblivious jackass like the guy and the moderater on
those forums, because the printer didn’t say “wop.” He said
“whap.” It’s a perfectly innocent little onomatopoetic word
that means the sound “whap,” a word that I’ve heard many times
in many contexts and that couldn’t possibly be interpreted as being
offensive to Italian-Americans or even having anything at all to do
with Italian-Americans.
When I got to the place in
the poem where I needed to write “whap” or “wop,” I hesitated
for a moment. Should I write what the man said or should I write what
I heard? Well, I decided, it’s my poem so I’ll write what I
heard. Anyway, I figured, the whole point of the poem, that tiny
spark of power, would be a little stronger, and a little clearer, if
I wrote “wop.”
Has Bona never been up
against a bigot who’s more an oblivious jackass than a bigot? If
she hasn’t, she’s luckier than I am. I don’t know how much
breath I’ve wasted trying to explain my culture to idiots. As least
if they’re already aware that what they’re saying is insulting to
us overly sensitive and over emotional Italian-Americans, you can
skip over the explanation and go directly to cursing them out. That
can save a lot of time, especially if they decide afterwards that
they don’t want to talk to you anymore. And maybe they won’t be
so quick to insult the next wop because, although most bigots are
truth-resistant, the rest of them don’t like taking the risk of
looking at the truth.
Aother question, the one
that hurts me, is what she says about my poem “Final Stages.” She
says: “For example, in the final stages of AIDS, Romano’s
ex-husband, Donald asks forgiveness for having left the poet and
their daughter.”
He didn’t leave me; I left
him. And that’s not pride talking. So where did she get this idea
from? I just read the poem over.
Okay, I say: “He wants me
to forgive him for / not being there for / seventeen years. . . .”
But that doesn’t
necessarily mean that he left me; you could also interpret that as
meaning I left him. No matter which one of us left, he still wasn’t
there, even if the one who was left is asking for forgiveness. You
know how complicated life is and relationships are more compli-cated
than life. Obviously, there was a lot more going on that I didn’t
mention in the poem. (I’m pretending now that I think poems are
autobiographies, as many literary critics seem to think. But I don’t
think that at all.) I think it was big of him to ask for forgiveness,
in spite of the fact that I left him, and it made me feel guilty,
because I could have tried to keep in touch with him, and hopeful,
because I was thinking, as I say in the poem, “maybe that means
he’s forgiven / me for taking his daughter / away,” that is, when
I left him and he didn’t leave me. Right after that I say: “. . .
We panicked. We ran. . . .” We is not he.
I say: “I think, after I
left, you went back.”—after I left him. Maybe I should have said
“him” but it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be necessary.
So why does Bona’s idea
that my husband left me and our daughter hurt me? It’s not in the
poem because Donald wasn’t like that. The only explanation I can
think of is the racist stereotype of the black man who abandons his
family. But why would Bona, who thinks that poems are
autobiographies, believe a racist stereotype when it is contradicted
by what is said in the poem?
Then she goes on to say:
“What remains essential about their relation-ship is not their
separation (because of abandonment, race difference, and illness) . .
.”
No abandonment. A man
abandons but a woman leaves. I think that’s a rule, but I could
easily be wrong. And isn’t abandonment a type of separation? Is
Bona saying that one of the reasons we were separated is that we were
separated?
Race difference? There are
lots of similarities in differences. I say in the poem “. . . He /
didn’t believe me when I told him / we had spaghetti and meatballs
for / dinner every Sunday. But I didn’t / believe him when he said
/ they had chitterlings and black eyed / peas for dinner every
Sunday. We / used to goof on each other that / way. . . .”
Those are just two different
recipes. The important thing that we shared is that we grew up
having special foods from our own culture on Sunday—the most
special, even if the most boring, day of the week.
Our race differences brought
us closer; you share a lot of heavy stuff when you’re part of an
interracial couple, stuff that people like Bona seem to be unaware
of. Or, if Bona’s not unaware of it, she doesn’t seem to give any
importance to it. And maybe Bona doesn’t know what dissing is or
how much fun it can be to goof on your friends.
The poem that appears on the
page immediately preceding “Final Stages” goes like this:
Like an Echo
I was young
and didn’t see any difference.
A two-story home filled asymmetrically
with family, mostly aunts and
cousins, a couple of uncles, the
grandmother. It was the only
American family I’d ever seen
that looked so much like mine.
I was happy
and didn’t think how different
reasons can sometimes bring results
that only look familiar.
I was eager
to grow from cousin to aunt to
grandmother and when I married him—
Italian woman to black man—I took
the same place in his home
I’d had in mine.
Now, I watch
my daughter, a cousin
who has promoted me to aunt. The grand-
mothers I remember are gone,
the aunts have become grandmothers,
reasons are chosen by people with power,
and the cousins look
familiar.
Re-read the first two lines
of this poem. I was there and I didn’t see a difference. Where did
Bona see a difference?
Illness? I didn’t feel as
though his illness separated us. Actually, we were separated long
before he got AIDS. As I say in the poem: Today I found out / my
ex-husband/ is in the final stages / of aids. . . .
If I call him my ex-husband,
doesn’t that make it clear that we were divorced? Don’t you
usually separate from a spouse before you get a divorce? How could
this illness have separated us if we were divorced before he was
diagnosed and before I found out about it?
What does Bona mean when she
says “separated”? I’m not sure be-cause she uses two other
words incorrectly.
These “race differences”
she talks about aren’t as insurmountable as Bona seems to think.
People are people and they have the same needs and feelings. The
details of their history might be different, but the people are the
same. Ignoring the sameness of different people is something that
racists need to do in order to justify their racism.
Instead of reading the poems
carefully, she “evaluates” them according to racist stereotypes
and clichés. Why? Is she a closet racist or just un-able to think
original thoughts?
I thought maybe she hadn’t
read “Like an Echo,” which, as I said, appears immediately before
“Final Stages.” But she did read it; she mentions it in her
essay. If she’s so convinced that poems are auto-biographies, why
doesn’t she take it into consideration when she talks about “Final
Stages”?
When she gets to the poem
“The Family Dialect,” Bona refers to Santa Rosalia as my
namesake. How could that be if Rosalie and Rose are two different
names? Does she mean to suggest that Rosalie is my saint? No, she’s
not. I know of three saints who go by the name of Rose: Saint Rose of
Lima, Saint Rose Venerini of Viterbo, and Saint Rose from Viterbo. I
prefer Santa Rosa da Viterbo because, although she only lived for
about 17 or 18 years and I shared very few of her beliefs, she had
the guts to say what she believed no matter who was listening,
knowing all the time that it could get her killed by the people in
power.
And if Santa Rosalia was my
saint, what relevance would that have in my decision to join her? You
don’t pray to a saint because she’s your saint. You pray to a
saint according to what you want and what their area of expertise is.
You pray to Saint Anthony when you lose something. You pray to Saint
Rocco when you’re in a hopeless situation and you can’t stand it
any more. If I told Santa Rosalia that I was coming to join her, it
was because she was a hermit who lived in a cave.
Or maybe, like many people,
she just doesn’t like repetition. But I don’t think this
justifies using a word incorrectly.
Bona says I was “. . .
willing to be literally flayed . . .” Where did she get the idea
that I’m willing to be “literally” flayed? Not me. I’m not as
brave as my saint; I don’t want to be “literally” flayed. And,
although I like a good fight, I don’t even want to be figuratively
flayed; it’s a pain in the butt and leads to useless agita. But
I’ve noticed that a lot of people use the word “literally”
without meaning it literally, as though it’s just an intensifier.
Maybe that’s how Bona meant it.
Bona says that “. . . Rose
Romano believes that poetry is not a luxury . . .” Where did
she get this idea from? Letters we exchanged? We didn’t exchange
any letters. An essay I wrote? I never said this in an essay. In my
poems? I never said this in a poem. I think she just invented this in
her own head because it suited what she wanted to say in her
essay—and for another reason which I’ll mention later.
As a matter of fact, I think
that poetry is a luxury and I think that suggesting that any
form of art is a necessity is offensive to people who don’t have
enough of the necessities. Eating, drinking, sleeping, some other
stuff, are necessities. The necessities are what we do so that we can
live to enjoy the luxuries we like, such as poetry.
Before writing this essay, I
sent Bona an email to ask her to explain some of the things she wrote
in her essay. After waiting more than a month without a response, I
sent her the email again. After waiting another month without a
response, I sent her another email telling her why I wanted this
information. Altogether, I waited for more than three months and
never received a response. Was she too busy to have even at least
enough respect for me to acknowledge my emails? Apparently, she
thinks she has the right to decide what my opinions are and I’m
just a problem that will go away if she ignores me long enough.
I’ve noticed that some
Italian-American literary critics don’t care about the truth,
aren’t responsible about what they write, and think that their
ideas about what a writer thinks and feels are just as valid as what
the writer says she thinks and feels.
And I’m beginning to think
that this attitude is one of the reasons that Italian-American
literature doesn’t get as much respect as it deserves. A
non-Italian reader might read this stuff, and read the work it’s
supposed to be about, and conclude that wops don’t know what
they’re doing.
There are two essays that I
read in VIA, I think. I don’t remember the names or what
issues they were in or who wrote them, but I’m going to go ahead
and mention them anyway—if literary critics can write without
giving sources, so can I. At least I know I’m telling the truth,
whether you believe it or not, and I’m not just making stuff up. In
any case, I wrote to VIA to ask about these essays and got no
helpful information.
One essay talked about me
and a few other Italian-American women poets. I think the author got
the poems she talked about from the anthology I did, la bella
figura: a choice, published by malafemmina press in 1993.
The women she wrote about, including me, were all third-generation
Italian-Americans, that is, they were born in the United States of
parents born in the United States. Their grandparents had been born
in Italy and had gone to the United States as immigrants, the first
gener-ation. The author of the essay noticed that we wrote mostly
about our grandmothers and, for reasons that I’ve never been able
to understand, she concluded from these few poems that
Italian-American women reject their mothers. Why not conclude that
Italian-American women reject their grandfathers or their fathers? Or
their mail carrier? Beats me.
If the author of this essay
had taken the trouble to read my bio notes, she would have found out
that my mother died when I was eight years old. I don’t have a clue
about what it’s like to have a mother beyond that age. I was raised
by my Neapolitan grandmother. That’s why I wrote about my
grandmother—she was the closest thing to a mother that I knew and
my most important direct connection to Italy. I never knew my other
grandparents.
I don’t really know why
the other women wrote about their grandmothers, but if I had to take
a guess, I’d say that they were also third generation and, in
writing about their history and culture as Italian-Americans, they
wanted to write about their closest direct link to being Italian and,
in writing as women and feminists, they chose their grandmother
instead of their grandfather. I don’t think they were re-jecting
anyone or anything; I think, instead, they were accepting some-one
and something, that is, their grandmother and the culture she gave
them.
The other essay claimed that
I was influenced by a certain four or five writers. I always thought
that, in order to be influenced by writers, you have to read them. I
don’t remember who these writers were but I remember that I had
never read any of them and one of them I had never even heard of.
If the author of this essay
thought my work was similar to these writers, if my work reminded her
of the work of these writers, if my work seemed to her to fit into
the same “family” as the work of these writers, she should have
just said that. But where does she get the nerve to say that I was
influenced by them without even knowing whether or not I’ve read
them? A similarity in writing styles is not the same as an influence.
Doesn’t the author of that essay know that?
But it gets better. I
mentioned this to another literary critic, without mentioning the
names of the writers and only saying that I had never read any of
these people and one of them I had never even heard of. He put on his
knowing smile and said, “Oh, I’m sure you were influenced by
them.”
Sure based on what? His
complete ignorance of who was an influence on me? His not even
knowing who these writers were that I was talking about? He seemed to
have the feeling that, when it comes to literary critics and writers,
it’s us against them. That’s possible when you consider what
nonsense some literary critics write about writers’ work. If the
artists’ complaints about critics is a cliché, well, there’s a
reason for that.
Now we plummet.
While Bona’s article makes
it obvious that English is her native language and she didn’t sleep
through her grammar lessons in the third grade, Chiara Mazzucchelli
writes English as though she learned English in Italy from Italian
teachers who can’t speak English, something very common in Italy,
and, in English, Mazzucchelli is just barcollando nel buio.
But when you’re reading a
literary essay, you expect correct grammar and punctuation,
insightful reading, and an understanding of the text. I used to
expect that, too. Now, after reading what some people have written
about me, I just keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.
Now comes the fun part.
I’ve met people who are
under the impression that venting and writing poetry are the same
thing. Some people seem to think that every poem a poet writes is
about her and gives an accurate account of some event in her life.
When I lived in San
Francisco, where there are poetry readings almost every night of the
week, I did a lot of open poetry readings. You see the same people at
these readings and you become poetry-reading friends, the way, in
Italy, you become cafe friends with the people you always see at your
cafe, that is, the cafe you always go to. In San Francisco, you sit
with your poetry-reading friends, you comment on the poems being read
and you talk about your own writing. You get to know some things
about each other.
One night I read a poem
about the loss of the culture of origin, something I wrote about
pretty often as an Italian-American. The poem spoke about a woman
whose son used to call his grandmother “nonna.” When he grew up,
he called her “grandmother.” His mother is a little saddened by
this, although she doesn’t seem to be sure why. I wrote the poem in
the first person because I thought it worked better that way. At the
end of the poem, she says, “He has a son who calls me Grammy, but
it’s not the same.”
After the reading, when we
were all standing around eating our cookies and drinking our apple
juice, one woman came up to me and said, “I didn’t know you have
a son.” I was in my mid-forties. Did I look like I was old enough
to have a grandson who can talk? What made her think this poem was
about me?
But a literary critic can be
expected to be more sophisticated and to know better. A literary
critic should be educated at least well enough to know the difference
between a poem and an autobiography. She should be honest enough to
admit the limitations of her knowledge of the writer’s personal
life and deepest feelings, especially if she has never met that
writer. She should have enough understanding of literature to know
that the authors of murder mysteries aren’t necessarily murderers.
She should have the intelligence to be able to distinguish between an
inter-pretation of a piece of writing and a description of what’s
going on in the mind of the writer.
She should have learned in
grade school that a poem is the same as any other work of
literature—some of it is true of the poet, some of it is true of
other people, some of it is symbolical, some of it she read in a
news-paper or magazine, some of it she saw on television or heard on
the radio, some of it is just made up to make a point.
So, Chiara Mazzucchelli
wrote an article about me called “The Scum of the Scum of the Scum:
Rose Romano’s Search for Sisterhood.” First published in the
Journal of Lesbian Studies, and later in her book The
Heart and the Island, published by
Suny Press, this article is a load of crap.
If
a critic thinks my work is no good and backs it up with reasons that
make sense, that doesn’t bother me. But when a critic makes up a
bunch of lies about me to suit her own ideas (or, in Mazzucchelli’s
case, ideas taken from other people) and to further her own career,
that really pisses me off.
According
to the title, Mazzucchelli’s article is about me and right from the
get-go it’s wrong. I wasn’t searching for sisterhood. I wanted
recognition of me and my people. I wanted respect for me and my
people. I wanted lesbians to understand that even wops have a history
and a culture. I had no desire to be the sister of ignorant racist
con-servatives who disguised themselves as enlightened progressives
who welcome all women as equals.
I’ve already described the
hierarchy of pain in the lesbian community. If I’m forced to be
shoved into the white cubbyhole, my history and culture are
annihilated, because to a politically correct lesbian white means
wasp. They learned their beliefs out of a supposedly radical
catechism, memorized it and barfed it up whenever they needed to
score points. If they really believed the things they said, they
wouldn’t have needed to be told by every new group that comes along
that even the new group is made up of people who have a history and a
culture and who deserve respect.
When I first read
Mazzucchelli’s article on the internet, I had no idea that it had
also been included in a book because the article begins with a quote
from Booker T. Washington, a black man who said that the situation of
blacks in the United States is better than the situation of Sicilians
in Sicily. From my experience in the lesbian community, I took that
as an apology, a politically correct request for permission to commit
the mortal sin of talking about Sicilians as though they’re people,
maybe even worth as much as black people. I thought Mazzucchelli, as
the typical politically correct lesbian who’s too cowardly to see
with her own eyes and think with her own brain, needed to call me
Sicilian in order to be granted that permission and to write about me
in the lesbian press. I figured she couldn’t find a similar quote
about Italians.
Politically correct lesbians
consider Sicilians, and other Italians, to be white. They consider
black people to be equal to white people, at the same time that they
consider white people to be inferior to black people. If I say that
Italian-Americans are just as good as black people, this is
considered to be insulting to black people. Politically correct
lesbians apparently don’t have the brains to see that their own
response is insulting to Italian-Americans because, in the
politically correct lesbian community, it’s okay to insult
Italian-Americans if you consider them white.
I had to take algebra five
times before I finally passed it with the lowest possible passing
grade, so maybe what I’m about to say isn’t trust-worthy. But I
don’t remember any of those algebra teachers saying that A is equal
to B but B is not equal to A. Yet this is what passes itself off as
rational discourse in the politically correct lesbian community.
Then I found out that there
was a book. I know that academics need to publish and now I know that
some academics, and some academic presses, don’t care what they
publish. All they want is to further their own careers and have their
names remembered.
Here’s her
“interpretation” of one of my poems:
The contestatory potential
of Sicilian Americanness as a discourse in Romano’s hands is easy
to discern when one introduces the element of choice in the poet’s
process of self-ascription. In fact, Romano is the daughter of an
inter-regional couple, so to speak.
The lines themselves look
pretty good. Her grammar’s okay and she uses big words. She really
sounds like she knows what she’s talking about. But the stuff
between the lines doesn’t add up.
I wrote the poem and I
happen to know she doesn’t have a clue.
She doesn’t bother
explaining what this easily discernible process of self-ascription
is, how it happened, or how her conclusion was reached. She doesn’t
even mention what her conclusion is. She just expects us to get it.
I wrote the damned poem and,
far from finding this process of self-ascription to be easy to
discern, it took me two days to figure out that all she was really
suggesting is that I was so ashamed of my lying Neapolitan aunt, that
I decided to be Sicilian. Maybe it took me two days to figure it out
because I’m stupid. Or maybe it took me two days to figure it out
because I wasn’t ashamed of my aunt, she wasn’t lying, and I
never decided to be Sicilian.
This is the whole poem:
Just Two More
My aunt, keeper of the
family history, says
my grandparents were
Neapolitan
nobility, owned property on
the bay, named my
father Victor, after the
king—they knew him
personally. They seem to
have come over
accidentally. My aunt can’t
offer a satisfactory
reason why they would leave
a home of
respect and riches—a count
and countess—
to come so far to this
classless
society, where they were
just two more
wops. I try to imagine the
bay, the hills
rising in green steps around
it,
Mt. Vesuvius smoking. But
when my aunt
explains that my
grandparents owned a
villa in Castellammare,
which she describes
as a suburb of Naples, all I
can see
is my cousin at his barbecue
in his backyard
in Staten Island.
If you can show me a
“process of self-ascription” as Sicilian-American in this poem, I
will eat my computer. In fact, I think if you showed this poem to a
ten-year-old and asked her to find the lines that indicate a
self-ascription to Sicilianness, she would first ask what
self-ascription means. Then she’d look puzzled and say, “But
Sicilians aren’t even men-tioned in this poem. And if she belongs
to a Neapolitan family, doesn’t that make her Neapolitan? And
wouldn’t she know that?”
I understand that as the
writer of the poem, I’m not allowed to interpret it. As everyone
knows, literary critics know everything and writers are all a bunch
of assholes who don’t know shit from Shinola. But as long as you’re
reading this, you might be condescending enough to allow me a few
paragraphs to give my own interpretation of one of my own poems.
According to my own
interpretation, the poem is about assimilation, particularly in the
way it’s accomplished in Italian-American culture, a culture born
of Italian culture. The first generation, arriving in the United
States, would have left half their culture behind and lived in what
they were able to salvage and to hide in their hearts, even from
their own children. (I call this “wop omertà.”) The second
generation, who typically wanted only to be American, would not have
investigated much, only dropping a few crumbs to their own children.
The third generation is already replacing Italian images with
American images.
The poem is not about my
family. To think so means that you read only the words and don’t
know what the words mean or imply. There’s more to poetry than what
you see on the surface.
My family history is just
the “occasion” of the poem. And I left out half my family history
because it wasn’t necessary to the poem. The subject, as I said, is
assimilation.
You’d think an Italian
literary critic who understands what it means to be a wop and knows
English well enough to evaluate English-language literature, would
have seen that very easily. You’d think any competent literary
critic would be aware that a poem is more than just the words used in
it. I think the meaning of that poem is pretty obvious.
I think that my being me
gives me the right to discuss myself and my family history. Unlike
Mazzucchelli, I’m not making suppositions. I was there. I’ve met
me. I’ve known me all my life. I’ve been everywhere I’ve ever
gone and I’ve done everything I’ve ever done. And, unlike
Mazzuc-chelli, I’m in an excellent position to read my mind.
It’s a little funny, too,
that the only time she recognizes my being Neapolitan, which she
manages to ignore at the same time, is when she tries to use my
“Neapolitanness” to back up her claim that I identify as
Sicilian. The expression double-think comes to mind.
You want my family history?
I got my family history right here, I got my family history.
My grandfather, Nicola
Sorrentino, was the ward of King Vittorio Emanuele II. He was a
count; his wife was a countess. My Neapolitan grandparents went back
and forth between Naples and New York and happened to be in New York
when they ran out of money. But they had enough money left to buy a
house and to open a business. Only rich people would think they were
poor because they couldn’t afford to live in a castle. And,
considering what was going on in Italian politics at the time, there
were good reasons for a Neapolitan count to want to stay out of
Italy, reasons that my grandfather would not have wanted to tell his
children.
You’d think that someone
in Mazzucchelli’s position would know that not all of the
immigrants left Italy because they were poor.
I wrote to Mazzucchelli
explaining my feelings. I’m was damned polite enough. I wrote to
her several times. All I ever received in response from her was her
claim to be willing and ready to discuss these things with me. But
she never discussed anything.
Her emails were always
brief, curt, dismissive messages, the equivalent of tossing me into
the garbage. Her tone was that of a little girl who’s trying to be
a bully because she’s afraid that someone will find out she’s
incompetent.
I waited about two weeks for
a response to my last email to her. Maybe she thought I would just
disappear and she wouldn’t have to treat me with respect and deal
with the problem. I’m pretty sure she thinks, as politically
correct lesbians think, that I have no right to define myself or even
offer my irrelevant opinion about what I am or how I feel.
After two weeks without a
response to my last email, I threw a fit all over Facebook about
Mazzucchelli’s article, and sent emails to a bunch of people I
know.
I received an email from
another literary critic who said, “You can fight against
interpretation all you want, but you’ll never convince anyone that
their’s [sic] is wrong.” He said, “Sorry to hear about your
problems, but don’t expect any response from anyone on this.”
I’m a high school dropout;
I don’t know how academic people do things. I thought he was
talking from his own general experience in the academic community.
But several other people
sent understanding emails to me. One literary critic, who is also a
writer, mentioned that, although he didn’t know how Suny Press does
things, there should be a “series editor” and that I had “a
right to ask that the essay be corrected and reprinted or removed.”
An academic, who is not a literary critic, said, “I am very sorry.
This is obviously a case of misinterpretation.” The woman who had
originally sent me a copy of the article, who is an academic but not
a literary critic, expressed her sympathy, saying, “Gee, I didn’t
think it was that bad.”
Then I found out that there
is a series editor in this case and that the critic who told me not
to expect any response was the series editor, a man I’ve known for
a long time. Then I understood that what he said wasn’t coming from
his general experience in the academic community. Instead, he was
just saying “Shut up and put up.”
I referred, above, to my
“interpretation” of my poem. I only used the word
“interpretation” to mimic Mazzucchelli. A writer does not
interpret her own work; she explains it. Readers interpret. Maybe
this series editor is confusing readers with writers. To be told that
the writer can never convince anyone that the reader’s
interpretation is wrong, is not just plain ridiculous; it’s also
presumptuous. The poet knows what she meant. The reader does not tell
the poet what she meant, unless he’s more arrogant than God.
Both the series editor and
Mazzucchelli have informed me that this article is about my work, and
not about me. Maybe they think I don’t know how to read. Or maybe
they don’t know how to read.
Reading a poem and
concluding, for God knows what reason, that I identify as Sicilian,
is not an interpretation of the poem. How I identify is about me, not
my work. Calling my aunt a liar is about me, not my work. Suggesting
that I’m ashamed of being Neapolitan is about me, not my work.
“In this article,”
Mazzucchelli says, “I will explore Rose Romano’s poetry to show
how she uses especially her Sicilian Americanness . . .” In other
words, as Mazzucchelli just said herself, the whole article is going
to serve as proof that I identify as Sicilian. In other words, the
article is about me. It is not an interpretation of my work. Whether
or not I’m Sicilian is about me and not my work.
She quotes only what serves
this purpose. She quotes this part of one of my poems:
I grew up
in a Neapolitan family,
always silently
defending Sicilians. . .
If I misbehaved
or did something
stupid, it was because
I’m Sicilian.
She leaves this out which
should appear where she sticks her ellipsis:
(Sicilians were
my sainted mother.)
Sicilians were my sainted
mother; Sicilians weren’t me. If I identified as Sicilian, the two
lines in parenthesis wouldn’t have entered my head. These two lines
were obviously intended to “un-identify” myself as Sicilian. But
that doesn’t suit Mazzucchelli’s ideas.
Mazzucchelli is also not
above changing direct quotes, something, I’ve noticed, that some
Italians have no problem doing when it suits them.
In her opening quote asking
for permission to write about a “Sicilian-American” lesbian, she
tells us that Booker T. Washington wrote: “The condition of the
coloured farmer. . . .” She quotes me twice as having written
“colour” instead of “color.” I don’t know about Booker T.
Washington, but I wrote “color” not “colour.”
Before you decide that I’ve
reached new heights of persnicketyness, let me explain, because it’s
not just a tiny, unimportant change in what I wrote. It’s not even,
in itself, the problem; it’s a result of the problem.
Italians, as I’ve already
mentioned, are, in the majority of cases, taught English by Italians
who learned English from Italians who learned English from Italians,
from here to the dawn of time. Some of them even spend a summer or
two in England to “perfect” their English. From what I’ve seen,
most of these teachers are laughably incompetent. Even the best of
them don’t know English as well as they think they do. And they
don’t teach American English. They don’t know American English.
They teach British English, which they don’t know too well, either.
And they certainly don’t know American slang or American culture.
Mazzucchelli’s use of
British English (Maybe she thought she was correcting my mistake or
maybe she doesn’t know what “sic” means.) just tells me she has
little real life experience with English; it’s just something she
learned out of a book and has no gut level understanding of it.
But then there are the
editors at the Journal of Lesbian Studies. I’ve pointed out
elsewhere that suffering is more important than merit in the
politically correct lesbian community. In one email that I received
from someone at the Journal of Lesbian Studies, I was informed
by the writer, whose name, both first and last, weren’t even
Indo-European let alone English, that the problem would have to be
“discussed to the director.”
All mistakes made in any
language can be divided into two main categories: native speaker
mistakes and foreign speaker mistakes. No native speaker of English
would say “discuss to.” It wouldn’t occur to a native speaker
to make such a mistake. Any native speaker who’s that ignorant
would more likely have written “talk to.”
So, we’ve got the blind
leading the blind, or, to be more precise, the ignorant leading the
ignorant.
Mazzucchelli also said that,
in my “coloured” essay, I “lamented” about being censored in
the lesbian press. I wasn’t lamenting; I was protesting. I was
speaking out against bigotry. I was denouncing the fantastically
con-voluted bigotry that tries to pass itself off as an open-minded
welcome to all lesbians who accept being crammed into their cubby
holes. I was bitching. But maybe Mazzucchelli doesn’t know what
lamenting is.
But I say in the poem “it
was because I’m Sicilian.” If Mazzucchelli knew English well
enough to evaluate the literature, she would be aware that such a
modo di dire, used in contexts such as this, is intended to express
the feelings of others, and not of oneself. In other words, my
Neapolitan family, because of their prejudice against Sicilians,
blamed all my faults on their idea that I’m Sicilian.
The poem is called “Mutt
Bitch.” I have never denied that, by blood, I’m half Sicilian. To
do so would be to deny my mother, not myself, and I have no more
intention of denying my mother than I have of denying myself. The
point is, and maybe it’s too subtle for some people, is that I have
never felt Sicilian. I have never identified as Sicilian. I have
always felt myself to be Neapolitan. I have always identified as
Neapolitan. I was raised by my Neapolitan grandmother. A great pride
in being Neapolitan always glowed around her, while the aunts and
uncles found being Italian to be embarrassing. I decided long before
I even knew that such things could be decided, that I wanted to be
one of the ones who are proud of what they are and not one of the
ones who are ashamed of what they are. I wanted to be my Neapolitan
grandmother.
Having grown up in a
Neapolitan family, I have no notion of “Sicilian Americanness,”
as Mazzucchelli says. In fact, I don’t have a clue. I did not use
my “Sicilian-American woman identity.” I don’t have one to use.
I am not aware of anything “as a Sicilian American.” She says,
“The process of identity construction in [my] poetry involved the
recovery of [my] Sicilian heritage.” This is about me and not my
work. But I don’t have a Sicilian heritage to recover; I have a
Neapolitan heritage. I’ve always had a Neapolitan heritage; I still
have it so I’ve never needed to recover it.
Heritage is not in your
blood. Heritage is in your head.
But she knows I grew up in a
Neapolitan family. How the hell would I get a Sicilian heritage from
a Neapolitan family?
You learn heritage from what
you hear in your family, what you see, what your family tells you,
how they raise you, how they behave.
I know that many people use
the word “heritage” a little loosely in a casual conversation
with friends. So do I. But an academic essay about poetry is not a
casual conversation. A competent literary critic is expected to use
words precisely.
“[My] notion of Sicilian
Americanness springs from many factors and personal considerations.”
What factors? What personal considerations?
Mazzucchelli doesn’t tell
us what these factors and considerations are, maybe because she
doesn’t know what they are. If Mazzucchelli, or anyone else, read
my poems and concluded that I wanted to be Neapolitan because of my
strong Neapolitan grandmother, because I wanted to belong to my
Neapolitan family, because my Neapolitan family was always insulting
Sicilians, I wouldn’t throw a fit on Facebook. And it’s not just
because they’re declaring me Neapolitan. It’s also because their
reading of my poetry would make more sense, because this conclusion
would show that they read the poems first and then came to their
conclusion, instead of coming to their conclusion first and then
digging through my poems to justify themselves—although declaring
me Neapolitan would still be writing about me and not my poems.
“According to the poet, in
fact,” she says, “Sicilians are a racially defined group.”
According to the poet? It seems to me like Mazzucchelli doesn’t
want Sicilians to be a racially defined group. In fact? What facts
does she know about me? Not too many. In any case, there are a lot of
people who consider Sicilians to be a “racially defined group.”
I’m only one of many and I’m not the first.
At one point she even
“interprets” a part of my dedication to one of my books, just to
prove what she thinks I am. But my dedication is not my work. How
does this “interpretation” of my dedication qualify as an
interpretation of my work, if my dedication is not even my work?
She says, “Romano’s first
collection of poems, Vendetta, is also dedi-cated to her
daughter, with a bitter-sweet explanation that leaves no room for
doubt as to the poet’s degree of awareness of the familial
expectations of Italian-American culture: ‘to Megan, my daughter, /
for proving I can do what’s necessary.’ ”
Although she thinks she
knows how I feel, I don’t know why she calls the dedication
“bitter-sweet.” My dedication was intended to show gratitude, as
all dedications are; that’s what they’re for. “Familial
ex-pectations of Italian-American culture”—Why is she calling it
Italian-American culture? It’s true of Italian culture as well.
Italian-American culture comes from Italian culture; I guess she
doesn’t like that idea. I think she’s trying to distance herself
from the wops. “Also dedicated”—without a referent, the word
“also” doesn’t mean much.
This is the whole
dedication:
to
Emilia, my grandmother,
for
showing me it’s good to be Italian;
to
Beatrice, my mother,
for
teaching me to write my name;
to
Megan, my daughter, for proving I can do what’s necessary.
I
dedicated my first book to these three women because they each gave
me something very important. I raised my daughter completely on my
own, with no help from her father or my family, and when I saw her
growing up, not only normal, but strong and able (which is what the
word ‘Megan’ means), I was damned proud of myself.
Taking
seriously the raising of your children is something normal parents do
in all cultures. It’s not unique to Italian-American culture or to
Italian culture or to Sicilian-American culture. It’s considered a
pleasant responsibility. Raising your children is not a dreary chore,
as Mazzucchelli makes it seem. I’ve known people who think it’s
the most important job in the world—and some of them weren’t even
Italian.
I’ve
noticed, too, that most of what is said about different cultures can
be said about any other culture. I think it has something to do with
the fact that people are people. We all need the same things and we
all have to learn how to get along with each other. If I’m Italian
and I like to eat well, it’s not because I’m Italian; lots of
people who aren’t Italian like to eat well and lots of people who
are Italian don’t spend all their time sitting around stuffing
their faces. If I’m Jewish and I’m cheap, it’s not because I’m
Jewish; lots of people who aren’t Jewish are cheap and lots of
people who are Jewish aren’t cheap. If I’m black and I’ve got a
good sense of rhythm, it’s not because I’m black; lots of people
who aren’t black have a good sense of rhythm and lots of people who
are black couldn’t dance if their life depended on it.
If you
slip from describing a culture to thinking that everyone who lives in
that culture lives by that culture’s rules, you’re sliding into
stereotypes. If you insist that all these stereotypes are the only
people who are the “real” members of a group and any others are
just abberations, you’ve landed yourself right smack dead in the
middle of bigotry.
You’d
think someone who’s qualified to read writers’ minds would know
the difference between a stereotype and a culture.
But Mazzucchelli doesn’t
even seem to understand the difference between reality and culture.
In her bit about my poem “There is Nothing in this World / as
Wonderful as an / Italian-American Lesbian,” she says, “Be she a
lesbian from Bensonhurst, shouting profanities to a bunch of men
hitting on her in the streets; . . .” Where did Mazzucchelli get
the idea that these men were hitting on that woman? It’s not in the
poem and it’s not a part of American culture. American men don’t
go around in packs picking up women in the streets by shouting at
them. I was really puzzled by that one for a while. Later I found out
that many men in Italy pick up women like that, in packs and shouting
from a distance. Apparently, she hasn’t got enough understanding
either of American culture or of what it’s like to be a lesbian to
judge an American poem about lesbians.
Mazzucchelli’s
not too hot on logic, either. She says, “Before
that time, though, she too had been a victim of—to use Adrienne
Rich’s famous formulation—the ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ of
her community, as proved by her marriage.” I wasn’t a victim.
Mazzucchelli has no clue why I got married.
But the point is, marriage
is an act. Lesbianism is a feeling. You can’t prove a feeling with
an act. In fact, you can’t prove a feeling with anything. This
isn’t logical.
And why I got married is
about me, not my work.
Another example of her lack
of logic is contained in the following sentences.
She says: “Romano’s
poetry celebrates pride in her lesbian identity, but it also explores
the difficulties engendered by her sexuality.”
And then: “In fact,
Romano’s poetic project particularly focuses on the difficulties
engendered by her sexuality.”
Difficulties are not
engendered by any oppressed group. Difficulties are engendered by the
oppressors. I do not accept the blame for my own oppression. You
might as well go ahead and say that Afro-Americans cause racism and
the Jews are responsible for the Holocaust. Where is the logic in
that? Where is the sanity in that? If you try to resolve a problem,
and you go looking for it in the wrong place, you’re never going to
resolve it.
But, to be honest, I’m not
really sure how much her misinterpretations are due to her inability
to think logically or to her limitations in English. She’s
constantly throwing in little expressions that don’t mean much, and
don’t add anything to what she’s saying, as if she’s trying to
make us think she knows English better than she does. Her choice of
words is often a little awkward. A couple of times, her syntax is a
little screwy. She uses what I call coward quotes, quotes intended to
say, “Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t say that.” And
sometimes it gets insulting.
She says, “Romano
approached the multicultural lesbian community to resignify the term
‘of color’ so as to encompass the experience of a self-styled
‘Olive’ ‘Sicilian-Italian-American Lesbian.’ ”
The quotation marks around
her words here suggest that these concepts aren’t real, that this
Olive stuff is something I just made up, that I was just kidding
myself, and trying to kid others, when I called myself olive and said
I’m a Sicilian-Italian-American Lesbian. This is about me, not my
work.
Twice she calls me
self-styled. The second time she says, “this self-styled
‘Sicilian-Italian-American-Lesbian.’ ” Does she know what that
means? The 2011 fifth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of
the English Language says, “As characterized by oneself, often
without right or justification.” How often? Does Mazzucchelli think
I’m one of the ones who have no right or justification? This is
about me, not my work.
Mazzucchelli sprinkles her
article with a lot of suspicious words. She says, “Rose Romano’s
work needs to be inscribed in the complex historical and cultural
climate of her time” and refers to “Rose Romano’s legacy.” Of
my time? My legacy? Uh-oh. You don’t suppose I’m dead, do you? I
mean, you can have a time and a legacy without being dead, right? You
just have to be finished, over, done, ended, concluded, terminated,
kaput.
I hope I’m not dead,
because if I’m dead, I’ve been going through a lot of crap for
nothing. On the other hand, now that I think of it some more, since I
get a pension from Italy based on the pensioner’s inability to
work, the amount of which is, at least in part, determined by just
how unable to work the pensioner is, if I can prove to Italy that I’m
dead, maybe I can get my pension increased.
In any case, the “cultural
climate of [my] time,” from what I’ve seen on Facebook and read
in emails from Italian-Americans, is still pretty much the same: many
Italian-Americans are still ignorant of their own history and
culture, think that ignoring problems is the way to resolve problems,
write mostly about those big family dinners that they enjoyed in
their childhood, and that we’re all American at this point. This is
why so many of them have taken the hyphen out of Italian-American.
Even the quotes Mazzucchelli
uses in her article talk about me and not my work. According to
Mazzucchelli, Helen Barolini “compares [me] to a ‘stand-up
comedian,’ who ‘stresses a blue-collar past and present, . . .
and presents herself defiantly vaunting all her differences.’ ”
Although I don’t know
where Barolini got that from, I know she couldn’t have gotten that
from my poems and I don’t recall that she ever came to one of my
poetry readings.
In fact, most of what people
say about me is gossip spread by people who have never even met me.
And what’s really cute is
that, in spite of Mazzucchelli’s desperate need to label me as
Sicilian-American; in spite of the fact that she forages through my
work looking for justifications for labeling me Sicilian-American; in
spite of the fact that I’ve written poems about Sicilians and their
culture, she never once mentions any of those poems in that essay.
You have to wonder why.
So, Mazzucchelli’s article
talks about me, and only mentions my work when she needs to justify
her definition of me. So why don’t I write a little interpretation
of Mazzucchelli’s article?
Chiara Mazzucchelli’s
Search for Recognition as a Literary Critic
In this article I will show
how Mazzucchelli uses her first-generation Northerner status to score
points in the Italian-American literary community at the same time
that she distances herself from those pesky and inferior wops, a
problem that is common among first-generation Northerners. As the
typical politically correct lesbian, she begins with an apology and a
justification for talking about Sicilians. Unsure of herself in
writing English, she tosses fancy words and phrases around to justify
herself, assuming her subject will never find out and protest, and
other writers, scared of literary critics, will never dare to say
she’s just a naked emperor who thinks she has the right to define
people and those people have no right to define themselves, just like
the typical politically correct lesbian that she is.
It’s evident that she
chose to participate in the Italian-American literary community,
instead of the mainstream American literary com-munity, because she
feels unsure of herself in writing in English. She writes as though
she has a stick up her butt; she doesn’t seem to know the
difference between academic writing and constipation; most of the
words and phrases are just a little imprecise, usually when she tries
to convince us and herself that she knows what she’s doing. And,
although she feels that Italian-American culture is not like Italian
culture, she shows the same confidence that an Italian-American won’t
complain, just as Italians never complain; that an Italian-American
will pretend to resolve problems by ignoring them, just as Italians
do; that an Italian-American will bow down to any authority figure
that shows up, just as Italians do; that an Italian-American will
believe anything any authority figure tells her, just as Italians do;
that an Italian-American won’t be able to follow simple logic, just
as Italians are unable to follow simple logic; that an
Italian-American cares more about maintaining bella figura than she
does about the truth, just as Italians do; that an Italian-American
wants prestige at any cost, just as Italians do.
But Mazzucchelli isn’t the
only one who has decided I’m Sicilian. I’ve seen stuff all over
the internet putting me into Sicilian-American literature. I don’t
like it and I’ll bet that Sicilian-Americans don’t like it,
either. Another literary critic said in an email to me that you don’t
have to be Sicilian-American to be included in Sicilian-American
literature. How can he not see how offensive that is, not only to me,
but to Sicilian-Americans as well? Try going into the politically
correct lesbian community and saying that you don’t have to be
black to be part of black American literature and let’s see whether
you get out alive. Better yet, go to Harlem and say that. I’d like
to see the newspaper headlines the next morning. Politically correct
lesbians say that we all have the right to define ourselves and they
(the politically correct lesbians) have the right to define everyone.
Double think is not uncommon among politically correct lesbians who,
instead of reading our histories, write them to suit their own
convenience, just like the straight white men who do that to
lesbians, and about whom the politically correct lesbians complain
all the time.
One literary critic, many
years ago, wrote a nice review of Vendetta. But he included
the “information” that I was a “ragazza madre.” My Italian
was very limited then and I couldn’t find the expression in my
bilingual dictionary. Although I was about forty years old at the
time, I guessed that it meant young mother. I figured that if he
wanted to think that forty is young, God bless him.
When I waas living in Sicily
among my mother’s family, I thought of showing this review to my
mother’s cousins as a kind of introduction to me. It’s a damned
good thing I didn’t because I could have gotten myself into a lot
of trouble. As I found out later on, “ragazza madre” means unwed
mother.
What made him think that I
wasn’t married? Was he too unsophis-ticated to know that lots of
gay people get married, not only before they come out but sometimes
even afterwards?
I’ve been told that
literary critics aren’t required to do research. In other words,
they don’t have to know what they’re talking about and can just
make up anything they want. But if that’s what they want to do, if
they want to make up the thoughts and feelings of people, if they
want to make up information about people, if they want to make up
things that people have said or done, they shouldn’t be writing
literary criticism—they should be writing novels.
So, what was that other
reason for Bona’s claim of knowing my opinion that poetry is not
a luxury?
Bona says, “Like poet
Audre Lorde, Rose
Romano believes that poetry is not
a luxury.”
The poems Bona was talking
about in her essay were in a book that was then out of print; no one
would have been able to read the poems to judge for themselves
whether Bona’s affirmations were valid, and I wasn’t around to
complain. Is that why she made an unfounded state-ment which wasn’t
really necessary to the essay? What other reason could she have?
Bona wanted to throw in
Audre Lorde’s name as a way of asking for permission.
Mazzucchelli’s quote of
Booker T. Washington was obviously a request for permission.
Another literary critic uses
this information about Marcus Garvey to begin a review of my novel
You’ll never have me like you want me, “In
the nineteenth century African American leader Marcus Garvey led a
Back-to-Africa movement encouraging those of African descent to
return to their homeland.” And this was in spite of the fact that
he was talking about a novel, a work of fiction, not about memoirs
that spoke of my return to my homeland. He was asking for permission.
Why do so many
Italian-Americans need permission from other people in order to be a
people? Do they not have their own feet to stand on and, instead,
think that they can sneak past reality by tip-toeing with some-one
else’s feet? If the bigots are too stupid to figure out for
themselves that even Italian-Americans are a people with a history
and a culture, it’s going to take more than a bunch of lip-flapping
wops with a passing grade in Creative Reality 101 to change their
minds.
I think that these are just
two of the many reasons that Italian-American literature is getting
nowhere fast: excuses and apologies, adding up to a desire to glom
onto other groups for a free ride as though we can’t make it on our
own, because we’re not real people like the other people are.
What all literary critics
need to remember is that the
literary critic needs the writer. Without a book in her hand, a
literary critic would have nothing to criticize. Without a book in
her hand, a literary critic wouldn’t be able to teach literature.
Without a book in her hand, a literary critic would have nothing to
talk about at conferences. I personally know one literary critic who
wouldn’t have been able to evade the police if it hadn’t been for
a library full of books.
Remember this, dear literary
critics: writers can do everything they
do without literary critics, while literary critics could not even
exist without writers. You need us. We don’t need you.
I have a friend who’s
intelligent, well-read, normal, and nice. Every once in a while, she
lets me whine about literary critics. She just lets me go on and on,
listening patiently with a little smile. When I’m finished, she
laughs and says, “Ah, questi critici. Sono tutti artisti mancati.”
Then I feel better.
I think I’ll give her a
call.
