A new book by Rose Romano

The arsenic in the drinking water in the entire province of Viterbo is over the level permitted by the European Union, enough to cause serious health problems, including lymphoma, a type of cancer. There are about 1,000 different kinds of lymphoma, divided into three groups. People in the first group can be cured. People in the second group, if they get the proper treatment, can expect to live almost as long as people who don’t have lymphoma. People in the third group are going to die pretty quickly no matter what they do.

Alice thinks she’s in the third group. Maybe she is. But that doesn’t justify what she did.

Beyond the Leash

a novel by Rose Romano

From the back cover:

“I just had this paranoid idea that after I die and people come to look through my stuff, someone who reads English and had a loved one who died of cancer, will see all the stupid things I’ve written in these notebooks and will be hurt, angry, and offended. But I really don’t mean to belittle the pain and fear of others. I just want to belittle my own.”

Rose Romano is an Italian-American living in Italy for too many years. In the United States, she published a literary journal, la bella figura, and founded malafemmina press, publishing only the work of Italian-Americans. Her books of poetry (Vendetta and The Wop Factor) and her anthology (La bella figura: a choice), all published by malafemmina press, are included in the collections of many public and university libraries. Her work has been taught at universities in the United States and Canada. She has organized and participated in poetry readings and book presentations in the United States, Canada, and Italy.

She was diagnosed with cancer in December 2010. Since her last chemotherapy/immunotherapy treatments in May 2012, she’s been in complete remission and total denial.

Beyond the Leash is available from Amazon and other online stores.

ISBN: 979-12-200-1763-3

Another review of You'll never have me like you want me

I found this on Goodreads.

You’ll never have me like you want me, a novel by Rose Romano

Contrary to popular belief, not every book written by an Italian-American living in Italy, about an Italian-American living in Italy, is about going back to Italy to look for heritage.
In this novel, written in the form of a journal kept by Emilia, Emilia goes to live in Italy because, as she says, she wants to live in the only country in the world where it’s normal to be Italian. Why does she want to live in the only country in the world where it’s normal to be Italian? There are a lot of Italians who don’t want to live in the only country in the world where it’s normal to be Italian.

Emilia wants to be wanted and that’s all she wants and all she’s ever wanted. No one has ever wanted her, not even her parents. I guess she figured that, as an Italian-American, she might have a better chance of fitting in in Italy. After all, Italian is what you are and American is just where you live. And fitting in means you’re wanted.

But Italy doesn’t want her, either. Most of the Italians she meets keep insisting that her name has to be Emily, and not Emilia. By not allowing her an Italian name, they’re telling her she must be American, which means she’s not Italian, which means they don’t want her.

Her social workers don’t want her, her psychiatrist doesn’t want her, potential bosses don’t want her, potential friends don’t want her, her roommates don’t want her, the volunteers who work with the crazy people don’t want her. It doesn’t take long before her boyfriend doesn’t want her.

But she gets what she wants in the end. If the ending of this novel really happened in real life, I’d say it was a horrible, terrible thing to happen. But, in this novel, I’d say it’s a happy ending.

Romano does a lot of little things in this book that I like, such as the names of the characters. Maybe Silvio was named after Berlusconi—that would suit his character. Or maybe I’m just getting carried away—maybe Romano just wanted a name that starts with the letter S. Mrs. Spigliato was her first social worker; her name means self-confident, self-possessed. (I’d call her arrogant and unfeeling.) One day, Emilia, tired of Mrs. Spigliato always calling her Emily, makes a mistake and calls her social worker Mrs. Spigoloso, which means angular (furniture), difficult (person). Emilia says, “Mrs. Spigliato, because her appearance was neither here nor there, was a little difficult to describe. I have no idea how to describe Mrs. Mordimi because she’s invisible.” Mrs. Mordimi is her second social worker and she really is invisible. She’s never seen—she’s never there when Emilia needs her, not in the way Emilia needs her, and her name means: bite me.

Another little thing is that most of the characters are described as animals. Roberto is a wolf. Mrs. Spigliato is a horse. Doctor Bologni is a penguin. Silvio, a former member of ′Ndrangheta, is an eagle. Sandra, the most unreal character, is a teddy bear.

The Virgin Mary, one of the characters, likes to wear t-shirts and sweatshirts with slogans on them. Of course, she’s got a t-shirt that says: You’ll never have me like you want me. My favorite is her sweatshirt that says: The truth doesn’t give a flying fuck whether you believe it or not.

Emilia, who doesn’t understand much about Italian politics, explains Italian politics to us. Usually when people explain something they don’t understand, they make it sound boring, but Emilia makes it sound as ridiculous as it really is.

Emilia gives some of the reasons that it’s cheaper and easier to live in the United States than it is to live in Italy. For example, if you quit going to the university before you get your degree, and then “. . . you decide, five years later, ten years later, twenty years later, that you want to go back to the university and finish up your degree—Surprise! In order to get back into the university, you have to pay all the taxes and fees you would have been paying if you had been attending the university for those five, ten or twenty years. In other words, you have to pay thousands of euros and you get absolutely nothing for it.” Public grammar schools and high schools don’t lend the students textbooks for free; the parents have to buy them. And Italy is the only country in the world where you have to pay, maybe even more than 200 euros, to close a bank account. (I found out somewhere else that closing a bank account can take as long as two weeks.)

The Italian-American flag, used in the cover illustration, and flown upside down as a distress signal, is an original design created by Rose Romano.

It’s an unusual little book and I think it needs to be read.

Mafia

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature by Robin Pickering-Iazzi

Pickering-Iazzi has written an insightful book that lights up a dark area that very often is treated superficially, in fiction, in movies, in bigotry.

Although not exaggerated as the main selling point of the book, Pickering-Iazzi focuses on the women, and the young people, involved in the mafia, as active members and as family members, and as anti-mafia activists. But it’s not feminist in the strident sense. It’s feminist only in the self-respect sense. If Sicilian men are expected to keep their mouths shut, Sicilian women are expected not only to keep their mouths shut, but to be invisible.

This book makes Sicilian women visible.

Have you ever wondered how mafiosi see themselves, live with themselves, create their contexts, explain to themselves their motivations, justifications, reasoning and involvement?

What does a mafiosa tell herself, as she’s falling asleep at night, about the time her brothers killed her son because he was an anti-mafia activist? What does she remember of the stories her grandmother told her of those men of honor, creating a fairy tale that the average child never hears? What goes on in her mind as she’s approaching, often in spite of herself, the conclusion that the only way to fight injustice is to kill the unjust and the only way to eliminate oppression is to eliminate the oppressor?

I found Rita Atria’s story particularly moving. A seventeen-year-old girl who served as a witness in anti-mafia prosecutions, breaking omertà and violating the mafia codes of behavior she’d been taught as a child, the discussion of her experiences and internal agony include excerpts from her diary, excerpts that show Rita to be, not only a young girl, but an old woman.

Written in the kind of academic style I appreciate the most—uncomplicated but insightful, reader-friendly but elegant, unambiguous but profound, decorous but not squeamish—it’s a good book for intelligent people who want to get at the essence without having to plow through a lot of useless clutter.

Besides the information itself that it provides, and the writing style, I like the way the book is constructed. The first four chapters each present a novel, written by a woman, which is given its context, and the fifth chapter tells us about Rita Atria, often in her own words. There’s overlap, but there’s no repetition. It just has all those maneuvers, highs and lows, flowings and jarrings, and a crushing and defiant conclusion that settles the matter while reaching out to the future with hope, kind of like a symphony.

If you’re a person of normal intelligence and sensibility, if you’ve ever found yourself wondering what psychology or philosophy, what emotional and intellectual beliefs, could possibly pass for justification of mafia murders and terror, but you just don’t have the strength to read dozens of books about the mafia or Sicilian culture in general, this is the book you want.

A review of "You'll never have me like you want me"

Anthony Valerio is an important and long-time established writer in Italian-American literature. His books include:

The Mediterranean Runs Through Brooklyn; Valentino & the Great Italians; Conversation with Johnny; BART, a Life of A. Bartlett Giamatti; Anita Garibaldi, a Biography; Toni Cade Bambara's One Sicilian Night, a Memoir; The Little Sailor, a Romantic Thriller; John Dante's Inferno, a Playboy's Life; Dante in Love.

He had this to say about my novel You’ll never have me like you want me:

Learned about 15 yrs ago when asked by a major newspaper to write a book
review that I cannot do it. So here I am recommending a new novel. I’d
thought that Household Saints by Francine Prose was at a zenith. This
novel, for me, ranks as high. Ms. Prose had Madame Butterfly. Ms. Romano
has the Virgin Mary. I can say of her novel published this year that it’s as
close to me as a work of mine that I could never write. It is by a writer
I used to know who at least in this work goes places I have not. It takes
me by the hand. I bought my copy of You’ll never have me like you want me
by Rose Romano on Amazon.

 

Thanks, Anthony!

 

"You'll never have me like you want me" is available on amazon and other online stores.

HUGE CHANGE IN PLANS

malafemmina press deeply regrets being unable to publish the Neapolitan/Campania anthology and sends sincerest apologies to all those who submitted work.

 

The opportunity to respond? Not with JLS.

Apparently, the people at the Journal of Lesbian Studies feel that they can’t be sued for what was said about me in Mazzucchelli’s article and that’s all they care about. They didn’t even offer to let me claim my own identity by writing a response. I guess they thought it would be too embarrassing for them.

 

And who said anything about suing? I just don’t like being invented. I don’t like being misrepresented in Mazzucchelli’s lie-infested article.

 

But if these people don’t care about how I feel, they should at least care about whether or not the articles they print make sense, whether or not what they print stands up, whether or not what they print is logical, thoughtful and insightful. Mazzucchelli’s article is none of these things and makes their journal look as though it’s put out by a bunch of ignorant little girls who want to play at being academics.

 

I don’t have an official opinion of JLS. I only read this one article and I didn’t even know the magazine existed until a friend sent me the article. But the above is the impression I get from this one article and also the e-mails they sent me. In one of these e-mails, one of them says that the matter has to be discussed “to” the director. Give me a break. Learn English before you start working for an English-language magazine. Mazzucchelli herself uses a plural verb with the noun ‘news.’ If she reads enough to be a college professor, she should know by now that ‘news’ is used with a singular verb. We say ‘the new is,’ Mazzucchelli, not ‘the news are.’

 

This essay is more about me than my poetry. She only used my poetry to invent me. Mazzucchelli wrote what you could call a mini-biography of me without even checking her facts. She just made up stuff to suit her own ideas, her own stereotypes, her own prejudices.

 

She says: “Rose Romano’s work needs to be inscribed in the complex historical and cultural climate of her time...”

Of my time? Did I die? But maybe the use of this expression is just another result of Mazzucchelli’s limitations in English.

 

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.”

 

I try to be as precise as I can. I have fourteen dictionaries. 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.

 

She says: “Romano’s first collection of poems Vendetta is also dedicated 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.’ ”

 

‘Also?’ Without a referent, that word means very little. ‘...bitter-sweet’? ‘familial expectations of Italian-American culture’?

 

My dedication was not bitter-sweet. It was intended, like all dedications, to show gratitude. The complete dedication is:

“To Emilia, my grandmother,

for showing me it’s good to be Italian [notice it doesn’t say ‘Sicilian’];

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 my ex-husband 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 considered a joyful responsibility. Raising your children is not a dreary chore. I’ve known people who think it’s the most important job in the world—and some of them weren’t even Italian.

 

She says: “Adrienne Rich’s famous formulation—the ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ of her community, as proved by her marriage.”

 

I don’t know what ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ means. I was completely oblivious to my sexuality when I married my husband. I married him because I loved him and, because I thought I was straight, I thought the relationship meant marriage, sex, the whole kit and caboodle (Look it up, Mazzucchelli).

 

In any case, an act (marriage) cannot prove a feeling (lesbianism). Reality doesn’t work that way. This is just another example of Mazzucchelli’s limited ability to think things through.

 

She says: “However, Rose Romano’s relationship with the multicultural lesbian community was fraught with difficulties and conflicting feelings. The issues were mainly about her notion of Sicilian Americanness...”

 

I don’t have a notion of Sicilian Americanness. I don’t have a clue about Sicilian-Americanness.

 

I am Neapolitan. I was raised by my Neapolitan grandmother. I grew up surrounded by my Neapolitan family. Like any child, I wanted to be like my family. Mazzucchelli should be aware that children want to be like their family, many of them even when they get into their teens. What planet is this woman from?

 

She says: “Because of all the above reasons, the process of identity construction in Romano’s poetry involves the recovery of her Sicilian heritage.”

 

Where does she get this crap from? I have no Sicilian heritage to recover. This is something she made up in her own head.

 

If Mazzucchelli knew as much about Sicilian-American literature as she wants people to think she does, she would be aware that there is a Sicilian-American writer who identifies very strongly as Sicilian, in spite of the fact that she’s half Northern. Lots of people are aware of this writer. She’s also a lesbian, which means that, if Mazzucchelli had included her instead of me, she wouldn’t even have lost any points towards the gay vote and could have gotten an article about her in JLS.

 

But even if Mazzucchelli is that ignorant of her own field, it would be easy to find this woman on the internet. Go to yahoo or google and search for ‘Sicilian-American lesbian writer.’

 

Let me reiterate: I am Neapolitan and if you don’t like it, tough shit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't like being invented.

The following is an e-mail I sent to the Journal of Lesbian Studies and to SUNY press.

My name is Rose Romano. There is an essay about me (“The Scum of the Scum of the Scum”: Rose Romano’s Search for Sisterhood) included in Chiara Mazzucchelli’s book The Heart and the Island, which was published by your press. According to your description, the book discusses Sicilian-American literature.

 

I don’t belong in this book. I have never identified as Sicilian-American and I am not a part of Sicilian-American literature. If Mazzucchelli had bothered to do her research, she would have known that.

 

She talks about my “notion of Sicilian-Americanness” and how I used my “Sicilian heritage.” I have no notion of Sicilian-Americanness and I have no Sicilian heritage to use. In fact, I don’t even know what “Sicilian-Americanness” means. Sicilians have always been foreigners to me. I have always identified as Neapolitan.

 

In her article, she says : “According to the family history, her grandparents on her father’s side “were Neapolitan / nobility, owned property on the bay, named [her] / father Victor, after the king—they knew him / personally” (“Just Two More,” Vendetta 10). Ironizing on the self-aggrandizing family mythology, the poet wonders why no adequate explanation has ever been provided to her as to the reasons that pushed this allegedly  rich couple to leave its fortunes and titles—count and countess—behind in Naples to become in the United States just ‘two more / wops’.”

 

Mazzucchelli knows absolutely nothing about my family history. She seems to be basing her ideas on her own prejudices and stereotypes and her need to further her own career by publishing.

 

My poem does not ironize on “the self-aggrandizing family mythology.” It simply reports the truth, although that truth, within the poem, is incomplete. My “allegedly rich” grandfather 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 a rich person would think he was poor because he 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 count to want to stay in New York, reasons that my grandfather would not have wanted to tell his children.

 

But, instead of checking her information or admitting that she’s guessing, she just presents her guesses as though they’re facts and calls my aunt a liar.

 

She says: “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.”

 

This is the entire 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. This “self-ascription” is Mazzucchelli’s own invention. Instead of doing research, she presumes to read my mind and concludes, according to her own stereotypes and prejudices, that I wanted to be Sicilian in order to escape the lies of my Neapolitan family—something which I, myself, did not find “easy to discern.” She backs up nothing that she writes.

 

A self-ascription is a yes to oneself, not a no to others.

 

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, in the process making me and my aunt look bad. The expression double-think comes to mind.

 

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. But a poem is the same as any other piece of literature—some of it is real, some of it is symbolical, some of it is true of other people, some of it is just made up to make a point.

 

But a literary critic can be expected to be more sophisticated and to know better. Mazzucchelli should at least be honest enough to know that she has no idea whether this story of my family is true or not. She should be educated at least well enough to know the difference between a poem and an autobiography. She should have enough understanding of literature to know that the authors of murder mysteries aren’t necessarily murderers.

 

I’m betting Mazzucchelli doesn’t even know what this poem is about. It’s not about my family. If I’m remembering the terminology correctly, this story about my family would be the “occasion” of the poem, not the subject.

 

The poem is about assimilation, particularly in the way it’s accomplished within 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. 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.

 

You’d think an Italian literary critic who’s qualified to evaluate English-language literature would have seen that very easily. I think the meaning of that poem is pretty obvious.

 

I wrote to her to ask her why she wrote these things. She said she tried to find me but couldn’t. Is that the general practice of academics—if you can’t do the research, you just make things up to suit your own purposes?

 

She could have found me if she tried hard enough. I have always had my residenza at the address where I live. It’s been my experience that many Italians believe anyone in authority. If she had presented herself as an authority, even the police would have given her my address. In spite of the privacy laws, the police have handed out my personal information on more than one occasion.

 

She even quotes one-third of my dedication to Vendetta, calling it “bitter-sweet.” My dedication was not bitter-sweet. It was intended to show gratitude, as all dedications are. Mazzucchelli uses this partial quote to read my mind. And what does this dedication have to do with my work?

 

This article is about me, someone she knows nothing about, and not my work.

 

If a critic thinks my work is crap and backs it up with reasons that make sense, that doesn’t bother me. But this article is about me and not about my work and it’s just a list of lies.

 

I’ve written several e-mails to Mazzucchelli who always responds with brief, curt, dismissive messages, sometimes suggesting that she’d like to discuss these things but never discussing anything. She seems to think I’ve disappeared forever and she takes advantage of that to invent me as she pleases.

 

My last e-mail to Mazzucchelli was sent a week and a half ago. I haven’t received a response.

 

As I said to Mazzucchelli, I don’t like being in a book about Sicilian-Americans. I’ve very uncomfortable about it and I think that any real Sicilian included in the book, if she believed Mazzucchelli, would think I’m being presumptuous and ridiculous in trying to get points as a Sicilian, and would be resentful. If I were Sicilian, I would be resentful. As a Neapolitan, I’m ashamed to be presented as someone pretending to be something she’s not.

 

In fact, I found, on the internet, another article about me and others, that says I’m Sicilian-American. It’s copyrighted 2015 State University of New York Press, Albany and was written by Michaela Baldo called “Italian-North American Women Writers.” It discusses Sicilian-American writers and includes me. The author apparently got information from articles like Mazzucchelli’s. People believe these things.

 

A lot of people believe what a literary critic says because, they think, literary critics know everything and writers are all a bunch of assholes who don’t know shit from Shinola.

 

What is your policy at SUNY Press? Don’t you check information or at least require your writers to back up what they say? Don’t your historians and biographers do research or do they all just make things up to suit their own ideas?

 

I think Mazzucchelli only included this article in her book to make it a little fatter. I know academics have to publish and apparently some of them don’t care what they publish—they’re more concerned with their own careers than they are with scholarship.

 

If this book is print on demand, please delete the article about me now. If not, please keep it out of any future editions.

 

Being remembered as something you’re not means being forgotten.

 

I don’t like being invented. I don’t like people claiming to know something about me when they know nothing. I don’t like bullshit.

 

Rose Romano