MERECA’: (AMERICANO)

I was eleven when my parents decided to move the family back to their hometown of Sarno in the province of Salerno, Italy in 1967. We lived in the Bronx, the Little Italy section where life was an American version of an Italian village. I understood and spoke my parents’ Neapolitan dialect alongside my English. As an only child, Pop made the tough decision to move the family back when his mother, my nonna Nunzia fell ill. She had been diagnosed with intestinal cancer and needed our care. 

In a small town struggling to break into the twentieth century, time took its time. It stymied us at first, as we tried to tone down the adrenalin from the more energetic existence on the streets of the Bronx. When the place started to grow on us, we allowed the history, the ancient agrarian culture, and the theatrical lives of its inhabitants to produce a glimpse of what life would have been if my parents had never left for the allure of America. 

This is a fictional story based on my experiences overcoming the initial shock of being so clinically uprooted, to finding a way to acclimate, and to ultimately fall in love at first with Sarno, and consequently with an entire country. I used the names of my closest male friends as a tribute to their kindness and brotherhood. Actual people I encountered helped me to define the main female characters, Elisa and Stella. Chapter four is dedicated to my cousin Tullio who became our willing instructor in all things Sarno. Not only were our days filled with his laughter and love during our move back, but in subsequent years we spent entire summers together at numerous venues on the Amalfi Coast. He married hi love Clotilde, together raised three amazing children, and stayed true to his hometown. Sadly, this beautiful man passed away, but his legacy lives on, never to be forgotten. 

So, there are fictional characters based on real people I either met or learned about, as well as many who left their marks on an American kid discovering his heritage. In that coming of age, I absorbed the subtleties of living Italian, a wide range of academics, and both the Italian language and an addictive Neapolitan tongue. In the book I incorporated both languages in support of the English narrative. As I read through chapters, I pleasantly concluded that the reasonable repetition of Italian and Neapolitan words would have the reader gain a level of fluency to put those words and sentences to personal use. What a wonderful way to learn enough of a foreign language to be able to belt out a few words, maybe put together a sentence or two without having endured the delusion of learning nothing in three years in high school Italian. 

Ultimately, the novel is the story of a teenager coming of age in an unexpected place, with an unexpected language, and unexpected people. It took me off my Bronx streets, out of my Catholic elementary school, away from my comfortable friendships, with all the anxieties of a true immigrant. Sarno and its people took us in, eased us through assimilation, granting us the respect earned by those like my parents who left to seek out opportunities abroad, but who never severed the umbilical.