Meet My Dear Friend, Romance Author Angela Rosati, and Read About Her Extraordinary Stories, Straight From the Heart--With Her Own Brand of Humor
Angela has been a very dear friend of mine for 30 years, and she is a gifted writer. She is 96 years YOUNG and still writing heartfelt historical romances.
I highly recommend every one of her historical novels. She writes straight from the heart, and her stories are 100% genuine and authentic–because she was THERE!
About Angela
I was born on August 22, 1929 in Long Island City, NY. I grew up in Astoria, NY. I wanted to be a teacher,
but got drafted into the family business. Then at age 29 (which was very old as per Italians) got married. Then in my late 70s, I bought a computer and started writing hysterical/historical family tales my family was tired of hearing. I love music and I sing
opera arias by Giacomo Puccini. My grandson, at a very young age, asked me why I sing in the shower. I responded, "The door is locked and nobody can tell me to shut up!"
A 96 year old “new author” focuses on early Italian immigrants
In Those Days is a short essay written by Angela M. Rosati, the daughter of Italian immigrants from Basilicata (father) and Puglia (mother). Raised in Astoria, Queens, the same neighborhood as the great Tony Bennett (born Anthony Benedetto), Rosati has made it her mission to document the Great Migration (1880-1924), specifically via the experiences of her family. What’s interesting about Rosati is that she first began writing in the 70s—no, not the decade, but her age. A self-described “Nanny Granny,” she was in her late 70s, bought a computer and began writing personal stories and mini-novels “when my grandchildren were busy outside playing after school. I didn’t know I could do it.”
She did, and she hasn’t stopped. Over the past 18 years—she turns 96 this August—Rosati has turned out 11 books centered on the idea of teaching the latest generation that life for early Italians “back in the day” wasn’t all pasta and roses. As she puts it, “They need to know how offended and ill-treated we were. Yet we didn’t sit on the curb and cry. We prevailed because we knew who we were, we knew our strength.”
That strength was something called Italian culture: “Cuisine! Music! Art! Movies! Food! Operas! Who writes them better? When a soprano enters a singing contest, she sings, ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ by Giacomo Puccini. A guaranteed win!”
Ms. Rosati came to my attention a month ago after she emailed to compliment me on a recent blog. It was very fortuitous, as I had been having discussions with colleagues over the appalling (and depressing) lack of representation of Italians in American history. Peruse any current social studies book in our nation’s schools and you will see none of our heroes and heroines—our role models—ever mentioned.
Instead, you will see what I call the “Three C’s”: Columbus, Capone and Cascades of Unwashed Immigrants. Even the story of Sacco & Vanzetti, whose 1927 execution in Boston remains a template of anti-immigrant prejudice, is hardly ever mentioned anymore.
The first two C’s are now radioactive. Capone always has been, but Columbus has become (unfairly and unjustly) a lightning rod of scorn by angry activists. And the Cascade of Unwashed Immigrants is more like one big, gigantic, amorphous blob—an uninspiring pile of nothing.
Rosati’s writings are invaluable in that they turn that blob into individual cells. She puts human faces on those follicles. If our nation still refuses to publicly proclaim any pride in, say, inspiring role models like A.P. Giannini or Ella Grasso, they can’t keep suggesting that Italian immigrants themselves were of no value. By documenting their suffering, by personalizing it, Rosati’s books say to academia, “Oh, yeah?”
She does it with humor: “I was the third, and only girl, of four kids. When some people heard this, they would say, ‘Oh, you must be the queen.’ Yes, I’m queen of the mop and the ironing board. My parents were careful not to spoil me and my three brothers.”
She does it with drama: “My father, Angelo Russo, rarely spoke of his wartime experiences. He fought for Italy during WWI in the Austrian campaign. But, he had nightmares. We would hear him vocalize sounds at night. And Papa did tell us once, when he was in the trenches, one of his buddies from Bari said, ‘Russo, I’m afraid to die.’ Immediately, he received a bullet in his skull. Papa said there was blood, brains and flesh everywhere. He never recounted any other similar stories after that.”
And she does it with a childlike candor, whether relating unkind comments from Irish or German neighbors or relating how teachers in the schools routinely slapped Italian boys “because they (the teachers) knew the Italian boys would never squeal on them. Parents always thought the teacher was right. The Italian boys endured the embarrassment of those slaps rather than get a beating from offended parents.”
As a witness to both the good and the bad, Rosati is in an excellent position to see how Italian Americans triumphed over their often-difficult circumstances. So it has some gravitas when she compares the reality of real Italians to images perpetuated in the media: “The way Hollywood depicts Italians is all wrong. The men are depicted as thieves, gangsters, and murderers. The women are all depicted as whores and liars. Unfortunately, most Italian Americans today, and others, believed the baloney. But the damage is done and we must correct it.”
Rosati is heroically doing so by documenting our true stories.
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