Читать книгу Over the Spiked Picket Fence - Angela Aloisio Sander & Denvil Buchanan - Страница 11

My past loomed large in front of me. In many ways, in North America, I met a very different life from what was my childhood. I was born in Calabria, a small town nestled between rolling hills and the Sea, not far from Rome. There is a saying that “you cannot die before you see Calabria.” This is how beautiful my country is. In any case, as a small child, my mama told me many stories.

As I grew older, Mama told me that she had been a member of some organization called the Euro Communist Party at home in Italy. She had been an admirer of some guy named Enrico Berlinger. I vaguely recall attending once, a big demonstration in Rome in the company of my mama, where this Enrico shot up a captive audience of followers. We listened to his gibberish on the communist revolution, about what needed to be done to challenge and defeat the government and all the capitalist state. My mama, who I believed to be the eternal idealist, had been fixed to his every word, believing with all her heart, though now I’m pretty sure she did not know what she believed. I tell this story because, on reflection, and given the way in which my mama’s life turned out, I am less confused as to what she could have believed in the idealism of Italian youth.

My papa was very practical and somewhat of a cynical man. He was always concerned with facts or actual occurrences. He had always said that all people were born to stick to their own. All people would try anything to rise above each other, without worrying about whom they trampled on. People were animals. Animals ruled by virtue of their size and power and life was the survival of the fittest. That is what my Papa would say. But Papa

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