SUNY series in Italian/American Culture
Fred L. Gardaphe, editor
The Anarchist Bastard
Growing Up Italian in America
JOANNA CLAPPS HERMAN
Photo on previous page: Grandpa Becce sitting on a cow.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herman, Joanna Clapps.
The anarchist bastard : growing up Italian in America /
Joanna Clapps.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3631-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Herman, Joanna ClappsChildhood and youth. 2. Herman, Joanna ClappsFamily. 3. Italian AmericansConnecticutWaterburyBiography. 4 Italian AmericansConnecticutWaterburySocial life and customs. 5. Waterbury (Conn.)Biography. I. Title.
F104.W3H47 2011
973'.0451dc22
2010031915
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To every single Claps, Clapps, Becce, Scarpa, Padula,
Semprini, and all those who have joined us. Especially to
my beloved sister Lucia, my wonderful Billy, to delicious
James and Heather and to my Donna
Acknowledgments
C an anyone write a book without their people? Non posso. There have been so many people who have been with me in this, who always read what I write, who care about what I've written, who want me to write.
My husband has been at my side every word, sentence and paragraph, who insisted for yearsYou have to write about Waterbury.
My sister, Lucia Mudd, has been with me every single step of my life and my writing and thinking. Her family, John Mudd, Peter Mudd, William Mudd, and Anna Mudd, all of whom have supported my work.
Myra Goldberg, has read and reread, who was there when we were girls living in the Village and together we decided that since we were readers we would be writers. We were young and certain and young and uncertain, but we grew up together and now we're ladies and grandmothers together of the spectacular Ariella. I thank my beautiful god-daughter, Anna Resnikoff, for her inimitable self and for Ariella.
Edi Giunta, Annie Lanzillotto, Maria Laurino, Nancy Carnevale, without whom there wouldn't be an Italian American world of women writers for me.
My wonderful friends and fellow artists Judy Solomon, Linda Sherwin, Theresa Ellerbrock , Karen Wunsch, and Jane Olian.
Toby Miroff who gave me the courage to write what I wanted to write despite how terrified it made me to do it. And who has helped me finally to be myself.
Others who are part of the world of writing and ideas as writers, brothers, friends.
Joseph Sciorra, George Guida, and Peter Covino.
Then there are those for whom it simply wouldn't matter if I wrote or didn't. All of my Waterbury cousins who keep the flame.
My mother and father both of whom were wonderful storytellers, all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins who helped me remember and told me things I didn't know, who helped me bring these stories to life. Paul Claps who was especially helpful with the Claps material.
James Peltz who is the very best editor I know, who says things like, Sure you can do that. I think we can get that in too. Why don't you try it and we'll see how it goes. Does anyone else have an editor that good? No.
His kind and helpful assistant, Amanda Lanne. Amelia Krales who prepared all the photographs for this book.
Finally, James and Heather and Donna Ann without whom life just wouldn't be fun.
The following pieces are reprinted by permission of the publishers:
U Bizza di Creanza: A Piece of Politeness, Alimentum. Fall 2010.
My Aboriginal Women, Lavanderia: Wash, Women and Word. Fall 2009.
My Homer, Speaking Memo, edited by Luisa Del Giudice, Palgrave. October 2009.
Words and Rags, edited by Joanna Clapps Herman and Lee Gutkind. New York: Other Press. Fall 2006.
Papone, Don't Tell Mama: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, edited by Regina Barreca. Penguin. 2002.
Coffee And, The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture, edited by Edvige Guinta and Louise DeSalvo. New York: Feminist Press. 2002.
Notes from an Unredeemed Catholic, The Critic 48:2. (Chicago). Winter 19931994.
Two, New England Sampler. December 1980.
With And Without Words
An Introduction
O nce at a party I met a really crazy womanwho happened to be Italianand who loved to read books and talk about them. I found myself gripped in conversation with her, talking to her about reading and about being Italian even while I recognized that there was something very crazy about her. My hostess came by and said, with ill-hidden irony, I see you two are enjoying yourselves. She came close to rolling her eyes at me as if to say, What are you doing with this one?
As I drove home from the party I gazed out into the dark night wondering: why had I spent the whole night talking to a crazy woman? In my sad reflection in the car window I saw the answer. I was that desperate, that lonely, and that filled with longing to talk to someone who knew intimately both of my spheres, my Italian world and the life of the mind, that I didn't care that she had been a lunatic.
That ride home was the beginning of a long search for a world that joined both my lives together.
For many years I had lived with a divided consciousness without realizing it. My Italian world was in Waterbury, Connecticut, with my family, where I grew up and where my large clan still sprawls. My adult life, husband, son, work life, intellectual and cultural life has been made in Manhattan where I moved when I was twenty-one. It wasn't something I thought much about. I simply lived this divided life. I went home to Waterbury and I came home to New York. Neither place knew much about the other.
I have always loved my family inordinatelymy grandparents, my parents, my sister, all my aunts and uncles and cousins and their wives and husbands and children and grandchildren too. They made me and make me still. They are the waters I swam in first and swim often in my imagination, in my heart, and in my writing. When I sit at their tables drinking and eating and talk, talk, talking I could sit there foreverleave never.
Yet I did. Physically in 1963 and emotionallyfullyreally only in the last few years. It's only recently that my life has come to belong to me before it belongs to anyone else. Where I come from loyalties belong first to your tribe, then your parents and siblings, then your husband or wife and children, then to your neighborhood, church, and maybe eventually to yourself last and only a little bit. Any more than that and you are the kind of person who doesn't put others before yourselfself-centeredthe worst you can be. It's hard to overturn what were really good values for another time and place. It was a good way of life: full of vitality, fun, passion, joy and profound connections with an intense sense of the past and the immediate present as central and important. It wasn't about always moving toward somewhere else in the future. Still, because of my deep connections and loyalty to my Italian family it is only recently that I have come to feel I can write what I want about them despite what I know will be their grave confusion and disappointment, even disapproval. I am violating a basic ruleall loyalty to the family: keep all of the difficult stuffall that was painful or sad or angry or rudewithin the family. I'm still in the pull of that loyalty but no longer enough to stop me from doing the work.
