Kym Ragusa - The Skin Between Us

Copyright 2006 by Kym Ragusa

All rights reserved

First Edition

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Book design by Brooke Koven

Production manager: Andrew Marasia

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Ragusa, Kym.

The skin between us : a memoir of race, beauty, and belonging / Kym Ragusa. 1st ed.

p. cm

ISBN-13: 978-0-393-05890-1 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 0-393-05890-5 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 978-0-393-60955-4 (eISBN)

1. Ragusa, KymChildhood and youth. 2. Racially mixed peopleNew York (State)New YorkBiography. 3. GrandmothersNew York (State)New YorkBiography. 4. Feminine beauty (Aesthetics)Social aspectsNew York (State)New York. 5. African AmericansNew York (State)New York. 6. Italin AmericansNew York (State)New York. 7. Harlem (New York, N.Y.)Race relations. 8. New York (N.Y)Race relations. 9. Harlem (New York, N.Y.)Biography. 10. New York (N.Y.)Biography. I. Title.

F128.9.A1R345 2006

974.7'10040551096073092dc222005033673

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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for
Vivek Bald and Edvige Giunta
and
in memory of my grandmothers

Acknowledgments

This book is a subjective look back at certain events in my life and in the lives of my family. I have woven a narrative out of many bits and pieces: fragments of my own memory; family stories passed down through the generations and altered in the process with each telling; interviews with family members; snippets of adult conversation I overheard as a child. It is my own interpretation of events as I have experienced, understood, and remembered them. Undoubt edly others represented in the book will have their own interpretations. To that end, I have changed the names of many of the people I have written about, in order to protect their privacy.

Portions of this book have appeared in earlier forms in the following publications: tutteStorie 8: OriginiLe Scrittrici Italo Americane (Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, ed. 2001); The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture (Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta, eds. The Feminist Press, 2002); Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America (Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno, eds. Routledge, 2003); Leggendaria 4647: Italiane DAmerica (Anna Maria Crispino, ed. 2004). I am deeply grateful to the editors of these publications for supporting my work in its many stages and for introducing it to a dynamic, critical, and encouraging audience, both in the United States and in Italy.

I thank my editor at W. W. Norton & Company, Alane Salierno Mason, for believing, from the beginning, in the importance of my story, for giving me the opportunity to tell it on a larger scale, for helping me to give it shape and nuance, and for having the patience to allow it to come in its own time and on its own terms. In many ways, it was she who called this story into being. I thank my agent, Geri Thoma, for her great faith in the book when it was just an idea, for helping me to see and to reach its potential, for her gentle guidance and her fierce support, for her humor, her clarity, her personal integrity and strength. She is a constant inspiration to me.

I also thank Alane Masons assistant, Vanessa Levine-Smith, for her great generosity, kindness, and patience in guiding me through the production process. I thank Geri Thomas assistant, Julia Kenney, for her enthusiastic reading of my manuscript at its earliest stage.

I have been blessed with many mentors, brilliant and uncompromising women, writers, and readers, who believed in me without question and who pushed me to write, think, dream, and be in ways I never imagined possible. I thank my English teachers at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Victoria Taylor, Eileen Brady, and Suzanne Price, for encouraging me to live a life in books. I thank Hettie Jones, in whose memoir workshop at the 92nd Street Y I began to write this book, and whose early enthusiasm for my story gave me the courage to keep writing. I thank Joyce Johnson, whose memoir workshop at the 92nd Street Y and the smaller group that evolved from it provided a space for me to struggle through the tough lessons of voice and craft. She pushed me, through her teaching and through the example of her own work, to write with simplicity, precision, and grace. I also thank my fellow writers in each of these workshops for their support, their criticism, and their comradeship, especially Chaya Deitsch and Corinna Barsan. I thank Jan Clausen, friend, colleague, and mentor, for her faith and encouragement through all the years when I was circling around the writing of this book, not knowing yet that I would write it. She showed me, through her own art and life, that the personal can be deeply, truly political. Finally I thank Louise DeSalvo. She was there at the birth of this book; her practical guidance, her emotional support, and her creative advice made it possible for me to write and publish my story, and to begin to live my life as a writer. I am honored now to be in her MFA class in the Creative Writing program at Hunter College. Her talent, courage, generosity, honesty, and humility astound and inspire me daily.

There have been so many people who have influenced and inspired me in the making of this book, and I want to thank specifically those who have been there from before the book was even an idea, whose love, friendship, conversation, and creative example have been beacons of light in my work and in my life. There are four people whose spirits pervade this book, and whose friendship over the years has given my life shape, meaning, and much pleasure: I thank Lyle Ashton Harris, Susannah Ludwig, Jennifer Guglielmo, and Jyoti Mistry. I also thank Lina Pallotta, Mauro Magrini, Kim Masterson, Patricia Eva Oppenheimer, Phyllis Capello, Rosette Capotorto and Ronnie Mae Painter, Mike Poppleton, Florian Schattauer, Sangeetha Kamat and Biju Matthew, Jocelyn Luckett, Joseph Sciorra, Sunil Bald and Yolande Daniels, and Richard Fulco. With so little space there are many people I cannot include by name, and I extend my sincere thanks to them. I trust they know who they are and how much I appreciate their friendship and support.

Many thanks to my dear friends and colleagues: Catarina Romeo for her beautiful and sensitive translations of my writing; Mary Gannett of BookCourt for her heartfelt and inspiriting early reading of the manuscript; and Hiram Perez for his generous and creative criticism and contextualization of my work.

It has been my great fortune to be part of two communities in which I have grown tremendously as a writer and as a person. In their embrace I have felt the pleasures of belonging and have developed some of the most important relationships of my life: the Malia Creative Collective and the Brooklyn Writers Space. I also thank Stefano Albertini and New York Universitys Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo for providing a nurturing and welcoming home for my own work and that of my Malia sorelli.

I thank Thrae Harris for her compassion, her wisdom, and her invaluable presence in my life. I thank John Edgar Wideman for his encouragement and his kinship, and for telling the world the story of Sybela Owens and the beginning of Homewood.