Writing About Being a Hyphenated American

Maria Giura writes in the essay "The Book That Changed My Life" that in her high school days it was a book published in 1939, Christ in Concrete, that changed her. She writes that the book is about "an Italian immigrant bricklayer named Geremio, who dies on Good Friday when he falls from the building he is helping to build. Geremio is swallowed by the concrete, which crushes him as it dries around him, his arms outstretched like Christ’s on the cross."

But in her late twenties, through being involved in the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA), she moved from reader to writer, a move inspired by the poetry of Maria Mazziotti Gillan.

Here is an excerpt from her essay:

 I began to listen to the desires of my heart. Part of what IAWA did was help connect me to other writers, including the acclaimed poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan. For the first 40 years of her life, Mazziotti wrote poems that mimicked the English Romantic male poets; she thought that was what she was supposed to write, that those were the only kinds of poems that existed. But after 40, she started writing what she really wanted to write: autobiographical free verse about the tight-knit, blue-collar, Sicilian American immigrant home she grew up in. Although in that home she felt loved and proud and happy, outside that home she was always afraid “the Italian word [would] sprout from [her] mouth like a rose.” In Mazziotti’s poetry, I recognized that the impulse to write stems from our need to be heard, to give witness to our lives, to help give witness to others’ lives. 

Because of her, I started writing a lot and often. I learned that poetry can be autobiographical, angry, tender. I learned how emotion is done well on the page, that it must be done well. The best writing is the kind that gives you chills up your back or makes you cry like Christ in Concrete did for me. It’s not distant or general; it’s rich, sensual, imaginative. It tells the truth even if it’s fiction. In addition to helping me tap into and trust my own voice, Mazziotti was also a bridge to a long list of other authors who write about the experience of being a female immigrant or “hyphenated” American...

Maria Giura delivered a version of this article in a talk to the Italian American Women of Staten Island at their 2019 Women in History Luncheon. Giura has taught Literature and Writing at St. John's University, Montclair State University, and Binghamton University where she earned her doctorate in English. Her first book of poetry is What My Father Taught Me (Bordighera Press) and Celibate: A Memoir is forthcoming in October 2019.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's most recent books are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow  and the poetry collection, What Blooms in Winter. Her collection of poems paired with some of her paintings is The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets. Her new artist website is at MariaMazziottiGillan.com. Maria's poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

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