Joe and Paula McHugh are a husband and wife team who believe strongly in the power of stories and their American Stories website is a celebration of American family stories. Joe McHugh knows Maria's hometown of Paterson, New Jersey because it is the city where he spent most of early years. Paterson was and continues to be a community of immigrants - a place people come to hoping to improve their lives in this experiment we call America.
In Maria's interview, she tells the story of the courtship of her father and mother which began in San Mauro, Italy and brought them to Paterson, New Jersey. The focus in this story is her mother, Angelina, who Maria described in a poem as ''Soothsayer, Healer,Tale-teller / There was nothing you could not do.''
Click this link to listen to the interview and a poem Maria wrote about her mother as a tribute after her death, and listen to Maria's stories: about her mother's "E.S.P" and her mother wanting to go back to school, self-learning, her granddaughter's yearbook and America.
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| Angelina Schiavo Mazziotti |
Further Reading - an article in The New York Times about Maria finding her heritage and her voice.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.
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