COBBLESTONES, CONVERSATIONS, AND CORKS

In this memoir, a man recollects his first visit to his parents’ hometown in Italy, an emotional journey.

Ruscitti grew up in Frederick, Colorado, a small coal-mining town, regaled by stories about his ancestors in Cansano, nestled in Italy’s Abruzzo region. His parents, Emiliano and Maria, introduced him to the traditions that dominated their own youth—the family made its own wine, hung dried sausage in the cellar, and bought Italian cheeses in bulk. The author’s first language was Italian. But unlike his sisters, he never visited Cansano—never experienced firsthand this town that figured so significantly in the constitution of his own character. He yearned to finally see it for himself and to make sense of his father’s identity and his own. Ruscitti finally visited the town in 2013, a trip he deftly chronicles in this moving memoir: “I had never been to Cansano before and the stories I had heard seemed disconnected from me and my daily life. The difficulties, pain, and suffering of the post-World War II era and subsequent immigrant life were not mine. Yet, after one day, I wanted to touch and get to know this place of origin, and I would soon have an awakening, an understanding of where—and from whom—I came.” The author lucidly combines the personal and the political—he describes his family’s life in Cansano as well as the town’s modern history, both of which were often fraught. Emiliano and Maria grew up in Italy during the 1930s and ’40s and witnessed the ways in which their homeland was ravaged by war, Nazi occupation, and economic deprivation. They both moved to the United States in the mid-’50s and built a successful life that preserved, however imperfectly, the culture of their youth. Ruscitti’s reflection is more than an idiosyncratic remembrance—it’s a thoughtful consideration of the meaning of a person’s sense of self and the nuanced ways in which it is constituted by elements that preceded the individual and elude full comprehension. As a result, the author’s recollection transcends the particulars of his own life and should resonate with readers similarly gripped by the struggle to understand their origins.

A captivating, candid, and insightful account about a man’s Italian heritage.