ABSTRACT

Gilda, was born in East Harlem; her parents had migrated from their village near Cosenza, in the mountains of Calabria, and had settled into a tenement building on 113th Street filled with their paesani. When she was sixteen, Gilda's mother took her out of school and arranged for her to marry Luigi, a man from the village who had recently arrived in the United States. Eventually most of the families, all white, who were there when we arrived had left; it was like a mass exodus. Across from the couch was the blocked-up fireplace, inside of which it had hidden on the day we moved in, overwhelmed by the piles of boxes that filled each room. The only sign of the life that once filled the echoing space was the photograph that hung on the wall over the beds. It is a black-and-white image of grandparents, seemingly caught off guard.