By Andrea Scarpino
Dear Gay Talese,
I just finished Unto the Sons. Yes, I had to renew it from the library twice and then kept it four days past the final due date. But here’s why: I read slower and slower towards the end, trying to stay as long as possible in your words, trying to keep your voice a little longer in my head. Even as my 25-cent daily overdue fine accumulated, I wanted stay in your world.
Because you sound so much like my father. Or more exactly, you sound like you could explain my father. Maybe because my parents had me later in life—my father was 45 when I was born—I’ve always felt they are a mystery, a complex puzzle I have to parse. My father had a successful career by the time I came around, had long-established friendships and rivalries, traditions and ways of doing things. We didn’t “grow up” together like I’ve heard some people describe their relationship with their parents. My father knew who he was by the time I was born, and while he seemed happy to have me along, it was always clear to me that I was his child and not his friend, that I had to do what I was told, that there were right ways and wrong ways of doing things, that there were questions I could never ask him.
And he puzzled me. His patriotism puzzled me, the fact that he always wore American flag pins on his suit lapels. The fact that he always wore suits—even when mowing the lawn or doing heavy housework, he wore old suit pants. That he wouldn’t admit to being Italian—even with a name like Pasquale, he’d insist he was “American” unless really pushed. Then he would finally admit to being “of Italian extraction.” The only Italian I ever heard him speak were imperatives like basta! and avanti!
But now, I feel like I’m beginning to understand. My father was born the same month and year as you were, Gay, born to immigrant parents like your own who heard the same Italian slurs your parents heard. I understand now how hard World War II was on my father’s family—immigrants to a country at war with their homeland. Immigrants who still had relatives in Italy, now their sworn enemy. How does a child make sense of that? How does a child make sense of an opinion poll in the 1940s that found Italians were “the most undesirable immigrant group in the United States”? No wonder my father didn’t want to claim his heritage. No wonder he always wanted to look his best. No wonder he always worked harder than anyone else, became enraged so quickly when he sensed disrespect.
And I never before understood Calabria, its centuries of oppression, its poverty. The pressure my grandfather must have felt to succeed in America so he would be able to send money home, to support family who couldn’t leave. The pressure that spread to a young son who would spend his life trying to take care of his family.
Which is all to say thank you. For giving me your own father’s story and through it, the story of Italy, of the south, of Italian immigrants to this country. For giving me a sense of my own father, my own family’s journey. For giving me Unto the Sons.
Poet and essayist Andrea Scarpino is a frequent contributor to POTB.
Planet of the Blind 