LA MIA STRADA: TRANSUMANZA AS METAPHOR FOR TRANSCENDING FAMILY RECONNECTIONS IN ABRUZZO AND AMERICA
Just when it may seem that the myriad paths to and from Italy and Italian America have been unearthed or upturned, the 2012 documentary La mia strada (My Road: Michaelangelo Productions) offers new inroads into two aspects of the ongoing dialogue between families separated by country and ocean yet connected through story, culture and identity. The film offers a rare perspective of interviews with Italians left behind after emigration, and shares their perspectives on how that affected a feeling of being abandoned by members who left for America.
It also offers a growing perspective shared by Italian-Americans who make their way back to Italy and, in returning to the point of departure, come full circle in reconnecting and feeling united by what DiLauro calls “an indelible genetic bond.” I saw the film at the Corner Store, a house near Eastern Market that has an Italian story of its own to share. Current owners Kris Swanson and Roy Mustelier enjoy sharing the story of how an Italian family used to own the house.
The Corner Store is a family home with space for salons that spotlight studio, gallery and performance art, including a room large enough for the screening of La mia strada. For anyone wanting to know what it might feel like to take the path back to family in Italy, about whom stories may have been told around the dinner tables of America, La mia strada offers a moving and enticing cultural metaphor for finding home. DiLauro’s personal story grounded the film in what he says “was passed around the table growing up.” His greatgrandmother Chiara DiLauro was his grandmother Filomena DeMuro’s field boss in Puglia, where the two picked lampasconi (a type of wild onion). One day, Chiara heard the bagpipes (zampogne) and said to Philomena, “I hear the bagpipes – it must be the shepherds from Abruzzo. Go up the hill and give them the ‘eye’ and maybe they’ll give us some cheese.”
That’s how DiLauro chose the metaphor of the tratturi – the paths traveled every year in la transumanza, in which the sheep migrate south from Abruzzo to Molise and Puglia – to become the anchor of La mia strada. “I discovered connections between these ancient tratturi and the ones that led to the New World,” DiLauro says in the film. “And as a result, I linked people on both sides of the Atlantic who were also looking to discuss and perhaps re-evaluate their own identity with those of similar DNA.” La mia strada is unique in that in sharing the story of the DiLauro family back to the ancestral town of Ascoli Satriano, near Foggia, in Puglia, it offers every family with roots in Abruzzo and America an eye into what reconnection might look like for thousands of families spread throughout the Italian diaspora. Both sides of the family – in Italy and America – discover reconnection. The film includes dozens of interviews, including with Abruzzesi currently living in Philadelphia, as well as historical sites, family photographs, and oral histories.
The gorgeous traditional Abruzzese folk music of the Sulmonabased group DisCanto includes special tracks made for the film. AMHS member Joseph D’Andrea is featured in an interview in the film, along with Italians and Americans who may be familiar to current AMHS members. Philadelphia-based Francis Cratil, owner of the Abruzzese restaurant Le Virtù (named for the Abruzzese minestrone soup made in Teramo on May 1st after the hard winter), students from L’Aquila attending university in America, and DiLauro himself all offer personal perspectives and stories about their journeys on the path that touches the lives of so many Italians and Italian-Americans. Pittsburgh-based Italian-American activist Maria Palmieri offers a story to which many Italian-Americans can relate, and many more may hope to experience: “I grew up in Pittsburgh,” she explains in the film, “but we don’t have a lot of extended family.
All of my cousins and extended family are in Italy. Around that (dinner) table, my dad made us understand who we were connected to there. So…when we got there (to Italy) for the first time, we knew who everybody was. All we had to do was attach the face with the name. And people were just shocked that I would know the stories and the nicknames of people. You know, everybody in my dad’s town has a nickname. They call it sopranom (il soprannome). It’s a name on top of your name just to distinguish what family you belong to, or usually by a trait: a big nose, short pants…
There was a guy in my dad’s town that wore a hundred – well, maybe not a hundred, but a lot of belts. And they used to call him Centofibbie One Hundred Belts. When I got to Italy, and asked my aunt, who had never met me, ‘Where is Centofibbie?’ She couldn’t believe it.” Stories like this one resonate throughout the film and reconnect Abruzzo’s villages to American dinner tables. Luca Guardabascio, an Italian writer and filmmaker (Inseguito, 2002) notes that in making the film, “DiLauro has stirred up the dust that has settled beneath our soul.” DiLauro admits that “I wanted to talk about my connection (to Italy) and put it out there. I really wanted to commit myself in telling the story and putting stories and anecdotes out there that may stir up the dust literally or metaphorically.” The upturned earth offers new ground for the next generations – DiLauro’s wife and co-producer Jan, his sister Angela, and her sons Graham and Sean are all featured in the film, along with Graham and Sean’s Italian cousins who are thrilled to meet their American family.
“All of them have embraced putting faces, places, people and towns together with their heritage,” DiLauro says. “I came to the realization…it must be me who reconstructs the familial trail from America back to Ascoli Satriano.” The film has received critical acclaim from scholars as well as filmmakers. Author and historian Ben Lariccia says, “[the] film explores some of the harder truths: the brokenness, the silence, and the finality that result from migration.” Out of that brokenness, new ground is broken in the rich imagery, music, and stories. In reconnecting the past to the present, La mia strada offers one family’s example of personal reconnection, and may inspire many to share their stories of finding their own paths back to Abruzzo, Molise and Italy.
An official selection at the Palestrina Film Festival in Italy (2012) and the Atlantic City Film Festival (2013), La mia strada won a silver medal at the Media Communications Association International Film Festival (2014) and a Silver Award at the Spotlight Documentary Film Award (2014-2015). DiLauro is currently the Director of the Academic Media Center and Associate Professor at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, and an award-winning director and producer of documentaries, television programs, and corporate productions. Website and film trailer, http://www.lamiastrada.org ; DisCanto (Abruzzese folk music group from Sulmona, Province of L’Aquila), www.discanto.org; The Corner Store, www.cornerstorearts.org
MY ROOTS
In my last article (in the September 2015 issue of the AMHS Notiziario), I wrote about a visit to my mother’s town, San Bartolomeo in Galdo, where she grew up. I have a cousin there and she knew we were coming. I made this trip with my wife Jacque and her sister Annette. We stayed in a hotel in Campobasso, about a one hour drive from my mother’s town of San Bartolomeo in Galdo in Benevento; one hour from my father’s town, San Martino in Pensilis in Molise; and one hour from my wife Jacque’s father’s town, Formicola in Caserta.
We rented a car and a driver for the five days we visited our families. The driver spoke excellent English which was a big help. This article will be devoted to our trip to my father’s town. My father came to this country in 1920 at age 22. I have written two books that give more detail about my father’s entry to America, so I will not go into too much detail here. He was the only one of his family of six children to come to this country. He went back to San Martino in Molise in 1961, after 41 years of being away. While there, he had a photo taken of his entire family.
We have had that picture since 1961. There are 21 people in the picture; however, the only person we knew was my father. I had no idea who or what we were looking for. My father, for reasons unknown, never talked about his family. I do remember his reaction when his father and mother died. Then he talked a little about them. When we drove into this small town of about 5,000 people, we found many men playing cards in the “piazza” (when they saw the black Mercedes they stopped playing cards to look.) I told the driver to pull over in the middle of this little town. I told him I would go to see the gas station attendant to see if he could help me as to whom we were looking for. I walked up to him, and showed him my name, which is French (some say Greek, but I say French), and asked “Do you know anyone by this name?”
He looked me in the eye and said “Yes, me!!!” I was astounded and could hardly catch my breath. It turned out that he is Lorenzo D’Ermes, my first cousin: his father and my father were brothers. I could hardly speak - I just hugged him and told him my name and my father’s name. I also asked him to give me all the data about himself, i.e. age, date of birth, marriage, children etc. (I still have that piece of paper.) While we were looking at the picture, a man named Michael, who married into the D’Ermes family, came across the street. He pointed at the picture and said, “that’s me”.
My newlyfound cousin told the man to put everyone in the car and drive to another house. (I am deaf and I wear a cochlear implant; it is very helpful, but sometimes I miss things, which is what happened to me on the way to “the house)”. I was the last one to enter the house; I saw the name D’Ermes on the doorbell, so I took a picture.
When I went inside I met another first cousin, Giuseppe D’Ermes. His father and my father also were brothers. I showed my picture to Giuseppe and he recognized it immediately. He began telling me about my father. He knew about New Rochelle, New York, where my father settled and where my three sisters and I were born. He looked just like my father. I was in tears, I just could not handle this without becoming emotional.
Giuseppe’s wife, Maria, was also there. She wanted to fix lunch and I said we would all go out for lunch, which is what we did. The waiter, who was also the owner of the restaurant, did not stop putting food on the table. No one else was in this large restaurant probably because it was about 2:30/3:00 pm. All the while, Maria was speaking Italian, to Jacque and Annette who did not understand one word she was saying. But she kept talking. My Italian has an accent from Abruzzo.
These relatives, including the waiter, spoke with the same accent and we got along fine (except for Jacque and Annette). On the way home on the plane, Jacque and I agreed we had to go back. And we did that in 2012, which will be the subject of my next article.