Italians of Brooklyn by Marianna Biazzo Randazzo

As she grows older, she struggles to keep the harsh realities of World War II and abandonment at a distance through her sense of humor, imagination and determination. Her spirit trumps over adversity during the war times within and around her. She is able to forgive those who took so much away from her. The child witnesses and experiences many disturbing things from her uncouth, unsanitary living conditions to the failed paratroopers dangling from trees during the allied invasion.

In wartime Europe, childhood does not exist. This time sickness, warfare and destruction are her enemies. After eight years, she returns home to find her childhood interrupted again. Less than 25 kilometers away her family leads a very different life. Her school is taken over by German soldiers and the things like bread and eggs that were once plentiful, no longer exist. The child grows up while WW II ravages the town. She shares her breakfast with goats and chickens while living in the shadow of fascism. She sleeps between a loving aunt and a deranged uncle. Tina lives in a one-room house in one of the poorest regions of Sicily. It was not an abduction nor was it an adoption. She spends the next eight years of her life absent from their lives. This work serves as a time capsule to remind us of the contributions and influences these immigrants have offered to the community.In Sicily, 1935 a four-year child walks away from her loving family, her mother, her sister and an infant brother, with a great-aunt for a vacation. Although the last notable wave of Italian immigration ended in the 1960s, Italian remains one of the six prevalent foreign languages in New York according to a 2007 census estimate. By 1900, Brooklyn's Italian population was second only to Manhattan. The 1855 New York Census did not list any Italian natives in Brooklyn however, by 1890, there were 9,563 Italians residing in the borough. Although Italians in South Brooklyn have been traced back as far as the 1820s, most settled in Manhattan. In an era when over four million Italians found their way to America, the first significant influx came during the 1880s, primarily from rural peasant communities fleeing poverty and overpopulation. Brooklyn, or 'Bruculinu,' as many Italians affectionately pronounced it, is where Italian values, culture, and dreams thrived.

Italians of Brooklyn by Marianna Biazzo Randazzo