On the Chessboard of Life

The book was published in Italy by the "Città del Sole" Publishing House of Reggio Calabria in July of this year, in print only and is achieving great success both with bookstore sales and online sales on Amazon. It is part of the series "La vita narrata" and talks about the story of my Grandfather Daniele, who emigrated to New Jersey in 1910 and returned to his native Calabria in 1953 after 43 years of America, finds himself living the last years in an alienating way of life, no longer feeling completely Calabrese and not even Italian and least of all American . There are four reading levels: 1)alongside his personal one there is the story of the numerous grandchildren who surround him and love him but at the same time fear him because of his grumpy and irascible character. 2)In the background, the village of Satriano is represented, located in the Serre Aspromontane, in poverty because it has been bled by emigration, as a result of which it is mostly populated by wives left alone with their children, often small. The emigration is also narrated through the photographic documentation of the papers belonging to Grandfather and through that of the "ships" he took to go to America. 3)The last level of reading is that of Satriano's historical cultural roots in which the narrating voice, which is mine as a Latin and Greek scholar, reconnects the threads that lead back to the great Classical Greek culture of origin. A book, therefore historical-biographical but also of formation of the gang of cousins who grow up without too many controls trying to understand and interpret the life that surrounds them and who find in it the roots of their future (Rosanna, for example, will choose as an adult emigrate like her as my grandfather to America, while I, Luisa, will never want to break away from Italy but, due to family events, I will at the same time become a "citizen of the world"). The writing of the book was requested by my niece Daniela who lives in California and who wanted me to tell her the story of her father Daniele as a child, my brother. It is dedicated, in order: 1) to migrants of yesterday and today 2) to Daniele, who died in California last February of a fulminant heart attack and to whom I also dedicated the back cover with the poem that inspired me about his story and that of the other deceased relatives of our family.

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