Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
Casa Italia presented its 22nd annual IA Literati authors exposition on May 23. The event was chaired by Anna Weiss and emceed by Frank Di Piero.
Lou Bruno, author of “The Love of San Demetrio,” talked about his transformative journey to his ancestral home to research his novel. Former Loyola University professor Carla Simonini shared insights from her scholarly dissertation “Traveling Italy, Writing America” and Oak Park’s Mike Rosanova read from his autobiography, “Big Brains and Broken Hearts.”
Leah Eskin, longtime food writer for the Chicago Tribune, spoke about her debut novel, “Like Wafers in Honey.” It follows the parallel stories of Stella Fortuna, a Jewish girl fleeing Nazi-occupied Italy in 1943, and Edda Servi Machlin, who preserved traditional Italian-Jewish heritage in 1960s America.
Richard Leto, author of “My Italian-American Roots,” spoke proudly about growing up in South Philly, and Marc DiPaolo delighted the audience with tales of a macabre visit to a bone museum in Rome and other moments from his memoir “Fake Italian.” Military historian Peter Belmonte, author of the soon-to-be-released “A Tale of Two Bands: Italian Americans in the U.S. Military 1898-1902,” regaled attendees with stories of the Spanish American War, and Di Piero talked about his series of illustrated children’s books, the last two of which were written in Italian and English.
Lively conversations and brisk book sales ensued over lunch provided by Frankie’s Deli.
