Cu Tia Avissi Avutu Furtezza E Casteddu

Carmela Galante, motherless within a month of her birth and orphaned at nine years, lost the comforting familiarity of her native place at the age of eleven only to be torn from family and detained alone for two weeks on Ellis Island at Thanksgiving time, 1921. Loss and emotional abandonment emerge as life themes in a cache of poetry styled in the age-old manner of Sicilian story telling. Products of a creative gush in 1964, the poems are an autobiographical explosion of reflection. In the face of a diagnoses of terminal cancer, her poetry was an effort to leave her story to future generations. She died four years later at the age of 58. The poems express nostalgic desire, the pain of death and illness, strength derived from religious faith and the common wisdom of a true daughter of Sicilian culture in the seaside town of Castellammare del Golfo, west of Palermo. Her opus, previously published in Italy by the National Association of Families of the Emigrated (ANFE), appears here as a bilingual presentation including English prose renditions of the poems and a biographical essay accompanied by commentary from both literary and psychological points of view. Her life achievements and loving relationships in spite of persisting psychological pain are amplified by inclusion of archival documents and photographs. Carmela's unexpected creation contributes personal context to discussion of the current moment of new mass migration.