Angelica Roman’s Memoir

Abandoned by my Dominican father and raised by my overly secretive Puerto Rican mother—who was abandoned by my Italian grandfather—I had cut myself off from considering myself to be much of anything.
Writing and reading memoir helped me delve into the ways in which my ethnic identity survived and taught me how to embrace the ways in which my ethnic identity faltered. Without memoir, I would never have learned that gaps in identity resonate in the person I have become nor would I have found camaraderie among writers who consistently teach me how to push against the boundaries of loss and displacement. I have been embraced in a world to which I never imagined I would belong. I now view my relationship with ethnic and immigrant identity not as a passive inheritance but as a living root that I must continually strive to cultivate.

Edvige Giunta is Professor of English at New Jersey City University. Her books include Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors, and the coedited anthologies, The Milk of Almonds, Italian American Writers on New Jersey, the MLA guide to Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture, Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women’s Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora, and Personal Effects: Essays on Memoir, Teaching, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo.

https://www.assayjournal.com/edvige-giunta-memoir-as-cross-cultural-practice-in-italian-american-studies-51.html