Join Pam and me for a special presentation and book discussion about our journeys into the far reaches of Southern Italy in search of the places our grandparents once called home.

Pam and I met in Rome in the summer of 2023 as fellows at the Calandra Institute’s Italian Diaspora Summer Studies Seminar. There we learned about the millions of Southern Italians who left their homeland for America. But as Pam and I got to know each other, we discovered that our own family stories had brought both of us to Italy.

I had already made my journey back to Rotondella, the small village in Basilicata my grandparents left more than a century ago, and had found the family I never knew I had. That journey would eventually become part of It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Live: An Italian American Story of Coming Home.

Pam had spent years researching her grandparents and their village in Abruzzo. Now she was finally in Italy, and the place she had searched for from across an ocean was suddenly within reach.

I understood how much it meant to her. So we made the arrangements and went together. I served as translator as Pam walked into the village her grandparents had left generations before.

And she found family.

That day became the beginning of a very special friendship.

Two women. Two villages. Two journeys back to the places where our families began.

On September 8, Pam and I will share our stories at the Italian American Museum of Cleveland. Come hear why we went, what we found, and what it means to discover that a place you have never lived can somehow still feel like home.

For more information, here’s the link: https://iamcle.org/events%2Fprograms