Customer Reviews

In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu: A Novel

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It always amazes me when a male author can cross the gender line and write from a profoundly feminine point of view. Using the voices of husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, Tony Ardizzone teaches us the simple wisdom that underlies all the folktales and traditions heard since childhood at family feasts and gatherings. Now you will know why we pray to St Anthony when we lose something, or why we "make the horns"just so.

But what was most surprising and unexpected was Mr. Ardizzone's feminist take on the goings on in Heaven. Who doesn't know that Mama is the power behind the throne?

Because this book is written as a series of vignettes, it can be read straight through or chapter by chapter. Whichever route you take, you will return to it again and again. A keeper.

This book satisfies that part of me that loves short stories, the part that loves novels, and the part that loves series--for it is all of those things wrapped in one. With it's intertwined, yet distinct stories told in the voice of each of Papa Santuzzu's family members, you learn all about this vibrant Sicilian family's trials and triumphs both in Sicily and "La Merica." I especially enjoyed the perspective that one family member would sometimes give to another's story. Some sections are stronger than others, but most surely hit their mark. The book is written in a fable-y style that reminded me a bit of some of Salman Rushdie's work (especially Haroun and the Sea of Stories), while the intertwined story structure reminded me of another wonderful book, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, by Sandra Benitez. Enjoy this book, and pass it on.

The novel is really a series of inter-related short stories about the Santuzzu family of Sicily. Beginning with Papa Santuzzu, the novel follows the immigration of each of his children to the United States. Each chapter is told by different members of the Santuzzu family as they survive harsh lives in Sicily through their journies to America and into lives in a new country. Each chapter reveals information about the family. Sometimes stories are repeated but they are told by a different family member, thus allowing varying viewpoints to be explored. The novel really begins to cook with the chapter "Cavadduzzo's of Cicero" and is at its richest in the chapter "Black Madonna." Ardizzone has a wonderful knack for probing the depths of emotional pain to reveal the beauty in lives spent in struggle. Readers who like this book should get Ardizzone's earlier work, "Larabi's Ox." It's an excellent read and gives an exquisite glimpse into the author's talent that is so evident in "In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu."

As a first generation Sicilian/American, I found this book to be the most wonderful learning tool I have ever found to explain what my heritage is. I would very much like to thank Mr. Ardizzone for his invaluable contribution to this cause. Sicilians are arguably the most misunderstood people on this planet. I am recommending this book to all my family members and to all seekers of learning.

In the midst of poverty in the rock-filled land of Sicily, "La Merica" beckons with its streets of gold. As did many peasant families, Papa Santuzzu encourages his seven children to leave, one by one. By turns, the Santuzzu brothers, sisters and spouses tell of their adventures; because the chapters are each told from a different viewpoint, they can almost be read independently. They are irreverent [God is described as old man who wants "to sit back in his most comfortable chair and listen to Verdi on the radio."] Myths and fables are woven in the stories, often catalysts of change, as well as Catholic miracles. Life is harsh: people are cheated, people are unwanted, people die. And yet there is a sense of zest for life.

I found the "oral history" aspect of the stories fascinating, but was a bit "put-off" by the mythical aspects. And I question the feminist view of God: was that appropriate for that era, or is that the influence of our era?

But Tony Ardizzone is a good writer, who has a "blazing imagination" [to quote a review from "Culture Watch"] and who supplies descriptions vivid enough to allow you to enter this world.

Tony Ardizzone's novel, In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, is an abundant collection of magical stories and magnificent language woven together to create a extraordinary loving novel about not only Sicilian Americans but also the heartbreak and hope of common people who leave a home to begin again somewhere else. In Ardizzone's case the people are poor Sicilian farm laborers who endure backbreaking work in the rocky fields of oppressive baruni. The place they migrate to is La Merica. The story begins as the character's father, Papa Santuzzu and his wife Adriana, push their sons and daughters, one by one, to the land of opportunity and promise.
Rosa Dolci, Gaetanu, Luigi, Assunta, Salvatore, Rosaria and Livicedda Girgenti, Teresa Pantaluna, Ciccina Agneddina, and Carla and Gerlando Cavadduzzo all bribe their way out of the poverty of their island--one disguises herself as a man; another gains the help of enchanted eels. In La Merica they each settle in different cities and wait for their father to arrive. He never does. The children find jobs where "everyone is made to kneel down before Big Business and its creator, Capitalism." One brother becomes a baker, another a hobo, another participates in the formation of a union in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The child Anna experiences visions of a Black Madonna in a Chicago orphanage.
Each of the siblings, in their own way, runs up against the barons of industry--not much unlike the tyrannical landlords in Sicily--who comment that if the garlic-reeking, "black-eyed and swarthy" Italians who have "an inborn inclination towards criminality" falls incapacitated beside his machine, "there are over a hundred others willing to take his place, often at a lower wage."
The family truly becomes American--and the new world becomes not new anymore--when one of them dies. They cry so much as they drop his flesh into the ground that they realize a passing stranger might think they were crude. Yet more than that, as they stand at gravesite, they already know that "we had come to a land that would stunt and shame and silence us."
This seems the wise impetus for Tony Ardizzone's novel. Each chapter of ...Papa Santuzzu tells whom an immigrant---Sicilian, Italian, Mexican, Korean--might be. It is a story about the divine within gentle, valuable souls; it is family story; it is a story that makes you feel as if you are being held by a loving grandparent. Most importantly Tony Adrizzone's novel echoes the past more loudly than the present so that future generations will not forget where they have come from.

Ardizzone recounts the tales of how each of the children of Santuzzu and Adrianna participated in the Italy-to-The-USA avventura. As he tells the tales, Ardizzone skillfully prompts readers to take the perspectives that guided the actions of the seven siblings; the children of Papa Santuzzu Girgenti and his wife, Adrianna. As did many of the Sicilian and Southern Italian people who occupied the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic hierarchy, Santuzzu and Adrianna produced an abundance of offspring - seven children: Carla, Gaetanu, Luigi, Salvatore, Rosaria, Livicedda, and Assunta.
And, as did many over productive families in the southern end of Italy, the Girgenti family solved their family's economic problems by joining millions of their emigrating co-nationals.
As Ardizzone shaped the stories of each of the family's emigrants, he conveys a cornucopia of the detail about the ideologies and beliefs that derive from the Sicilian family's constructions (ways of viewing) the objects and events of their lives: the place of work in their lives, the familial obligations of the family's members, the ways of cultivating plants, the place of food and cuisine in the daily and festive lives of the community and family, the managing of sexual attraction, the process of courting and marrying, the honoring of selected saints, the framing of relationships with persons who hold power.
After an introductory chapter that summarizes the family's emigration, the tale of Gaetanu - the oldest son - premiers the overall narrative. In the introductory chapter, Ardizzone frames Gaetanu's departure within the mythology of La America that infiltrated the Sicilian countryside, at the turn of the XIXth and XXth centuries.
The family faces the deep pain of the parents as they order their son to leave. Anyone who has experienced the partings of Southern Italian family will grasp the meanings which Papa Santuzzu, Adrianna, and Gaetanu placed on the scene that Ardizzone describes:
"The next morning Gaetannu made ready to depart. He kissed Papa Santuzzu for the last time. He kissed Mamma Adrianna for the last time" (p. 11).
The chapter describing Gaetanu's tale characterizes the thrust of Ardizzone's literary effort. Ardizzone frames the story as a first person narration by Gaetanu Girgenti. The core of the story centers around the working conditions encountered by immigrants to the northeast of The USA. To begin, Gaetanu learned of the operations of the padrone system - the labor contractors who helped the unschooled emigrants, and who, in return, extracted a hefty profit for their services. As Gaetanu recites the history of his emigration he interjects the story of the famed Bread and Roses Strike that, in 1912, brought the International Workers of the World to the attention of the broader populace of The USA. During the recitation Gaetanu names two Italian-Americans who became central figures in the strike, Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti. In that way, Ardizzone lays out the concepts of labor unity, led by talented organizers, one (Giovannitti) who himself was an immigrant from Italy.
In telling the tale of Luigi, the second son, Ardizzone introduces his readers to the concepts of social organization that induced young Sicilian men of the period to join the the island's bandit gangs. Speaking in the first person, the woman who would become the wife of Luigi lays out the relationships between the contadini, the owners of the huge tracts of land, and the overseers that the landowners sent to direct their affairs .
In telling of Papa Santuzzu's refusal to accompany the last party of siblings to The USA, Ardizzone elaborates on themes of family obligation and responsibility. Papa Santuzzu insisted that he could not foresee adjusting to life in The USA, and vehemently claimed that he could happily live out his life among the almost life-like memories of the people who had played central roles in his life - the people who inhabited the garden of Papa Santuzzu.
While describing Papa Santuzzu's parting with the last of his offspring, Ardizzone repeats his use of the techniques of "magical realism" writing - techniques that some readers might find less than attractive.
In the end, in this sweeping epic, Ardizzone introduces his readers to a very wide variety of the the concepts that were used by the people of the avventura - the great turn of the 19th/20th century migration from Southern Italy to the western hemisphere. A reader of this book will have had ample opportunity to construe all kinds of events and objects in ways that the cast of characters he describes would have construed those events and objects.

This book made me laugh and cry at the same time. It is filled with lyrical prose and folklore that glitter like jewels.

Ardizzone's novel of the southern Italian immigrant experience was very enjoyable - reminded me of a recent memoir ELEVEN DAYS IN AUGUST by Amatore Mille. I recommend both books.

This novel manages to blend all the emotional subtlety of Danielle Steel with the linguistic restraint of Louis de Bernieres. Or let's put it another way: if you enjoy really loud restaurants where all the dishes have the same sauce, you'll love In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu.