“Write what you know” is the usual recommendation in the books on writing I’ve consulted and the workshops I’ve attended. I want to set a story in a Calabrian village, a world both familiar to me and at the same time exotic to Canadian readers. Lucia and Totu’s story has never quite left me, but I witnessed it as a child and I don’t trust my memories. There are many missing pieces and gaps that need to be filled. I prod my mother. I speak to her as if she were still here, for her voice and words reverberate constantly in my mind. “In those villages, we fought like cats and dogs. We lived on top of each other. What could you expect?” It was like her to see the bigger picture, to look beyond what people did to explain why they did it. “I need to know more about Lucia and Totu, about their families, their thoughts,” I tell myself, “not the whole village.” “You can’t speak of one without the other.”
What do You think about The Girls Of Piazza D'Amore?
