On October 5th, 2005, The Italian Cultural Center and the University Library Programming Workgroup co-sponsored a poetry reading by Maria Mazziotti Gillan. Ms. Gillan shared poetry that reflected on her experiences growing up as the daughter of immigrant parents in Paterson, NJ. Her work is personal, without being private; the poems touch on universal themes of feeling both like an outsider and feeling part of a community, of dealing with relationships between parents and children, on the excitement of encountering strangers who are potential friends or bullies, and on the helplessness of seeing those we love having to endure pain.
The library is pleased to present a podcast of the poetry reading in its entirety, and to offer access to individual poems which address the ambivalence of the immigrant experience.
To access the poetry reading in its entirety:
Mazziotti Gillan Poetry Reading, October 5, 2005 (70:17 Minutes/ 28.8 MB)
To access individual poems on immigrant experiences:
Growing Up Italian (3:23 minutes / 3.1 MB)
Perspectives (3:25 / 3.13 MB)
After School (1:17 / 1.17 MB)
Paterson Public Library (3:06 / 2.84 MB)
Daddy We Called You (3:13 / 2.94 MB)
Maria Mazziotti Gillan is Professor of Poetry, Multicultural Literature, Contemporary Women Poets, and Working Class Literature in the English Department at SUNY Binghamton; she is also the founder/director of The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey and editor of The Paterson Literary Review.
Her poetry anthologies include: Where I Come From: Selected and New Poems (Toronto, Canada: Guernica Editions, 1994, 1998); Things My Mother Told Me (Toronto, Canada: Guernica Editions, 1999). She has co-edited several anthologies including Italian American writers on New Jersey : an anthology of poetry and prose, (New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, 2003); Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Prose About Learning to be American, (New York: Penguin/Putnam, 1999); and Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, (New York: Penguin/Putnam, 1994).
Additional free audio versions of Ms Gillan’s poems are available through PoetryPoetry.com.
Intro and Outro music: Instrumental sample from “Make Believe” by Paul Whiteman.
Public Domain. Available courtesy of http://www.publicdomain4u.com/.
This podcast was recorded and edited using free software and a St. John’s
University Laptop. For more comments or questions about the St. John’s University
Podcasting Initiative, please email us at eservices@stjohns.edu.
Timeline:
Introduction: Music: “Make Believe” by Paul Whiteman.
0:44 Welcome by Professor Arthur Sherman, University Library, Queens Campus, and introduction of Maria Mazziotti Gillan by Professor Steven Paul Miller, Associate Professor of English.
3:21 “Growing Up Italian”: Reflections on how she was keenly aware of having darker skin than her classmates, and aware of the names and stereotypes that Italians bore.
7:08 "Perspectives" (from Italian Women in Black Dresses): Reflections on seeing her childhood home after many years, and seeing it through both her memories and through the eyes of reporters who had asked her to revisit there with them.
11:20 "After School"; Reflections on everyday life of “ordinary days”
12:43 "When I was a Young woman"; Reflecting on whether the layers of clothes that a young woman had to wear were an attempt to protect them from young men..
16:15 "Patterson Public Library/Anthea": Reflection on working in the public library as a teenager, with epilogue on being the child of immigrants and dealing with bullies.
20:31 "Is this the way is it with Mothers and Sons?" (from an upcoming anthology)
22:38 "Poem to my sister": one of a few poems on death, and the quick, recent series of deaths in her family
25:02 Epilogue to "Poem to my sister" , and reflection on how the dead are "still with us" as a transition to a poem about her mother’s dying
26:17 “I/She forgot how to cry" (soothsayer...) with epilogue reflection on how to be a poet who is true to the stories of what it is to be human, and to be true to the past, like Edwidge Danticat is author of Breath, Eyes, Memory: A Novel, and Krik? Krak!
31:17 "Driving into our new lives" Reflections on her early marriage
, when she and her husband were young
32:46 "Nighties": Another poem about when she and her husband were young and vibrant, because later poems deal with how they've grown old.
34:24 "The Ghosts in our bed" (from Things My Mother Told Me) Reflections
on her husband, who has early-onset Parkinsons
36:56 "Shame" More reflections on the complications of long-term
relationships: especially given her husband's battle with Parkinson's.
39:38 "My daughter's hands" Reflections on support and on the senility
of the Grandmother who lived with them for 9 years.
42:07 "Dona Laura" Reflections on the paternal Grandmother, raised 7 children
46:05 "Daddy We Called You"; Always the "finishing" poem of every reading, about being embarrassed to call her father Papa when she was out with her American neighbors and friends.
49:56 Question and Answer period:
Question 1: [Barely audible, but paraphased here] You write alot about Family and other people, do you find that it leaves less time to focus on poems about you or your political views? -- Regarding Poetry and ancestry; and regarding poetry, politics, new immigrants and prisons.
56:41 Question 2: [Barely audible, but paraphrased here] I am surprised that
you thought only blond-haired girls were beautiful when you are so lovely
yourself. Why did you think that having dark hair and Olive skin was not beautiful?
-- Regarding negative feelings she associated with heritage and overcoming
the desire to fit in what she saw as the "American" mold.
1:02:47 Question 3: [Reasonably audible, but paraphased here] I come from
immigrant parents and there is that need to fit in, but whenever I write about
them, they claim it doesn't happen the way I write it, and they always want
to "whitewash" the story. – Regarding the role of shame, ethnicity
and unease of family "secrets" being exposed.
1:08: 11 Comment 4: [Barely audible, but paraphased here] As a mother of a writer, I understand that you want to write about us since we are wonderful subjects, but when will it stop?
1:09:08 Conclusion: Thanks by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
1:09:19 Closing remarks by Aurthur Sherman, Associate Professor, Librarian and chair of Library Programming Workgroup.
Outro Music: “Make Believe” by Paul Whiteman