CALABRIAN TALES: A Memoir of 19th Century Southern Italy Paperback – September 1, 2002

My family is from Calabria and my grandparents were part of that great migration to the States. I have recently retired and moved to Calabria to live out my days. This book reflects some of what I heard as a child. Now I’m experiencing first hand what being Calabrese is.

Calabrian Tales: A Memoir of 19th Century Southern Italy is likely the most fascinating book I've read in the last decade. That's no small statement as I am an avid reader of historical essay books and specifically, those that focus on Southern Italian history. I am an armchair genealogist with an advanced degree in History, who has spent the last year scouring microfilms and documents written in Italian of my ancestors. While I have found many names and dates, the stories of those ancestors have remained elusive and in one particular case, left me puzzled as the particular branch of my tree did not fit the "traditional" genealogical cultural pattern. Gagliano, the village central to Mr. Peter Chiarella's tree is about 30 miles from my ancestors extremely remote, mountain village. I have document evidence of ancestors who were nobility with title and feudal landowners going back for centuries. Likewise, in my tree identical situations experienced specifically by the concubine Marianna in Calabrian Tales- both explain the mysterious pattern of lineage in my own family and solved the biggest family mystery in my genealogical research. Had it not been for this book and the snippets of oral history given to me from long-lost relatives I recently reconnected with, our tree would have remained a mystery.What I like the most about this book, is the honest language. Life was dreadful and hard, more so than I ever thought or was described to me when I was a child. There's no white-washing or romanticizing of history that is often the result after generations or oral story telling. The author does a magnificent job piecing together his family's story while explaining the historical geopolitical issues and context,the local culture and economy, as well as the effects of epidemics of disease, earthquakes and climate. His descriptive language; his understanding of weather patterns like the 7 year snows or Sahara winds that blew through Calabria in the brutal, humid summers gives the reader a better understanding and appreciation for the suffering our ancestors endured. Epidemics of Scarlet Fever, Malaria...I now understand why in the documents some years indicate a disproportionate amount of deaths in one remote village compared to the paltry population of 500. Even in the late 19th century, several members of a family would die within days or one another, and then a page or two in, one can see how the epidemic caused the deaths of neighbors on the same street. It's a window into why some of them took the ultimate gamble - out of desperation - not knowing what the future held for them in America or Argentina. Instead of being shamed of embarrassed by some elements of our family history, I walked away feeling more proud of them. What shames me is knowing that I, myself, probably do not possess their courage or fortitude to survive the most unbearable situations and hardships. We really don't know how good we have it and I thank my ancestors for giving us all a future where I can make such a proclamation.I received this book last Friday and one week later, I am about 1 chapter away from finishing. It's bittersweet to me. Over the last week, as ridiculous as it sounds, I feel as though I have connected with the phantom strangers in this book - I am rooting for them so to speak. To me Peter Chiarella is brave. I have personal understanding of the risks he took in telling his family's stories - condemnation by members of family and in some cases, even expulsion. We were taught from a young age to deny our history and never to speak of what little we knew. Even over 100 years later, there are things I discovered in my own tree I am not free to discuss with other relatives. The silence is most powerful and it continues to breathe generations into the future out of the fear of dishonor and shame. As a scholar of history and one of Italian ancestry who didn't understand the culture of the nobility in Calabria, I am profoundly grateful of Mr. Chiarella for writing this book.

This book is not a literary masterpiece, but the stories told speak for themselves. Intense, brutal, unforgettable and inspiring all at once, it's very hard to put this book down. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5, as the simplistic nature of the writing is annoying at times. But the storytelling makes up for this by far. The extraordinary events of the lives of these people are told chapter by chapter, as if the reader is eavesdropping on family elders telling the younger generation how life unfolded in those days. I especially liked how the stories are interwoven with the political state of things at the time.

Peter Chiarella created a great gift with this raw tale of his family. I admire his reconstruction of his family’s stories, from stories passed to him. This is my third reading of this book. My family is also from this region and this book is useful for me in visualizing the desperate lives of the contadino, especially the women, and the anguish of losing sons in the war. I think there are many migration stories such as this and I applaud Mr Chiarella for capturing his and immortalizing his people whose stories would othwise be lost.

This book brings to life the real reasons the poor from Southern Italy and the poor from other European nations emigrated to the new world. Opportunity beckoned elsewhere and not in Calabria. Myself being the product of Calabrian immigrants this story rings a bell with me.

If your family has roots in Calabria, Italy I highly recommend this work. Also, a great thing for young adults to read.

There are so many of us Calabresi Americana. My grandfather was from Cetraro Cosenza and my grandmother’s family from Catanzaro. This books has inspired me to write their stories. I just loved the epilogue and have chills reading the Calabrian Tales. Grazie!

a fun review of the peasants of Calabria but touching as they cope with a bitter world a story fo all immigants to read especially from Hazleton Penna where they want o lock them out of housing