Initial Version
"Ah, Chicago! Bang-bang!"
That was the reaction I received upon telling some university students in Padova, Italy where I came from.
"No, that's a stereotype-" I was about to say, but then I reconsidered. After all, hadn't my neighbor...er... "committed suicide" not 6 months earlier? We never quite figured out how exactly he killed himself while tied to a chair in his garage, but there you go. And hadn't Joey the Clown just been caught, hiding approximately a block and a half from the police station?
So I began to consider what a truly strange place my hometown is, and how I grew to think it was normal. In short, how this Western European mutt by blood became Italian by, as my friend's dad used to jokingly put it, osmosis.
My family first figured out how strange Elmwood Park was soon after moving there in 1992. I think our first clue was being fully ignored at a neighbor's party, solely based upon the fact that someone had found out we weren't Italian. We had also come from Oak Park - basically, the worst kind of outsiders. After a while, we gained some social standing but were always looked upon warily, especially by those who were involved in the Catholic church and school we attended. We slowly figured out ways to be more acceptable - learning the foods, knowing the slang. Knowing what NOT to talk about was just as important. No one ever discussed how so many who claimed to work in construction could afford such big houses. Eventually, my family learned to pretend, go through the motions, associate with the right people after mass on Sunday, and be generally accepted.
But as for me, throughout grade school I remained somewhat on the outskirts in my class of 25. Some of that can be attributed to me being a nerd, but it was mostly due to me struggling to figure out how to survive in this clearly singular environment. When we had a "native american basket wearing project" in 3rd grade, I mentioned I was part Algonquin and was made to sit on the floor, Indian style, and weave my basket. In 5th grade half of the class stopped talking to me because they found out I was German. So I learned to not talk about my nationalities.
I also figured out how to fake priorities. Appearance is perhaps the most important thing in Elmwood Park - so I pretended to like those terrible velour tracksuits and joined cheerleading for a year. I changed my mode of speech in certain situations, and some girls even started calling me 'Lo' to fit in better among the Francescas, Sabellas, and Gabriellas. I loathed that name, but went along with it.
By the age of 15 I was fully assimilated. Working at my church, I didn't flinch when the old Italian men who served as ushers called me "bella" in a terrible accent and kissed my hand. It was normal when the mother of one of my brother's friends only stopped acting cooly towards my mom when she found out I was her daughter. Flattery and social graces were second nature.
It's around then I learned how far the sphere of Elmwood Park extends. While at a high school friend's house on the southside of Chicago, I was able to talk two young men who preferred the moniker "Italian Stallions" out of beating up a mutual friend by citing my hometown - they lived a few miles away, in a town with close ties to ours. Later in the night, another friend would comment, "Man. I knew you could pull rank on someone, yeah. I didn't know you could pull residency."
Going away to college at the age of 18 was somewhat of a godsend for me in terms of being exposed to something other than this little world; among other things, I found out that 'wife-beaters' are those shirts I had always called 'dego tees'. But, like the family that calls it home, you can never quite escape Elmwood Park. I still sound more like Roseanne Rosannadanna when I get angry than I'd like to admit. My cooking and hostess mannerisms are invariably those of an Italian grandmother. I listen to way too much Sinatra and Dean Martin than someone my age rightly should. A coworker of mine in Urbana, who I hadn't known beforehand, grew up two blocks away from me.
And on that trip to Italy, I found out one of the people one the trip with me was dating my grade school best friend's cousin, who still lives in town. It's inescapable.
But even with all the oddities and just plain scary things about my town, I don't think it's necessarily bad. It's given me an adopted culture, not to mention some great stories. By the way, my dad still swears that that mobster who was caught a few blocks away - Joey the Clown Lombardo - is "good people". He's wanted for 17 murders, yes, but he's the uncle of a family friend!
That's what gave me pause when trying to refute that stereotype the Italian students mentioned. It's a strange town, but it's my town, and I feel this bizarre sense of pride about it. So on the other side of the world, sitting in a piazza on the outskirts of Venice, I had to consider my roots and say, "No... well, yes, ok, that is pretty true."
My answer was met with laughter and a kiss on the cheek. I didn't flinch.
That was the reaction I received upon telling some university students in Padova, Italy where I came from.
"No, that's a stereotype-" I was about to say, but then I reconsidered. After all, hadn't my neighbor...er... "committed suicide" not 6 months earlier? We never quite figured out how exactly he killed himself while tied to a chair in his garage, but there you go. And hadn't Joey the Clown just been caught, hiding approximately a block and a half from the police station?
So I began to consider what a truly strange place my hometown is, and how I grew to think it was normal. In short, how this Western European mutt by blood became Italian by, as my friend's dad used to jokingly put it, osmosis.
My family first figured out how strange Elmwood Park was soon after moving there in 1992. I think our first clue was being fully ignored at a neighbor's party, solely based upon the fact that someone had found out we weren't Italian. We had also come from Oak Park - basically, the worst kind of outsiders. After a while, we gained some social standing but were always looked upon warily, especially by those who were involved in the Catholic church and school we attended. We slowly figured out ways to be more acceptable - learning the foods, knowing the slang. Knowing what NOT to talk about was just as important. No one ever discussed how so many who claimed to work in construction could afford such big houses. Eventually, my family learned to pretend, go through the motions, associate with the right people after mass on Sunday, and be generally accepted.
But as for me, throughout grade school I remained somewhat on the outskirts in my class of 25. Some of that can be attributed to me being a nerd, but it was mostly due to me struggling to figure out how to survive in this clearly singular environment. When we had a "native american basket wearing project" in 3rd grade, I mentioned I was part Algonquin and was made to sit on the floor, Indian style, and weave my basket. In 5th grade half of the class stopped talking to me because they found out I was German. So I learned to not talk about my nationalities.
I also figured out how to fake priorities. Appearance is perhaps the most important thing in Elmwood Park - so I pretended to like those terrible velour tracksuits and joined cheerleading for a year. I changed my mode of speech in certain situations, and some girls even started calling me 'Lo' to fit in better among the Francescas, Sabellas, and Gabriellas. I loathed that name, but went along with it.
By the age of 15 I was fully assimilated. Working at my church, I didn't flinch when the old Italian men who served as ushers called me "bella" in a terrible accent and kissed my hand. It was normal when the mother of one of my brother's friends only stopped acting cooly towards my mom when she found out I was her daughter. Flattery and social graces were second nature.
It's around then I learned how far the sphere of Elmwood Park extends. While at a high school friend's house on the southside of Chicago, I was able to talk two young men who preferred the moniker "Italian Stallions" out of beating up a mutual friend by citing my hometown - they lived a few miles away, in a town with close ties to ours. Later in the night, another friend would comment, "Man. I knew you could pull rank on someone, yeah. I didn't know you could pull residency."
Going away to college at the age of 18 was somewhat of a godsend for me in terms of being exposed to something other than this little world; among other things, I found out that 'wife-beaters' are those shirts I had always called 'dego tees'. But, like the family that calls it home, you can never quite escape Elmwood Park. I still sound more like Roseanne Rosannadanna when I get angry than I'd like to admit. My cooking and hostess mannerisms are invariably those of an Italian grandmother. I listen to way too much Sinatra and Dean Martin than someone my age rightly should. A coworker of mine in Urbana, who I hadn't known beforehand, grew up two blocks away from me.
And on that trip to Italy, I found out one of the people one the trip with me was dating my grade school best friend's cousin, who still lives in town. It's inescapable.
But even with all the oddities and just plain scary things about my town, I don't think it's necessarily bad. It's given me an adopted culture, not to mention some great stories. By the way, my dad still swears that that mobster who was caught a few blocks away - Joey the Clown Lombardo - is "good people". He's wanted for 17 murders, yes, but he's the uncle of a family friend!
That's what gave me pause when trying to refute that stereotype the Italian students mentioned. It's a strange town, but it's my town, and I feel this bizarre sense of pride about it. So on the other side of the world, sitting in a piazza on the outskirts of Venice, I had to consider my roots and say, "No... well, yes, ok, that is pretty true."
My answer was met with laughter and a kiss on the cheek. I didn't flinch.
This assignment was one of the most difficult so far. The writing process was much more intensive, and the audio aspect definitely presented its own challenges. Initially I had no idea what to do, but eventually settled on talking about my hometown, which, as I elaborate upon, is pretty much a world unto itself. Then I had to decide how to structure a narrative around it, and decided upon telling somewhat of a story about how my town required me to assimilate into the Italian culture over the years. It ended up being pretty cursory due to the time limit, but in the narrative methods I used I tried to retain some sort of structure.
I had some difficultly keeping it to five minutes and still making it conversational. In my practice runs it came in somewhere around 4 minutes - definitely time to spare - but I ended up having to chop some stuff out in editing in order to get it under and still keep the tone. (It shows up as 5:03 on the mp3 for some reason, although it's under 5 minutes in garage band. Ah well.) I had to be very aware of my voice as well as of my surroundings... not to fidget and make any extraneous noise, to avoid filler words and sounds. The spoken word in this medium seems to be a practice of economy and self-restraint. You have to say a lot in a short amount of time, but you certainly don't want to babble. It also brings up issues of spoken language versus written language, and how we tend to write more formally than we speak.
I certainly had to consider the language I was using. I kind of balked at using the word 'dego,' because I have met so many people who find it offensive rather than as a term for a certain kind of Italian as I learned it, but I hope people are able to take it in context. I definitely changed some things in my reading of my piece to make it sound more spontaneous, but since I tried to write for the spoken word, I found myself playing around more with the cadence of my voice than anything else.
I knew from the beginning that I would probably use Sinatra as my background music, but I wasn't quite sure where to put it. I had a part in there originally talking about how you can tell a party in my town because you can hear the Sinatra from 3 blocks away, but ended up cutting that and was left without a place to put the music. So I admittedly kind of copped out and just put it as a fade out at the end. However, I did splice together the beginning and end of the song, as well as putting in a little riff where I actually talk about Sinatra. I wish I would have found a better way to segue into the beginning, but music didn't quite seem to fit there. The entire thing didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, but I've found out throughout this class that that happens alot when working with media.
1 comment:
I dig the audio project you posted.
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