Bitter Chicory, To Sweet Espresso -- From WWII Naples to The USA

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Carmine Vittoria, retired professor at Northeastern University in Boston, born in Avella in 1940 and emigrated to the United States at the age of 11, retraces the stages of his childhood in his native land during the bitter times of the Second World War. The merit of this autobiographical writing is the continuous bounce between the narrator's private facts and well-known national and international historical events of the 1940s. The narrator is constantly seeking clarification to focus on the blurred memories of a child who grew up without his father, a young corporal who died during a bombing in Libya. The little protagonist, known to everyone as Capitaniello, grows up with his mother in a community of shepherds and his paternal grandfather, who lives in the centre of the village and becomes almost a mythical figure. 
The memories of his childhood are related to well-known historical facts, and all this required the author years of study and research. And, as if the adult self felt a strong need to reconnect to its past, trying to put together the pieces of a complex puzzle. The book succeeds in linking private facts to the flow of the historical narrative of war, demonstrating how history, besides being decided by great strategists, is accomplished by everyone, even the most humble who live in the most remote areas of a country. These testimonies from below enrich the narrative by widening its perspective. The text is well balanced in order to untangle the tangle of a complex historical period, not only Italian but world-wide. The narrator does not save anyone but the last of the population who somehow reacted by trying not to succumb to the events. "We make do to survive", is the incipit of the book, the true essence of the whole narrative.

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Bitter Chicory To Sweet Espresso
Carmine Vittoria, retraces the stages of his childhood in his Naple during the bitter times of WWII

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