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Neighborhood Girl and Pittsburgh original Little Italy with Linda Schifino
Manage episode 434033730 series 3592911
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PITTSBURGH ITALIANS: Who remembers Larimer Avenue's Little Italy? What memories do you have about Larimer Avenue? This week on The Italian Radio Hour, I caught up with Linda Schifino, author of her newly published book "NEIGHBORHOOD GIRL".On a recent drive thru Larimer Avenue, the neighborhood that was home to Linda and her family, she came to realize that what she grew up with, now is all gone. Wanting to find a way to preserve her family stories for her little granddaughter Alex, what was initially a collection of essays became, over the course of five years, a book that explores timeless human themes of family, place, and loss of community. An Italian American enclave of Pittsburgh in the 1950s, Larimer's Avenue consisted of small-time criminals on street corners, Saints’ Day festivals with brass bands and homemade sausage sandwiches, and the Italian Brotherhood Beneficial Association, where her great-grandfather drank too much and sang too loud. Larimer Avenue was a working poor community rooted in the struggles of immigrants who lived in tiny apartments and carried lunch pails to work. Folks in the neighborhood stayed for generations. They seemed oblivious to the post-war sprawl to the suburbs, or maybe it was scarcity that kept them there. Scarcity of transportation since almost no one owned a car, or scarcity of money to make a move affordable.Scarcity of options. Yet, as a child, Schifino didn’t see anything but abundance emanating from these people, these spaces.Remembering the legacy of Larimer ensures that we never forget the lives of our immigrant ancestors from the Old World and the communities they built to sustain themselves in the New World. VIDEO INTERVIEW: https://youtu.be/jewCkXxDrQENeighborhood Girl is available on Sunbury Press:https://www.sunburypress.com/products/neighborhood-girl...and on Amazon:https://a.co/d/0hW5tHk
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