Flannery O'Conner Award
for Short Fiction
My Inspiration...
Salvatore La Puma
"In his award-winning “The Boys of Bensonhurst,” Salvatore La Puma masterfully wove the lives of the hood’s sons and daughters, 1939-1943, just before I came on the scene in 1944. I partially came of age in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood whose inhabitants, not far from immigrant origins, were coming around to their new American identity. They were mainly Jewish and Italian, as evidenced by the accents, food, customs and religious practices that surrounded me. “Jewish and Italian” labels are too broad. There were finer divisions: Among the Jews, Litvak, Galitzianer, and Mizrahim, from Orthodox to Reformed. Italians self-identified as Sciacchitano, Palermitano, Napoletano, et al., distinctions that were often fiercely defended.
In La Puma’s story lines, and through my youth, relationships were heavily influenced by Church, Synagogue, European origins, the mob, family, and cohorts within and between each side of the religious divide. (La Puma was wise to paint the schism as simply Jewish vis-aĚ-vis Sicilian, though he described “commerce” across the divide.) La Puma’s stories are a backdrop to my own stories of halting maturation, from a Bensonhurst Boy to a (hopeful) man well beyond the neighborhood. Like La Puma’s boys, I did not always follow lessons learned the hard way. Yet Bensonhurst was my launch pad and is still my ground control, offering perspectives throughout my life’s trajectory."
"I was born(Bensonhurst Nursing Home on Bay Parkway—across the street from the Jewish Community House, the JCH—how bona fide can you get?) Italians and Jews were much closer to their European origins, and the events in Europe put some “sizzle” into relationships. Italian mothers wanted their boys to fight Nazi’s, if only to show they were not Mussolini’s American darlings. Of course, they wanted the boys to come back home. I know of at least one case of Mussolini’s henchmen trying to recruit first and second generation Italian-American youth to restore the glory of the Roman Empire.
The West End subway and elevated line was a big part of The Boys of Bensonhurst, and most boys didn’t have cars, nor did I. I vividly recall the Italian Social Clubs (the one from Licodea, Sicily, in the shadow of Mout Etna, is featured in Potpourri). Middle America, over-influenced by Hollywood themes, might tend to think that such social club members were mafiosi—Guys under their fedoras” is a La Puma chapter dealing with social clubs. However, the vast majority of club members was involved in aiding the immigrant community, or those back home facing poverty and natural disasters." - Joe Polacco