A Bit Of Myself-- Review

A  Bit of Myself is a memoir/journal/cookbook that will fill you with an interesting, significant journey. We travel with Fillomena from her early carefree days in Bagnoli, Italy, to NYC where her family must endure the tests of courage and perseverance in the burning Bronx. At a time when arson fires, rampant crime and poverty pushed residents out, Filomena’s family was moving into the borough.

Fillomena shares with us the unadulterated truths about migration to the United States through the eyes of a child in the South Bronx and a young woman in New York liberating herself from the stereotypes of expectations usually put upon young Italian girls.

 The story begins in the 1960s  A time in the US where widespread tension progressed regarding race relations, experimentation with drugs and the evils of abuse,  human sexuality and women’s rights and an ongoing debate of the traditional roles of authority.  Fillomena must differentiate her own interpretations of the American Dream.

Fillomena shares with us the painful memories and experiences she managed to survive as a youngster, crime, transgressions and horrors afflicted upon her family and her rise from drug infected projects in the South Bronx. Through education and perseverance, she peruses what she learns very early in life, the American dream is what you make it, and nothing is easy or free.

She is open, honest and brutally frank about the circumstances that navigate her life. Yet, never once does she play the victim. The word does not exist in her lexicon.

Sprinkled thorough the books are recipes that prove simplicity and good nutrition go hand in hand. Why eat out or eat junk food when it is just as easy to put together a good bowl of pasta fagioli?

I would like to learn more about the early days in the South Bronx, more about her father, her education, and her assimilation into not only American life but her complex days in the melting pot of NYC.

I would recommend this first memoir and expect to see more.

Marianna Randazzo,

Author of Given Way, A Sicilian Upbringing