Diana Giovinazzo, The Story of Three Sisters from 1940s Naples

[00:00:03]And now it's Deborah Kobylt Live and the Little Italy podcast.

[00:00:10]>> Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today on Deborah Kobylt Live and our Little Italy podcast. And please welcome Diana Giovinazzo.

[00:00:21]And we're talking to her about her third novel Daughters of Naples, which is an historical fiction about three sisters.

[00:00:30]Back in the 1940s, set in the 1940s.

[00:00:34]Talks a lot about sisterhood, romance, shifting loyalties, the Italian resistance. It's got a lot of intrigue.

[00:00:39]I loved it. Also, Diana is a co-creator of the podcast Wine, Women and Words, weekly literary podcast featuring interviews with authors over a glass of wine. And honestly, I don't have my wine with me. I do have a cup of coffee, so I hope that that's that's going to be good enough for this interview. So, Diana, thanks a lot for joining us.

[00:00:58]>> Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:01]>> Yeah, let's talk about Daughters of Naples. What's what's the idea behind this? Because historical fiction is so interesting to me, right? It's fiction, but it's based in a lot of, you know, historical events and facts, but yet you have the liberty of, you know, making up these characters and weaving them into historical events. So, let's talk about Daughters of Naples, if you will.

[00:01:23]>> Yes, so as you mentioned, it was it's three sisters caught up in the events of World War II Naples. And my primary focus of the book, what really got me interested in the story was the Four Days of Naples. Which was something I never heard about here in the United States, but it was this large event where the people of Naples it was a grassroots event, they rose up and they pushed the Nazis out of Naples.

[00:01:48]And I was so impressed by their tenacity, their courage their ability to be able to fight power the way they did.

[00:01:58]that I wanted to set a story there and I love sisters. I love this sisterhood.

[00:02:04]Yes, your sister can either be your first best friend or your first enemy.

[00:02:09]And exploring that relationship was something that I really love to do. I have a sister myself and there are things that she and I will say to each other that we don't say in public. And things that she can get away with saying to me or things I can get away with saying to her that we would never be able to get away with saying to anybody else. So it's something that I really wanted to explore that dynamic with these three sisters.

[00:02:35]>> Let's talk about those four days though that you just mentioned to me. A lot of people don't know that. What is that?

[00:02:41]>> So basically it's like I said it's very it was very grassroots where the people had enough. The Nazis were truly doing horrific things to the people.

[00:02:53]They were kidnapping the men. They were they cut the power. They cut they cut the water.

[00:02:58]They they were starving and the people had enough and they were going in even children were going into the armories and taking the weapons. They were pushing my if you go online you can look at photos where the people and it's a little sad because you have these young German soldiers but you have the people like crowding around them.

[00:03:20]Like we're going going after them and it was unorganized. It was chaotic. And they found ways to go ahead and systematically attack them and push them out of the city. So there was fighting all over the different neighborhoods of Naples. That was going on all simultaneously. So there was nothing they could do to fight that. The Germans at least.

[00:03:41]>> You know historically women were such a big part of that in pushing them back, right?

[00:03:46]>> Yes. Yes, women have a Women get the job done basically when it comes down to it. never piss off a mother. You would get the job done.

[00:03:55]>> Yeah, especially Italian women.

[00:03:57]>> Yes. Yes.

[00:03:58]>> There's no doubt about it. Talk to me about these three sisters, would you please? And what went into, you know, their personalities, what went into to creating these people?

[00:04:06]>> Uh so, Alida is she is the eldest sister and she is your quintessential eldest daughter. She was the one in charge of taking care of them. And she's a bit of a control freak. And she wants to be able to control everything and to be able to the idea of letting them go, the idea of letting them make their own mistakes is foreign to them.

[00:04:28]And she's the one who has a bit of a love affair or love triangle, where she has a husband who is who was pushed into the war, who was, you know, they had like they they had the draft in Italy, so he had to go off to war. And then she has this past love that all of a sudden shows up in the middle of everything while he's gone. So, she's got a lot of conflict going on with her. And I I loved exploring all those elements with her.

[00:04:55]And then we have Martella, who I honestly just want to give her a hug.

[00:05:00]She goes through so much, where she is a she's a midwife, she's doing what she can to take care of the women of Naples, but at the same time she has an abusive boyfriend. She has somebody who is just not good for her, who in the book really represents Mussolini's ideas.

[00:05:20]Uh intrusions into family.

[00:05:23]And so, she has to learn to be able to overcome that and gain her own confidence and become her own person.

[00:05:29]And then finally, we have Bianca, the youngest, the spitfire of the three, the one who I am surprised is not get killed by the end of the book. Uh that's not a spoiler. She's She's a lot.

[00:05:41]>> Yeah, you'd have to understand her personality. I loved her. I thought she was, you know, I I never knew what she was going to do next. You know, she was the most unpredictable to me of the three.

[00:05:51]Um explain to me like how did you get the idea behind them? Are these people that you know in your life and you you they became you know these three women?

[00:06:01]>> Um I think of the three it wasn't necessarily people that I knew for certain. I think of the three Bianca's the most like my my own sister where she has a tendency to uh she will say she'll she she'll say things uh out loud. She'll be a bit of a spitfire. Uh so she's she there's a lot of her in Bianca. Um I think there's a good chunk of me in Lita.

[00:06:30]I think with having my husband is a veteran. So being so having that worry that home front element while your husband's off in war some in another country where you could only at the time it was early 2000s and so we didn't have as much technology so we were Facebook communicating with each other. And sending emails back and forth. So there was some of that element of me that went into Lita and I think Marchella as a whole was just accumulation of the stories of women that I hear. Um even some of my own ability to gain confidence went into her. I think she's an every woman kind of situation.

[00:07:18]>> Yeah.

[00:07:19]Explain to me the research that goes into something like this. It was detailed. It was obviously accurate. Um talk to me about that. How do you go about doing what you did?

[00:07:29]>> Uh gosh. Well, I started my research the way I like to approach historical fiction is I'll start research with with books initially to see how much of a story is in there that I can really work with. Uh Naples 44 by Norman Lewis.

[00:07:45]That was a big influence on the book. He was um part of the British uh counterintelligence. So, he went into Naples and he was there during and after everything. And so, he wrote the story, his account of what happened. There's also a documentary that you can watch that goes into what was happening. So, like the stories of like their father who was a Roman who like to give eulogies.

[00:08:14]Who said he was a Roman. That was a thing. That was a thing that they did in Naples at the time.

[00:08:19]Uh so, there was a lot of that. That was that was my initial um inspiration. But, like reading about Ada Negri, she was a real person. She was a real person in the journey.

[00:08:29]And her story was so inspiring and her work, you could still read her biography. She was so inspiring and so um her writing is so so beautiful that it was I I was really touched by her writing and I really wanted to have something similar to about like the real women that went through this. And so, I started off with that and then I went and wrote some the outline and the first draft and then I go back and do a little bit more research cuz questions pop up and I go back and forth like that for about maybe three to four drafts before I set the research down and just write.

[00:09:07]>> Do you go back Did you go back to the region to do any of your research and talk talk to me about that?

[00:09:13]>> That was um that was so inspiring to go back. And so, going through it with a different lens because as a a tourist cuz when you go as a tourist, you just want to explore the city and everything. And so, I was looking for what the historical aspects of it. Like the fact that Naples has been around since the Greeks.

[00:09:36]And going into the underground and the history of the underground, there's you can go on tours of the underground that locals will give you of what they went what through. So, I got to see the caverns that they went into, the the like electricity that they would put up for themselves. The Neapolitan ingenuity as it were.

[00:09:58]Um the latrines, their their junk that's still there like we would consider artifacts now, but they're the stuff from like World War II and things of children that were hunkered down during all these bombings cuz Naples was just bombarded by bombs during the war.

[00:10:15]And so, there was a lot of being able to see that like first hand and taking a little stories to put in.

[00:10:23]Um I think it it changes my view of travel when I go and see these places.

[00:10:28]>> Is there a particular place uh museum that you visited when you were there in Naples that really spoke to you where you learned so much about what happened then?

[00:10:38]>> Um not a particular museum. I think the underground really was what it really spoke to me. That's what spoke to me the most was just being in the underground to know that there were people that were in there that were afraid for their lives and afraid to not know what they were going to emerge to if they could emerge to anything. That being in there was just terrifying and it's it's so vast. Being in one of those caverns like we have caverns here in the United States. You can just think about within those caverns and just hearing the bombs and and trying envisioning that while I was there is scary and overwhelming and knowing that our tour guide was like, "Yeah, my grandparents they were they were rushing this was the way they would come when they had to escape the bombs."

[00:11:26]It it kind of puts it into perspective for you.

[00:11:30]>> That was my next question. Where's your family from? So then you obviously had some uh historical perspective of your own from your own family having come from there. Talk to me about that.

[00:11:40]>> Well, my family is from uh Naples and Calabria.

[00:11:44]So I'm not my family's not Neapolitan at all.

[00:11:48]But they they came to the United States in before World War I.

[00:11:53]>> Mhm.

[00:11:53]>> So it was so it was a different perspective I think for me considering that there are so many other Italians that came to the United States post World War II.

[00:12:03]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:04]>> And knowing that I know one of I have an uncle who's northern Italian who married into my family who who went through World War II. And so like I know one of the stories my aunt's my aunt told me was that he had gotten trampled as a child.

[00:12:21]As he as they were trying to get into the into shelter into one of the aqueducts up north.

[00:12:28]>> Yeah.

[00:12:29]>> And so having just stories like that just and I think as Italian-Americans we need to recognize those stories too and that history as well.

[00:12:38]>> You know, even if it isn't our immediate family and by that I mean our parents or grandparents, there's always someone that we're related to a distant uncle or something like that who had been through something who passed down a story to somebody else that I find particularly interesting because we're really all related in that way, don't you think?

[00:12:56]>> Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And this is it's a shared history and it's a shared remembrance that we need to have and our our heroes from World War II they're they're starting to die off and we need to be able to preserve this history.

[00:13:10]This is one of the few historical events like some of the earliest historical events where we could really truly like capture their their voices in the events.

[00:13:21]>> As an Italian woman talk to me about some of your fondest memories of growing up Italian.

[00:13:27]>> Oh, gosh. Um I would say Christmas was always It's still my favorite holiday and it was always my favorite holiday where you just the whole family would get together and you'd have just this long table of cousins and relatives and food and community.

[00:13:48]And I think that in and of itself is like when I think about it, that's the first thing that comes to mind is just the Christmas with like the huge family.

[00:13:56]>> Do you still have that? Because I know I had that growing up, but everybody sort of splintered and went their way, you know, I'm the the lone person who ended up in California. Most of them are all back there. Some of them are in Italy and I think, gosh, what happened to that big table where everybody would come around? You try to recreate it, but that's not so easy, you know. So, that's my question to you. Do you still have that?

[00:14:16]>> Um in a way. I think in a way. I think, you know, you try to recreate it where you have the family back east. Most of my family's back east. I'm out here. My father's out here.

[00:14:26]Um I have a brother out here. Um my sister >> Yeah, and so we have There's a small bit of us. My sister's uh her husband's in the Air Force, so they bounce around.

[00:14:36]And so, whenever we can, we we get together with them.

[00:14:40]But, I think creating, even though it can be difficult, I think creating creating that is important. I still try to host Sunday dinners at my home where not everybody Not everybody's time Not everybody is biologically family. It's a found family. And you just pull up more tables. I think once we invited My husband invited so many people that I didn't realize we didn't have enough chairs, so we were pulling out camping chairs at the table so that we could all everybody could be all at one table enjoying the meal and being together.

[00:15:14]And it's about that. It's about creating community and I think that's one of the biggest strengths within the Italian-American community is creating community, whether we are Italian or not. It's about coming together and sitting down at the table together.

[00:15:28]>> Absolutely. Talk to me a little bit about your podcast that you're create you've created, which of course is over a glass of wine, which is magnificent.

[00:15:36]Tell me about it.

[00:15:37]>> Yes, Wine Mine and Words was started by myself and my best friend Michelle.

[00:15:41]Right now we're on a summer hiatus with the book launch and just summer activities.

[00:15:47]But yeah, we get together. We authors of the books that we we adore and we just it's as simple as that. We just grab a glass of wine or whatever somebody's drinking preferences.

[00:16:01]Like we like to say we're equal opportunity alcoholics even if you don't want >> That's very funny. I love that. I love that.

[00:16:08]>> Even if you don't want to drink you don't have to and we'll just talk and we treat it like a big slumber party. We'll just talk about books and the things that we enjoy.

[00:16:19]>> Will you be speaking perhaps over in Naples or anywhere?

[00:16:23]Where will you be taking your book? Cuz it's really a terrific read. I really got lost in these three women.

[00:16:30]And got really lost in their story and also the way you describe what was happening in Naples. It's an important piece of history people need to know about. That is sort of vanishing a little bit. So that's important. So where will this be taking you?

[00:16:46]>> Well right now in the immediate future I'll be here in California. I have some book events coming up. August 8th I'll be at Levine Winery in Vernon, California.

[00:16:56]And then I'll be in Roman's bookstore August 25th.

[00:17:02]And so I'll be popping around a lot locally right now and but I'm working on some other future events.

[00:17:09]>> Actually wonderful. Anything you'd like to tell our audience that you want to make sure that they know about either you or the book or what took you here, if you could share.

[00:17:17]>> Um, I think uh most importantly with the story, it's it's an important it's an important story for everybody to know.

[00:17:25]And that really at the end of the day it's about hope. It's about sisterhood and it's about hope cuz after everything that goes on within the book, there's hope. The people of Naples, they had hope at the end. And I I want the reader to walk away feeling like there's hope for the future from the book.

[00:17:45]>> Yeah. And the resilience of the people in that region to this day, you know, there's there's still plenty of scars there in Naples over what happened at that time.

[00:17:58]And when you visit there, you can see that and even the people will talk about it. And there's a real connection between then and now and I think you did a marvelous job in the book presenting all that.

[00:18:11]>> Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:18:13]>> Diana, thank you. So please everybody pick up Daughters of Naples, Diana Giovinazzo, um, your third novel. And also please tune in to Wine, Women, and Words. First of all, it's a great name to your podcast. I love it. And um, you know, just see what kind of uh authors that they've got to share on their podcast and make sure to bring that wine. Don't bring coffee like I did.

[00:18:39]>> The coffee is acceptable. We will accept it.

[00:18:41]>> Yeah, and stay in touch with us. I want to see where this book takes you. I think it's really terrific and I think you're going to go real far with it. So thanks for joining us today.

[00:18:48]>> Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:18:50]>> Yeah, I really appreciate it. And everybody you can find my interview with Diana on Deborah Kobylt LIVE and also our Little Italy podcast and I appreciate it if you'd share with everyone our interview with Diana and also the book. Pick it up. Let me know what you think about it. Write out to Diana as well. Reach out on her social media channels and see and you know, let her know. That would be terrific. Um, again, Daughters of Naples. My name is Deborah Zaricobel, and much of my family is from that region just east of Naples.

[00:19:19]So, um, you know, it it it also had a personal attachment to me this book. So, I enjoyed reading it very much. Uh, appreciate you all being here.

[00:19:27]Appreciate you uh supporting the podcast, and uh we look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.

[00:19:33]>> Thank you. Bye.