Something Italian: An Evening with Annette Januzzi Wick

For what is food but the greatest expression of joy and hurt in the world, Annette Januzzi Wick writes in this blending of history, memoir, and cooking. In response, readers are taken to the cherished place where her Italian ancestors and immigrant grandparents meet her mother’s recipe binders written by hand—the family table. Join her as she follows four Italian families from Abruzzo and Calabria who cross the ocean to America. There they toil on railroads and in coal mines, start shoe stores and bakeries, and face disease and injuries, poverty and tragedy, Mafia temptations and labor recruiters, knowing that forging ahead is their only means to survive. In Lorain, Ohio, all these dynamisms finally collide.

What does food signify on their journeys? To the immigrant son who sends money back home, so his aging parents avoid becoming beggars? To the first-generation Italian American mother who holds tight to tradition in annotating all her recipes? To her daughter who one day lands in Italy to share a meal with newly discovered Italian cousins? When ancestors disappear, die, or declare themselves missing, food is the impetus for subsequent generations to gather at the family table and become something Italian again.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program
Free & open to the public. Registration required.

Copies of Something Italian will be available for sale & signing.

About Annette Januzzi Wick

Annette Januzzi Wick is the author of I’ll Be in the Car and I’ll Have Some of Yours. With a focus on Italy and food, writing and connections, cities and memory, her work has appeared in Writers Digest, Creative Nonfiction, Edible Ohio Valley, Soapbox Media, Cincinnati Neighborhood Guidebook, Ovunque Siamo, Italian Americana, and numerous other publications. Born, raised and educated in northern Ohio, she’s made Cincinnati her home, though often yearns for Italy or Oregon (and yes, Cleveland). If you’re awake early enough, you might spot her out for morning walks in Over-the-Rhine. Something Italian is her latest memoir.