The Italy of the John M. Glionna's ancestors cannot be found in the museums of Florence, among treasures shaped by the exquisite touch of da Vinci and Michelangelo, but a world away, on the peninsula's infamous boot. Their hands gnarled from planting pomodori, aglio and melanzana, his forefathers were peasant-farmers from the agrarian south - that other Italy - dirt-poor and uneducated, a land with a history of witch's spells and pagan gods. For them, working the earth wasn't art, it was a fundamental duty. In 2023, Glionna experienced a cultural awakening: he travelled to his grandfather's home village to explore the landscape where his roots run centuries-deep. As he meets distant relatives, he asks questions echoed by all Americans exploring their ancestral homeland: "Who are these people?" "Who am I?" As a veteran Los Angeles Times journalist in search of his long-repressed Italianit , he travels far off the tourist map, where he examines his grandfather's motives for emigrating. Beyond poverty and disease, he learns, southerners of his era faced a historic discrimination from their own countrymen that also drove them abroad. The book examines his father's upbringing as a child of immigrants and focuses on a realization that the author, like his father and grandfather, is proudly, deeply Italian, southern Italian.
