Birthday Card for Tina Modotti

 

Pure your gentle name, pure your fragile life,
bees, shadows, fire, snow, silence and foam,
combined with steel and wire and
pollen to make up your firm
and delicate being.

--Pablo Neruda

Today is Tina Modotti's birthday.

She would have been 127, but during her short 46 years, Modotti lived a century's-worth.

"Marcantoniana" admires Modotti, not just for an unparalleled commitment to working people, but for the rich texture she wove into her existence, and a willingness to embrace not just what came her way, but the trouble she looked for and found.

By way of birthday card for the fabulous lady, we will sketch a resume of her brief, but full-fledged, engagement with the World.

Modotti was born in Udine, Italy. Her real, first name was Assunta. Poppa was a craftsman who followed the currents of work through the western factory world, so that she spent some years in Austria before taking off, as a teen, for San Francisco.

There she worked as a seamstress in factories while Momma fed her pasta and Poppa the rantings and songs of the anarchist-inspired International Workers of the World -- the Wobblies.

Modotti liked the theater and, at some point during her development into a first-class vixen, was tapped by a Hollywood talent scout to go south and settle in Los Angeles.

There she played the exotic and foreign siren in a number of A-list productions such as "The Tiger's Coat" and "I Can Explain."

Tina married and fell in with a bohemian crowd that counted among its numbers Edward Weston, a still-renowned photography pioneer at whose knee she learned the craft, while simultaneously having an affair with him.

She was, by any measure, a seductress with a healthy sexual appetite.

Her husband tempted Tina into visiting post-revolutionary Mexico. Weston followed. There she stayed and delved into that wonderful and beleaguered nation's cornucopia of colors, sounds and flavors, honing her craft into a portfolio much-admired even today.

Modotti mixed with muralist Diego River and his wife (not Frida, the first one), Siqueiros and other figures of the Mexican left until her commitment grew enough to join the communists' feeble efforts to overthrow an already corrupt regime.

When her first husband died Modotti became lover to a Cuban Marxist named Julio Mella, who was shot as he walked with her down a Mexico City street. She was accused as an accomplice in the murder.

Surviving the legal inquest, she nonetheless acquired the sobriquet, "The Bloody Tina Modotti."

Sooner than later, the revolution melded seamlessly with her own life. After somebody tried to kill the Mexican president, Modotti was tossed from the country and into a wanderer's existence served exclusively on behalf of the worker's cause.

Her art was dedicated to the same cause, but unlike socialist realism and other products of the era, Modotti never took up a cudgel. There is nothing bombastic or cloyingly heroic about her photographic subjects.

Rather than impose a communistic view onto the world, Modotti found natural instances, bits of workerist filigree that she highlighted with a Graphlex lens and whatever light was at her disposal.

The compositions are often exquisite.

Berlin, Austria, Paris...Modotti served as a spy in the service of the communist movement. Like many well-meaning progressives, she wasted her countless and life-threatening efforts on the schemes of wicked Joe Stalin.

Few knew what Stalin was until it was too late, that's what is said. Still, it was not necessary, this falling into the trap of losing God only to replace him with the leader of Russia's Communist Party, good or bad.

But we all make mistakes. The swoop and sweep of our lives can be ennobled by their smaller embellishments.

Modotti was dispatched to Spain along with her lover Ennea Sormenti, where she worked as a nurse for the international communist medical auxiliary, staying until the Spanish Republic's tragic demise, squiring beleaguered refugees across the icy Pyrenees mountains in the winter of 1939.


Tina floated the world over on a barge for a while, no country willing to take her in. Mexico finally relented. She died there in a cab a few years later, her life only partially rebuilt.

Elena Poniatowska, Mexican author of the definitive biography, "Tinisima," crafted a quiet expiration brought on by a life of high-drama and chain-smoking.

Others speculate her life on the political and romantic frontlines might have spurred someone to murder La Modotti.

Either way, the mystery befits a woman who led an uncommon existence, following her bliss, seeking a higher purpose, molding life itself into a work of art.

The Goodfather (A Novel): The Rising Fall of the Marvelous Marcantonio

Book Report: "Down These Mean Streets" by Piri Thomas

 

"Down These Mean Streets" gets you three books for the price of one.

The first book is true to its title: a young man's coming of age along the dangerous byways of Spanish Harlem.

Here we see the perils associated with traversing the concrete jungle, the need for toughness and concomitant death of tenderness in youth.

Author Piri Thomas details what life was like for Puerto Ricans moving into what had been an Italian neighborhood and the Italians' response to their displacement.

Thomas was born in the 1920s, so that the time covered here ranges from the '30s to, perhaps, the early '50s, rendering his once hip track of new-lit jargon and streetjabber something of a timepiece.

Thomas' novel came out in 1967 and one can imagine the liberal chic set of Mayor John Lindsay's New York jumping like cats to nip at his rough-edged peek beneath the shiny Big Apple's skin.

Although this kind of literature has become stock in the book trade (James Frey anyone?), Thomas' autobiographical recounting of life among the rough Puerto Rican boys on his street can still shock.

His detached description of when the bored kids willingly go up to the apartment of some transvestites for homosexual interaction, pot, and booze, is rather striking and unsettling.

The second "book" deals with young Piri's identity crisis. One which can be extended to all the Puerto Ricans of his time.

highwayscribery is ignorant of what they are thinking today, but in Thomas's time, there was much ado over skin color, the islanders running from evening black to lily white as they do.

Thomas' problem was that he was darker, while his brothers were white. As a Puerto Rican, he did not, at first, view himself as being in the same boat as the African-Americans with whom his people crowded Harlem.

But when the family makes an escape to suburban Long Island, Piri comes in for a bit of a shock, and slinks back to "El Barrio" with a severe chip on his shoulder and a deeper sense of shared experience with the American Negro.

This issue is aired-out in discussions with folks of different skin pigmentation, each of whom expresses a unique understanding of the related questions. For this reviewer, it went on a little too long, and seemed a little self-indulgent.

Especially for a young man confronted with the serious matter of economic survival in a cruel and unforgiving city.

Nonetheless, Thomas' youthful obsession generates an anger which serves as bridge to the third book, which is a jail tale.

Identity issues unresolved, his skin color serving him poorly in prejudiced city, the young man goes on a crime spree, again remarkable for its matter-of-fact execution, which lands him in the state penitentiary.

Perhaps it was novel at the time, but today his efforts to maintain a tough guy's rep -- primarily to avoid being sodomized by bigger, harder criminals (no pun intended) -- while rehabilitating himself with a little Nation of Islam cant and some in-house masonry training are now familiar fodder.

Thomas' attempt to forge a street-seasoned prose is uneven. He never really finds a groove and seems almost relieved to let more articulate characters do some of the heavy lifting where the expression of complex ideas is involved.

Nonetheless, he succeeds in engaging the reader, pulling of that time-tested trick of getting people to root for a guy doing bad things, by peeling back the hard layers and revealing a human and worthy heart.

"The Goodfather (A Novel):The Rising Fall of the Marvelous Marcantonio," can be found here:

Amazon.com: The Goodfather: The Rising Fall of the Marvelous Marcantonio: 9798889921745: Siciliano, Step Stephen: Books

Two Italian American Lions Reborn with Renato Cantore’s “Harlem, Italia”

Vito Marcantonio and Leonard Covello Reconsidered in Italian-Language Publication

Italian Harlem, and

its two main

prominenti, Leonard

Covello and Vito

Marcantonio, have

been brought to

literary life in

“Harlem, Italia” by

Renato Cantore. 

Cantore, deputy director of Rai-Tgr, Italy's television network for regional news, has published numerous books and articles on the history of Italian emigration to the United States. “Harlem, Italia,” published by Rubbetino, is an Italian-language effort intended to educate people on immigration and its history. 

“Italians are getting to know the immigration problem,” said Cantore in a Feb. 10 interview. “I think knowing the history of when we were immigrants can be very useful for all of us.”

Leonard Covello was an educator in East Harlem, a veritable pillar of the community, who worked to gain respect for his people and their language. Marcantonio was a student of his who went on to become a congressman and important collaborator to Covello where the construction of Benjamin Franklin High School - and other community-based efforts - were at stake. 

It has been a while since there was a big book written in this academic space. Allen Schaffer’s “Vito Marcantonio: Radical in Congress,” was published in 1966. Salvatore LaGumina’s “Vito Marcantonio: The People’s Politician,” came out in 1969. Gerald Meyer’s “Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician” was published in 1989. 

Covello’s own “The Heart is a Teacher,” was released in 1958. “Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education as if Citizenship Mattered (Michael Johanek and John Puckett) is the most recent effort with a 2006 publishing date. 

So, Cantore’s fresh scholarship is both needed and welcome. 

In “Harlem, Italia,” he revisits the largest Little Italy in the U.S. - East Harlem - during the first half of the 20th century, with a specific focus on Covello and Marcantonio. The former was a sociologist, educator and community activist, the latter, a famous radical congressman of the American Labor Party. 

Said Cantore: “Despite having the possibility, they never left their troubled neighborhood behind for fancier parts of New York City. They lived all their lives in East Harlem. This is where their friendship started, and it is here where they started a project that did not merely revolve around themselves, but around the community in general. 

Renato Cantore

“Both became leaders in their respective fields, but never ceased to work for the East Harlem community’s emancipation.

Italian Americans, he noted, were an "unwelcome" people but grew, by the 1930s, into the largest ethnic community in East Harlem; figuring prominently in the political and social life of the neighborhood. 

“My book,” said Cantore, “recounts that neighborhood life through significant events: the construction of the Madonna del Carmine Church on 115th Street; the activities of Harlem House; Covello's struggle to have the Italian language taught in New York's schools; LaGuardia and Marcantonio shaking up Gotham politics; the idea of a multi-ethnic society based on mutual respect and collaboration; the pedagogical project behind the Benjamin Franklin High School - the first high school in East Harlem - where Covello reigned as principal for 22 years; the realization of a massive, social housing program for thousands; civil rights campaigns; Marcantonio's electoral campaigns, and his radical ideas in opposition to consolidated powers.”

Cantore first encountered Marcantonio and Covello while studying Italian emigration. He had the good fortune of meeting with the preeminent Marcantonio scholar of the day, Gerald Meyer who argued that the importance of these two “giants” should be better known in their country of origin. 

“Meyer shared books, documents, memories and encouraged me to continue my research,” explained Cantore. Gerald Meyer died in November 2021. 

Cantore also studied LaGumina, Schaffer, Christopher Bell (“East Harlem Remembered” etc.), Robert Orsi (“The Madonna of 115th Street” etc.), and Italian cultural scholar Simone Cinotto (“The Italian American Table: Food, Family and Community in New York City” etc.) in constructing his story. 

“I read the newspapers of the time, consulted documents, met a lot of seniors from East Harlem, and also followed the activities of the Vito Marcantonio Forum and the blog “Marcantoniana,” said Cantore.  

The book, he stated, is aimed primarily at young people; school and university students, but also adults; especially those involved in education and politics. “They will be interested in knowing the story of Leo and Marc, and their long walk towards the integration of the Italian community of Harlem,” he predicted.

Cantore is maintaining a brisk schedule of public appearances with key events in Picerno, where Marcantonio has his roots, in Avigliano, so well-depicted in Covello’s aforementioned memoir, and other municipalities in the province of Basilicata, where the story is truly rooted. 

“We are preparing a vast program of presentations in other Italian regions, literary fairs and colleges,” explained Cantore.

“In the end,” Cantore said, “I hope that this book will render a tribute of gratitude to Covello and Marcantonio, in Italy, for what they have done. Their example is relevant, useful, and applicable to the times in which we live. We need a renewed commitment to the poor, the needy, the immigrants who remain on the margins of the community, just as it happened for the Italian-Americans of East Harlem.”

 The Goodfather: A Novel by Stephen Siciliano