How Not to Be an Italian Mother
When I was 15, my family moved from the center of Rome to the outskirts of Los Angeles, in Van Nuys, to work in show business. I lived in the United States for 16 years after that. At 33 I was back in Rome and the mother of a newborn baby. I had a contract to write a novel that was set in Los Angeles and inspired by my unusual experience as an immigrant and the places and things that happened to me when I’d first moved to the U.S. I knew that sooner or later I would have to go back to that city and reacquaint myself with its furious nature, magical canyons, and the complicated high school that had inspired the book. But there was a and hung out with the ghosts of , , and instead.
