Speaker 1: Hey Bessies, Hello Sunshine. Today we're diving into a tale
Speaker 1: that's as gripping as the best true crime mysteries. Imagine
Speaker 1: uncovering family secrets so intriguing they lead you on a
Speaker 1: journey all the way to Italy to figure them out.
Speaker 1: We're thrilled to chat with best selling author, podcaster and
Speaker 1: journalist Joe Piazza, who did just that to unravel her
Speaker 1: grandmother's mysterious death. Stay tuned for an unforgettable conversation. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: July sixteenth.
Speaker 2: I'm Danielle Robe, I'm Simone Boys, and this is the
Speaker 2: right side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we
Speaker 2: come together to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten
Speaker 2: your day.
Speaker 1: Stories. Stories. We have such an emphasis on stories, and
Speaker 1: you know, we all have these family stories that we
Speaker 1: hear about growing up, whether they're big or small folklore,
Speaker 1: like I think we hear whispers from our relatives. Did
Speaker 1: you have that?
Speaker 3: Of course?
Speaker 2: I think every family does. You know, every family has
Speaker 2: an interesting story and if you dig deep enough you'll
Speaker 2: find it.
Speaker 1: Well. Our guest today took one of those lures and
Speaker 1: actually went to Italy. She went to Sicily to explore it.
Speaker 1: And through this process of exploration brings to life an
Speaker 1: untold story which we are going to dive deep into.
Speaker 1: But it really got me thinking about our own family stories.
Speaker 1: And someone I know, your grandmother was such a force.
Speaker 2: Oh, she was such a legend. She was a black
Speaker 2: woman during the Civil rights era, and she left her
Speaker 2: mark on her community in a big way. Her name
Speaker 2: was Bonnie John's and this is my mom, Sheila's mother.
Speaker 2: And when Bonnie was little, she was so poor, she
Speaker 2: only had one pair of shoes to wear to school,
Speaker 2: and all the kids would make fun of her. I
Speaker 2: grew up hearing this story over and over again, and
Speaker 2: the moral of the story was that her education was
Speaker 2: her way out of that poverty. It was her way
Speaker 2: to escape that and so she just invested all in
Speaker 2: in her education. And later in life, she actually ran
Speaker 2: for public office won a seat on the school board
Speaker 2: in Maryland during this seven She was the only black
Speaker 2: school board member during integration, and she fought tirelessly for
Speaker 2: black students to have access to the same quality of
Speaker 2: education as their white peers. And to this day, there
Speaker 2: is a building named after my grandmother, Bonnie John's in
Speaker 2: my family's community in Maryland. That's so cool. I'd need
Speaker 2: a photo of you in front of that building.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a great idea. I got to do that.
Speaker 1: I just also want to say that I think that
Speaker 1: those values that your grandmother held like come through you
Speaker 1: so vibrantly. I see it all the time. My grandmother
Speaker 1: Roady is eighty eight years old. She lives in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and in the winters, she lives in Florida. Now. Her
Speaker 1: family was from Amsterdam, and she grew up during Hitler's Germany,
Speaker 1: and so her family heard rumblings of all of this,
Speaker 1: but they thought, oh, it could never come all the
Speaker 1: way to Holland, it could never make it to Amsterdam.
Speaker 1: And it did. She was taken from her home in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night at five years old. She
Speaker 1: went on a train to a camp called Vesterborg. My
Speaker 1: great grandfather was a tailor, and a guy who worked
Speaker 1: across the street from him, like their whole lives, had
Speaker 1: to join the Nazi Party. He was forced to. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to, and he saw one of the kid's
Speaker 1: names on a list and said, my great aunt Stella
Speaker 1: was going to go to death camp. And so he
Speaker 1: tipped my great grandfather off and they paid off the
Speaker 1: Nazis to save her life. They stayed at that camp, Investorborg,
Speaker 1: which was a work camp, not a death camp. And
Speaker 1: it changed the legacy of my family drastically. And so
Speaker 1: my grandmother Rody is super active in the Holocaust Museum
Speaker 1: and she speaks all over the country. It's really pretty
Speaker 1: amazing to see her in that light, because I see
Speaker 1: her as like my grandmother that I would go over
Speaker 1: to her house and see all of her like old
Speaker 1: trinkets and photos, and she would make every meal for
Speaker 1: every holiday. They actually made a VR film about her
Speaker 1: life last year. The ending scene is all of us
Speaker 1: in her living room like dining room table, and there's
Speaker 1: over twenty of us and it ends with the idea
Speaker 1: that Hitler tried to wipe all these people out, and
Speaker 1: look what she has built and the legacy that she
Speaker 1: has really built for our family. And so that story,
Speaker 1: similar to what you said, Simone, like just permeated my childhood.
Speaker 1: And I think when you grow up, regardless of what
Speaker 1: that story is, whether it's your own grandmother or somebody else,
Speaker 1: it really sort of dictates your values the direction of
Speaker 1: your life. And so I think today is going to
Speaker 1: be really powerful because there's this matriarchal figure in our guest,
Speaker 1: Joe's life who was life changing.
Speaker 2: Well in the same way that you revisited the sites
Speaker 2: that meant so much to your family, Danielle, our guest
Speaker 2: today retrace the footsteps of a larger than life matriarch
Speaker 2: in her family story to uncover the truth about her
Speaker 2: great great grandmother's mysterious death. So Joe Piazza is a
Speaker 2: best selling author, podcast host, and investigator of not just
Speaker 2: her family stories, but other women's stories as well. She's
Speaker 2: written multiple books, including Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, and
Speaker 2: she also hosted Under the Influence, which is this really
Speaker 2: fascinating podcast that dives into the business of social media
Speaker 2: mom influencers.
Speaker 1: She also had this article in l which is how
Speaker 1: I first found her writing, and it's all about how
Speaker 1: she gave herself her own engagement rank. So regardless of
Speaker 1: your marital status, please go check that out. And her
Speaker 1: latest project, The Sicilian Inheritance, is inspired by the story
Speaker 1: of Lorenza Marsala, her great great grandmother and Joe's dad
Speaker 1: became absolutely obsessed with piecing together what really happened in
Speaker 1: her mysterious death. So after he died, Joe came across
Speaker 1: an old email from him filled with information about Lorenza,
Speaker 1: and that's when she decided to dig into the mystery
Speaker 1: really on his behalf.
Speaker 2: And through this investigation, she's bringing a Jens Old story
Speaker 2: to life. And she's here with us on the show today.
Speaker 2: We are in for a wild ride. Welcome to the
Speaker 2: bright Side.
Speaker 1: Joe.
Speaker 3: Hello, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: You have such a quintessential Italian name, so it's fun
Speaker 1: to say Piazza, especially for what we're about to talk
Speaker 1: about today.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, totally, totally, and I really love the
Speaker 3: enthusiasm that you've said it with. Just like Piazza. But
Speaker 3: I mean, like as as everyone knows, like Piazza just
Speaker 3: means like town square in Italy. So when you say
Speaker 3: Piazza there, they're like, yeah, I know, we're here. We're
Speaker 3: just standing here in front of the city Hall. Yeah.
Speaker 2: We are going to talk all about you and your work, Joe.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've centered women in the stories that you
Speaker 2: tell as an author. You recently published a book and
Speaker 2: podcast about an ancestor of yours, which we are going
Speaker 2: to get into. You've also reported on influencer culture in
Speaker 2: the show Under the Influence. You've also covered Laura Ingalls
Speaker 2: Wilder and the show Wilder. What makes something a Joe
Speaker 2: Piazza story.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's a question that my agents are
Speaker 3: constantly asking me. They're like, what's your lane? Girlfriend? And
Speaker 3: I mean, I actually love the way that you just
Speaker 3: framed it, because, to be honest, I've been a journalist
Speaker 3: for twenty three years now, I've been writing books for
Speaker 3: about thirteen years, and if there's one through line through
Speaker 3: it all, it's, you know, women's stories that haven't been
Speaker 3: told before, brave and badass women's stories that I think
Speaker 3: deserve to be told. And that doesn't always fit neatly
Speaker 3: into a genre. It's not just like mystery thriller or
Speaker 3: you know, spicy romance, although you know, I like to
Speaker 3: write about all those things too, within the context of
Speaker 3: badass women. But those are the stories that have always
Speaker 3: gotten me excited. For most of human history, we've seen
Speaker 3: men writing history, and so to be able to tell
Speaker 3: the stories of women really feels like such an honor.
Speaker 3: And I also I call myself a storyteller now more
Speaker 3: than I do a journalist or an author, even though
Speaker 3: I do both of those things. Because I think different
Speaker 3: stories want to be told in different genres, and my
Speaker 3: biggest goal is to meet the audience where they're at
Speaker 3: with a particular story. So I'm like, oh, okay, is
Speaker 3: this going to be great in a podcast? Awesome, Let's
Speaker 3: do this in audio. Is this going to be good
Speaker 3: for a short, fun sub stack? Okay? Great? That is
Speaker 3: just as valid as like a novel with a big
Speaker 3: publishing house to.
Speaker 1: Me, if I may add, I also think that you
Speaker 1: take a traditional narrative and you flip it on its head,
Speaker 1: because you've done that so many different times. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I found you originally was you wrote an
Speaker 1: article in l called why I bought myself an engagement ring?
Speaker 1: And that's taking this traditional idea and flipping it on
Speaker 1: its head, and you always have such a feminist perspective.
Speaker 3: I love that story and it's funny. I mean, I
Speaker 3: wrote that almost ten years ago, because I've been married
Speaker 3: almost ten years and I wrote it right before I
Speaker 3: got married, and I bought you fling. I know, I know, right,
Speaker 3: I bought that ring in a Tanzania, And I just
Speaker 3: love the idea of flipping that narrative, right, Like, why
Speaker 3: as women do we have to wait for men to
Speaker 3: buy us this thing, like we need that to move
Speaker 3: on to the next stage of our lives. That seemed
Speaker 3: ridiculous to me. And by the way, I'm not acting
Speaker 3: all high and mighty. It only seemed ridiculous after like
Speaker 3: years of bemoaning why I was the last one of
Speaker 3: my single friends. Okay, so like I went through all
Speaker 3: of the crap, bought myself an engagement ring, and then
Speaker 3: essentially just conjured my fiance on a boat in the
Speaker 3: Galapagos three months later.
Speaker 2: I also see you as a bit of a cultural anthropologist,
Speaker 2: because it seems like there is no territory or era
Speaker 2: that goes untouched for you, Like you follow your curiosity.
Speaker 2: If there's an interesting, badass woman who is flipping the script,
Speaker 2: you're going to find her and you're going to cover her.
Speaker 2: What have you discovered about womanhood through each of these stories?
Speaker 3: You know that we are just so much stronger and
Speaker 3: braver than anyone ever gives women credit for, and that
Speaker 3: it has been women holding society together at the seams
Speaker 3: pretty much since the beginning of society. But it's always
Speaker 3: their stories that haven't been told. My favorite nonfiction book
Speaker 3: is a little book I wrote called If Nuns Ruled
Speaker 3: the World, and it's ten stories of bad ass feminist
Speaker 3: nuns who I think nuns have been turned into a
Speaker 3: caricature for so long, when really it was a way
Speaker 3: to escape the feminist tropes of getting married and being
Speaker 3: forced to be a wife and a mother. These women
Speaker 3: could continue getting their education. They were running colleges, they
Speaker 3: were running hospitals, they were running entire communities and taking
Speaker 3: care of the sick and running the economies of these
Speaker 3: small villages, especially when so many men were constantly leaving
Speaker 3: and going off to wars in Europe, right, no one
Speaker 3: ever recognized the nuns. In fact, when I talk to them,
Speaker 3: you know, they say, we've really we haven't just been
Speaker 3: written out of history. We've been mocked throughout history, because
Speaker 3: the easiest way to take away someone's power is to
Speaker 3: mock them. And so I think that's one of the
Speaker 3: best examples of a narrative that just has been buried
Speaker 3: in history, of powerful, strong women that the world doesn't
Speaker 3: want to think about.
Speaker 1: I love that you also said women that they don't
Speaker 1: want to think about, Yeah, because that really is the case.
Speaker 1: I cite this statistic all the time because I find
Speaker 1: it just wild. But zero point five percent of recorded
Speaker 1: history is made up of women's stories. And there are
Speaker 1: so many women's stories to share, they just haven't been told,
Speaker 1: haven't been shared, haven't been recorded.
Speaker 3: Or they have been but then they get lost, they
Speaker 3: get buried because not only is it not women writing
Speaker 3: down history so often recording history, but it hasn't been
Speaker 3: the women archiving history. And so when you think about
Speaker 3: the people responsible for maintaining records, it has typically been men,
Speaker 3: you know, male bureaucrats, male archivists keeping track of things,
Speaker 3: as opposed to women. So it's not just that we
Speaker 3: haven't been writing it, it's that we haven't been the
Speaker 3: keepers of history.
Speaker 1: Joe, we have to take another short break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be back in just a minute. Don't go anywhere, and
Speaker 1: we're back with Joe Piazza. So your book and your podcast,
Speaker 1: your newest one is The Sicilian Inheritance, and it looks
Speaker 1: at the suspicious death of one of your ancestors more
Speaker 1: than one hundred years ago. And we live in a
Speaker 1: true crime obsessed culture, but this is sort of like
Speaker 1: a true crime story in your own family. So for
Speaker 1: anyone who hasn't listened yet, can you set up the
Speaker 1: story for all of us. Who is Lorenza Marsala?
Speaker 3: Yes, also, isn't that name so good? If my husband
Speaker 3: weren't already fixed, I would have another baby and name
Speaker 3: her Lorenza Marsala. Lorenza Marsala is my great great grandmother
Speaker 3: on my dad's side from Sicily. And you know, for
Speaker 3: my whole life, I've been hearing this story about how
Speaker 3: she was the family matriarch and how her husband Antonino
Speaker 3: came here to America. All of her sons came here,
Speaker 3: they came to make their fortune, left her behind in Sicily,
Speaker 3: and she was murdered in Sicily before she could join them.
Speaker 3: And my family has a couple of different theories about this.
Speaker 3: The men all think that it was it was the
Speaker 3: mafia that killed her, because they all seem to think
Speaker 3: that they're Tony Soprano. And the women all think that
Speaker 3: she was killed because she was a witch and a healer,
Speaker 3: because all of my female ancestors think that they're Sicilian witches,
Speaker 3: and they're probably right, they really are. But you know,
Speaker 3: it was one of those family stories that just kind
Speaker 3: of gets told in passing. You know, it's like a
Speaker 3: mythology and a lot of my relatives didn't even know
Speaker 3: her real name. They're like, just you know, my great grandmother,
Speaker 3: my great great grandmother. I've been fascinated by it for
Speaker 3: a long time, and so I started writing a fictional
Speaker 3: novel called The Sicilian Inheritance, loosely based on Lorenzo's story.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to know the real story at that time,
Speaker 3: because I was really intently writing during the pandemic, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to have an adventure, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: write the adventure that I knew we all wanted to have.
Speaker 3: I wanted to transport us to Sicily and also to
Speaker 3: time this uniquely feminist time in Sicilian history, which I
Speaker 3: discovered when I started doing research about the time period,
Speaker 3: when you know, hundreds of thousands of men left Sicily
Speaker 3: to come to America. Many of the towns were left
Speaker 3: to the women and the children, and the women took
Speaker 3: the men's jobs, and they started buying and selling land
Speaker 3: under their own names and lending money, and they had power,
Speaker 3: like real power for the first time in their lives.
Speaker 3: And it was this unique feminist moment in Sicilian history
Speaker 3: that I had certainly never heard about, that I had
Speaker 3: not seen written about a lot in pop culture that
Speaker 3: appears in academic papers, but nowhere for a real mass
Speaker 3: audience to absorb it. And so that's what I really
Speaker 3: wanted to focus on in this book, a modern day
Speaker 3: woman going back to unravel this mystery and discovering this
Speaker 3: feminist time in Sicilian history, you know, laced with romance,
Speaker 3: an adventure, and the most delicious food that you've ever
Speaker 3: read about. But then when I finished the book, I
Speaker 3: started thinking, well, I would be doing a disservice to
Speaker 3: her and also to all of the women like Lorenza
Speaker 3: if I didn't actually try to solve her murder in
Speaker 3: real life. My husband thought I was joking when I
Speaker 3: was like, we should go to Sicily this summer and
Speaker 3: solve this murder, And all of a sudden, I bought
Speaker 3: plane tickets and he's like, I really just thought you
Speaker 3: had had two tequilas and we're kidding about solving a murder.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh no, we're going with all three
Speaker 3: of our children under the age of seven. And so
Speaker 3: we took our whole family of five to Sicily to
Speaker 3: start researching this murder. And that turned into the Sicilian
Speaker 3: Inheritance podcast, which is a true crime adjacent show Unraveling
Speaker 3: This century Old Murder.
Speaker 2: Did you know how to end the book before you
Speaker 2: started writing it or was the ending something that you
Speaker 2: discovered in the process.
Speaker 3: I love that question because I am not an outliner.
Speaker 3: I don't outline my books at all. I sit down
Speaker 3: and I literally fly by the seat of my pants.
Speaker 3: Other writers apparently call this being a pantser, which I
Speaker 3: only recently discovered, and when I heard it, I was like,
Speaker 3: pantser meant something so different when I was in junior high.
Speaker 3: But okay, yeah, sure, I'm a pants I fly by
Speaker 3: the stat of my pants. The only thing I knew
Speaker 3: without revealing anything is the twist that happens at the
Speaker 3: end of the book. I knew that was going to happen,
Speaker 3: and I knew it was going to be a banger,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know how we were going to get there,
Speaker 3: and so everything else just kind of came to me
Speaker 3: along the way. And it's been really interesting because I
Speaker 3: did so much research about Sicily for the novel, but
Speaker 3: didn't research Lorenzo's actual story while writing the book, because,
Speaker 3: like I said, I wanted to be able for it
Speaker 3: to be fiction, for the characters to develop, but after
Speaker 3: I finished the book, it was turned in, it went
Speaker 3: to copy editing. I mean, it was essentially printed and
Speaker 3: ready to go to stores when I was investigating the
Speaker 3: real murder. There were so many similarities that it is
Speaker 3: now completely eerie. And at one point during the podcast,
Speaker 3: I actually interview a medium, Marianne DeMarco. She's a Sicilian
Speaker 3: American who lives on Long Island, because apparently all on
Speaker 3: Long Island, and so she said something, and I'm not
Speaker 3: a wo wou person, but she was like, I can
Speaker 3: feel all of these Sicilian women, not just her ancestors,
Speaker 3: but these women whose stories haven't been told, and they've
Speaker 3: just been nudging you along as you've been working on
Speaker 3: this book and feeding you information and feeding you stories,
Speaker 3: and same with the podcast, and just little nuggets of information.
Speaker 3: And I really felt it along the way, like there
Speaker 3: were some things that I wrote that I could not
Speaker 3: have known were true, that were true. And I still
Speaker 3: get chills when I'm thinking about it now. But yeah,
Speaker 3: because I do think that those women wanted their stories told.
Speaker 2: Can you give us one example of that?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: My god, so many? Okay, So one of my favorite
Speaker 3: ones is this character appears in the book She's a
Speaker 3: hotel owner who lives in this tiny village called Caltabalessa
Speaker 3: in the book, which is based on my family's village
Speaker 3: of Culta Balota. So there's a woman who owns a
Speaker 3: hotel and her name is just A and it's Juicy
Speaker 3: for sure. Now, I had no idea that Justesseppina was
Speaker 3: even a name all right, much less that Juicy was
Speaker 3: the nickname for that name. I was like, it was
Speaker 3: kind of a placeholder, right, Like I knew Giuseppe was
Speaker 3: a name, and I knew that they feminized a lot
Speaker 3: of names, but I'm like, God, this sounds fun. And
Speaker 3: I also like the nickname Juicy really fits her. She's
Speaker 3: like this bold brush woman who's like taking control of everything.
Speaker 3: And I just kept it and kept it and it
Speaker 3: never changed it. And then I eventually found out it
Speaker 3: is the most common name in the town where my
Speaker 3: family is from for women, and Juicy is indeed the nickname.
Speaker 3: And when I was there in March of this year
Speaker 3: and I was in the cemetery, it's like every other
Speaker 3: grave was a Jusppoina, which was so interesting, Like these
Speaker 3: are just things that like kind of got to me
Speaker 3: along the way, And I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 3: where they came from. I really don't.
Speaker 1: So I want to tap into that a little bit
Speaker 1: because the psychic experience is my favorite aspect of this story.
Speaker 1: The psychic that you spoke to gave you an incredible
Speaker 1: term for Lorenza, and she called her a strong mouthed woman.
Speaker 1: How did this story change your perspective on your family's
Speaker 1: matriarch and what have you seen passed down through generations
Speaker 1: from her now that you know her better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, when I first heard the story of
Speaker 3: her being killed back in Sicily, you know, I didn't
Speaker 3: picture her the way that she actually looks, And I
Speaker 3: think I had this like very cultural stereotype of like,
Speaker 3: you know, a Sicilian grandma. She's at the stove and
Speaker 3: she's like making your sauce, and she's like making your meatballs.
Speaker 3: I mean, none of which could I mean, it just
Speaker 3: couldn't be further from the truth, when in reality, finally,
Speaker 3: when I discovered a picture of her, I'm like, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, that woman's eyes could cut glass. Like she
Speaker 3: looks terrifying and powerful and in control. And the fact
Speaker 3: that my family didn't know her name, that they didn't
Speaker 3: know really anything about her is now shocking to me,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't when I first started. It just seemed
Speaker 3: kind of normal. But I'm like, why did we passed
Speaker 3: down this story of her death and nothing about her life.
Speaker 3: When I went back through land records, I discovered that
Speaker 3: she was indeed buying and selling land under her own name,
Speaker 3: and that maybe she never planned to come to America,
Speaker 3: and that you know, she lived in this like little
Speaker 3: area of the village, really close to her sister and
Speaker 3: close to her close friends. And she's the one that
Speaker 3: paid for the passage, not just for her husband to
Speaker 3: go to America, but for each and every one of
Speaker 3: her sons. Like she was making the money over there.
Speaker 3: She was supporting everybody. And you know, there's also some
Speaker 3: rumors that she was perhaps a money lender and that
Speaker 3: she crossed the wrong people. I mean, she was a
Speaker 3: force to be reckoned with. So to hear Mary Anne
Speaker 3: say she's a strong mouthed woman, I'm like, oh, my gosh,
Speaker 3: how many other strong mouthed women are there in my family?
Speaker 3: Like that makes so much sense. We are a family
Speaker 3: of strong mouthed women, So of course she was. But
Speaker 3: you know, just the fact that we didn't picture her
Speaker 3: like that. Again speaks to how much we lose women's
Speaker 3: strength and bravery when we're not hearing their stories directly
Speaker 3: from them.
Speaker 2: There's so much familiar pride imbued in this story. I mean,
Speaker 2: you said that your daughter was a huge inspiration for you.
Speaker 2: I know that your dad was always fascinated with this
Speaker 2: lore that's in your family.
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 2: And I know that he always wanted to be a
Speaker 2: journalist and he enjoyed researching her and trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what happened to her and piecing the story together.
Speaker 2: What do you think that he would think of the
Speaker 2: book and the podcast now?
Speaker 3: I think about that a lot. My dad loved piecing
Speaker 3: together family history. He wanted to be a journalist. He
Speaker 3: wanted to be a writer, and he ended up becoming
Speaker 3: a claims attorney instead, the opposite of a journalist, really,
Speaker 3: and he always you know, he pushed me to be
Speaker 3: a writer. But he was really, really supportive. And he
Speaker 3: had really bad muscular dystrophy for the last ten years
Speaker 3: of his life and couldn't get around as well as
Speaker 3: he used to, and his whole life really became the
Speaker 3: computer in a way, and where he could travel around
Speaker 3: the world through his research. So he did a lot
Speaker 3: of research on ancestry and trying to reach out to
Speaker 3: people on Facebook. And while he was sick, he did
Speaker 3: make it to Sicily about three or four times, and
Speaker 3: you know, he did interviews with people in the town.
Speaker 3: A lot of those have been lost because we lost
Speaker 3: his computer when he passed away. We couldn't get into anything.
Speaker 3: I felt him with me. I mean, again, I sound
Speaker 3: very woo woo when I say these things, but you know,
Speaker 3: I genuinely felt him, you know, cheering me on as
Speaker 3: I was doing this project, and it it really helped
Speaker 3: me grieve him in a way that I hadn't grieved
Speaker 3: him before, because when he passed away, I had just
Speaker 3: gotten married, I just moved across the country, I just
Speaker 3: lost my job, and I was pregnant with my first baby.
Speaker 3: And grieving is impossible when you're in the midst of
Speaker 3: that many life changes at once, and writing this book
Speaker 3: and following in his footsteps, and you know, even reading
Speaker 3: the few emails and messages from him that I had
Speaker 3: left behind, some to me and some to other people.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've cried more over his death in the
Speaker 3: past two years than I did right after he passed
Speaker 3: away nearly a decade ago, because I was finally able
Speaker 3: to get that kind of closure. I feel like I've
Speaker 3: been in conversation with him while I've been writing this book,
Speaker 3: and it's been a really beautiful process.
Speaker 1: You approached this story with two perspectives. There was one
Speaker 1: fictional wishes your novel, and then one factual with your podcast.
Speaker 1: Why did you make that choice?
Speaker 3: Because I think that the story begged to be told
Speaker 3: in two different ways, right, And I'm actually really glad
Speaker 3: that I did it in this way because they're both
Speaker 3: going to reach a different audience, and those audiences may
Speaker 3: end up crossing over, but their paths to them will
Speaker 3: likely be different. So the Sicilian Inheritance the novel, like
Speaker 3: I said, it has been packaged as a delicious, adventurous
Speaker 3: beach read. I mean it's on every summer beach read,
Speaker 3: which I love. I'm like, yeah, go pick up the book,
Speaker 3: read it and by the pool, read it by the beach,
Speaker 3: read it while you're ignoring your children. I love that.
Speaker 3: And while I did set out to write this delicious adventure,
Speaker 3: it has these strong themes of women's agency and women's
Speaker 3: ambition and women working together to fight against the patriarchy.
Speaker 3: Do I love the idea of someone picking this up
Speaker 3: and thinking that they're getting a delicious adventure and then
Speaker 3: just being like, oh my god, Yes, I would love
Speaker 3: to support other women too. Yes, I love these stories
Speaker 3: of ambitious, badass women. And so I think that you know,
Speaker 3: by packaging this in an adventure and something that is
Speaker 3: very easy to consume and read and is fun, I mean,
Speaker 3: first and foremost, I wanted to write a book that
Speaker 3: was fun again because I had been reading so many
Speaker 3: books that were so good but were so dark, and
Speaker 3: so I'm like, I just want to have fun reading again.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, for reporting out the real story,
Speaker 3: audio completely fun, like the most natural way to do that,
Speaker 3: because I find audio such an intimate setting. It is
Speaker 3: the best way to transport someone to another location. And
Speaker 3: another time, when I knew that I wanted to solve
Speaker 3: the real life mystery, I was like, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: we're doing this as a podcast. This is like, this
Speaker 3: is definitely definitely the right setting for this. I really
Speaker 3: wanted to transport us there, to take us I mean,
Speaker 3: not just across the ocean, but also travel back through
Speaker 3: time to really really understand Lorenza story.
Speaker 1: What do you think Lorenzo would think of Sicilian Inheritance?
Speaker 3: I think she'd like it, I really do. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think, like I said, those women were so I
Speaker 3: mean not all women, right, Like we can't say a
Speaker 3: blanket statement all the women in Sily, but like so
Speaker 3: many of those women were so ambitious and they wanted
Speaker 3: much more out of their lives than they were allowed
Speaker 3: to have. And so I think, you know, she would
Speaker 3: really enjoy getting to read this perhaps alternate ending to
Speaker 3: her story. Although I'm not going to ruin the podcast
Speaker 3: or the book for anyone, and you can listen while
Speaker 3: you read, because they're not at all parallel. There's no spoilers.
Speaker 3: But if you get through both of them, the real
Speaker 3: life ending of the podcast, there may be some crossover
Speaker 3: with what I imagined in the book, which I think
Speaker 3: is very very interesting.
Speaker 2: Okay, we need to take a quick break, but we'll
Speaker 2: be right back with author, journalist, and podcaster Joe Piazza.
Speaker 2: And we're back with Joe Piazza. Joe, what did it
Speaker 2: mean to you to be Sicilian before you embarked on
Speaker 2: this journey and what does it mean to you now?
Speaker 3: I mean honestly, everything about that has changed, you know,
Speaker 3: very I was proud of my Sicilian heritage in a
Speaker 3: very surface kind of way. I was like, I'm proud
Speaker 3: to come, you know, from these strong people who left
Speaker 3: a life of poverty to come to America. I didn't
Speaker 3: know nearly enough about Sicilian history and everything that had
Speaker 3: happened on that island for the previous three thousand and
Speaker 3: four thousand years, which was one of the most fun
Speaker 3: parts about reporting out this book. I mean, Sicily is
Speaker 3: an island that has been conquered over and over again,
Speaker 3: I mean pretty much by every conquering force tangential to
Speaker 3: the Mediterranean. It's why their food is so good, to
Speaker 3: be honest. But there are also people that, you know,
Speaker 3: have had to remain strong in the force of opposition,
Speaker 3: but also maintain a tight community in the face of opposition,
Speaker 3: including the women. And it is a history filled with
Speaker 3: strong women who held their families together as the island
Speaker 3: was being plundered over and over again, as the men
Speaker 3: were being sent away, as the men were being killed,
Speaker 3: was always the women who held these communities together. And
Speaker 3: that's what I think about. I mean, that's my biggest takeaway.
Speaker 3: I'm so proud of being a Sicilian American now in
Speaker 3: a way that I'm like it was fine before, great,
Speaker 3: but like now I'm like, oh, my gosh, yes, I'm
Speaker 3: getting my first tattoo. Guys, actually, wait, we love this.
Speaker 1: So Brooke Baldwin came on and told us about her
Speaker 1: bad girl era getting tattoos. What is your tattoo?
Speaker 3: Gonna say, my gosh, I'm getting my first one at
Speaker 3: age forty four, and I'm getting the Medusa from the
Speaker 3: Sicilian flag because we talk about Medusa a little bit
Speaker 3: in the book, and we talk a lot in the
Speaker 3: book about how the Greek myths, many of them originated
Speaker 3: it justly because Sicily was part of Greece, right, And
Speaker 3: I kind of flipped the narrative of Medusa on its
Speaker 3: head and say was she a monster? Or was she
Speaker 3: just sick of men come into her house?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Was she a badass woman? Who is just like I
Speaker 3: have had enough and I will not be treated like this.
Speaker 3: And I love the fact that Medusa is on the
Speaker 3: Sicilian flag, and so yeah, I'll send everyone pictures when
Speaker 3: it's done. I'm so excited. I think that I'm doing
Speaker 3: it on my forearm, but I'm not sure. So we've
Speaker 3: been drawing practice tattoos on different places in my body
Speaker 3: and deciding how we feel about it.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is a big deal, is we? Meaning you
Speaker 1: and your husband, me.
Speaker 3: And my husband, and also we are we're up here
Speaker 3: in the cast skills right now, and one of our
Speaker 3: best friends is an actual artist and a children's book illustrator.
Speaker 3: And every time I've had like one catchuo, I'm like Steve,
Speaker 3: and can you draw them a dusa on my arm?
Speaker 3: And then he does, and then he does. My mom
Speaker 3: is up here with us, helping us with our kids,
Speaker 3: and she's sixty nine years old, and I was like, Mom,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get my first tattoo. I just generally felt
Speaker 3: like she thought tattoos were kind of tacky and she
Speaker 3: wasn't into them. And she's like, I want a tattoo too,
Speaker 3: and I'm like what And she's like, I would like
Speaker 3: Denari's Tigerian's dragon from Game of Thrones, and I'm like, really,
Speaker 3: tracing Piazza, really like this is who you are right now.
Speaker 3: So we're getting our tattoos together. Actually as a mother
Speaker 3: daughter tattoo session.
Speaker 1: That's so Special's really exciting.
Speaker 3: Actually, this is something that I never would have envisioned
Speaker 3: for us years. Like I feel a new book coming on.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is the start of a new
Speaker 2: new book, news a podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Shoe.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm hearing from you is
Speaker 1: that you're sort of leaning into this theme of adventure
Speaker 1: even now that you're home from Sicily. Is that something
Speaker 1: that came from this experience in this trip or you've
Speaker 1: always been like this.
Speaker 3: No, I've definitely always been like this, for sure. And
Speaker 3: I also married someone who was like this right Like
Speaker 3: I got married when I was thirty five years old.
Speaker 3: I didn't meet Nick until I was thirty four. We
Speaker 3: were both journalists, Like I said, we met on a
Speaker 3: boat in the Galapagos Islands, like I married someone who
Speaker 3: loved to travel. Our fourth date was in Paris. We
Speaker 3: got engaged in three months, Like we had this whirlwind romance.
Speaker 3: You know, I wanted to be with someone who wanted
Speaker 3: to have these adventures with me, who wanted to, you know,
Speaker 3: have these adventures with our children, because even though they're
Speaker 3: so little and they may not remember the details, I
Speaker 3: think they'll remember the spirit of it. And that's what
Speaker 3: I think about all the time. But even though I've
Speaker 3: always been like this. I wrote this piece for Cosmo
Speaker 3: about big Sicilian energy, and like I said, I'm now
Speaker 3: a woman in my mid forties and being in Sicily.
Speaker 3: These women are strong mouthed women. They are confident. They
Speaker 3: are just walking down the beach wearing their bikinis, smoking
Speaker 3: their cigarettes and gossiping about Antonio over there. And so
Speaker 3: I'm like, I just I love their confidence and their boldness.
Speaker 3: And like, while I've always been adventurous, I do feel
Speaker 3: like I've started to lose some of that confidence, in
Speaker 3: that boldness, you know, just as I've gotten a little
Speaker 3: bit older. And that reminded me that there's no reason
Speaker 3: to lose any of it. And I feel more confident
Speaker 3: and comfortable in my body now than I ever have,
Speaker 3: and more inspired to just be a bold and brash
Speaker 3: presence in the world. And that is something that I
Speaker 3: think came from working on this project and being in
Speaker 3: Sicily so many times.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you've always been a strong mouthed woman,
Speaker 1: and maybe now you just have a term for it.
Speaker 1: So thank you for sharing all those strong words with
Speaker 1: us today. We really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Joe, I love it. This was so much fun. Guys,
Speaker 3: I could talk to you forever. Oh same, thank you.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to come back.
Speaker 2: Joe Piazza is an author, journalist, and podcaster. You can
Speaker 2: listen to our latest podcast, The Sicilian Inheritance, on the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, celebrity fitness trainer Jeanette
Speaker 1: Jenkins is here to talk health and fitness for another
Speaker 1: iteration of Wellness Wednesday. Listen and Follow the bright Side
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.
Speaker 3: I'm Simone Boye.
Speaker 2: You can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and.
Speaker 1: Tiktok'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's ro v Ay.
Speaker 3: See you tomorrow, folks.
Speaker 2: Keep looking on the bright side.