Angela Edwards
Author
Angela Edwards was captivated from a young age by her father’s tales about growing up in Little Italy, Manhattan in the New York of the 1920s. “His stories were filled with drama and inspiration, especially the ones about his relatives from Sicily,” she says. Leaning on a genius for transforming family stories into fables, Angela crafted the anecdotes into touching and authentic stories and poems. Her works, including “Little Italy Diary”, a short story collection, and her poetry volume, “Tribute” are now on Amazon.
Her father’s narratives were destined for great things the moment he told her about a certain agricultural laborer who was injured harvesting grapes in Sicily. “The man in the story was my great-grandfather. He was the sole support of his family. So he had to bring the grapes in, and that was that.”
His broken arm unluckily got infected on his way home, and he died, leaving his family destitute. It was one of a series of events—many featured in her writing—that ultimately brought Angela’s grandfather to America. Other real life-inspired characters in her short stories and poems are holy witches, madcap flappers, crusty cops, and déclassé bootleggers, with much of the material written through a lens of humor.
“My favorite character in “Little Italy Diary” is an outspoken, obstinate, off-center witch (or “Strega”) who clashes with the New York City Board of Health because they don’t want her to use traditional folk medicine. My father did, in fact, live next door to a woman in Lower Manhattan who claimed to be a witch. There were bootleggers in that building, too. I put all of that into the story. Great fun!”
The poems in her debut poetry collection, “Tribute”, likewise trace themes of family, heritage and nostalgia. “The first poem encompasses the entire narrative of the immigrant, and the hardship and triumphs of trading one’s former identify for a new one.”
Angela’s next literary project is a novel about a family with immigrant roots facing the changing landscape of the New Jersey Bayshore during Prohibition. She has a BA in English from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a blog on her author website https://www.littleitalydiary.com/. She also gives presentations about her writing and the Italian immigrant experience. Email her at bleeckerstreet1000@gmail.com with comments or questions about her work.
Find her books on Amazon: