Hamlet, 1984, Catch-22, The Sirens of Titan, The Great Gatsby, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, The Sun Also Rises, The Zoo Story
Hobbies:
Video games, reading, writing, painting, theater-related activities (including acting and costume design), Model UN, listening to music, freaking out over the sociopolitical state of this country, watching House, Monk, and Seinfeld, learning to walk and chew gum at the same time
Quote:
"What is worth having is universal first and American second." -Parag Khanna, Waving Goodbye to Hegemony
Christina Squitieri is currently a student at the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Brooklyn, Class of 2011, with an undecided major. She lives in the Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights area of Brooklyn, NY, with her family, including two siblings.
Course Listings
For the Spring 2008 Semester, Christina is taking:
ENG 15.1: Fiction Writing 1
CHC 2: Seminar 2: The Peopling of New York City
ENG 2: English 2 XD
POL 46: United States in World Politics
THE 20.4: Prop Construction
How I Came to Be a New Yorker
As a third-generation American and New Yorker, the story of how my family came to reside here is an old one, marked with
fuzzy details, embellished stories, and pock-marked, hazy facts. What is known, though, starts mostly with my mother’s side of the family, with her grandmother, Antoinetta Puleo.
My great-grandmother Antoinetta was the oldest of my great-grandparents to have been born outside of Italy. Born in the
United States, she was taken by her father as an infant to live in his hometown, a small settlement known as Craco, in Southern Italy, a place so ravished by earthquakes that it is now illegal reside in. It was here that she grew up, mostly under the care of her grandmother, until she was about 9 years old. It was then that her father decided to take her back in America through Ellis Island, in the first decade of the 1900s. They settled down in a tiny apartment in lower east side of Manhattan, on Mulberry Street, with other former Craco citizens, where she lived for most of her young life.
When she was in her teens, she met her future husband, Rocco, who worked in a paper-stock business in the city, and also
came to America as a small child. Together they had eight children and moved to an Italian area of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, into a four-family house that my grandmother and mother both grew up in. Coming straight from Italy, this side of my family landed and stayed in the heart of New York City, where they raised a family. When Rocco passed away, she took up the family herself. Like a real New Yorker, Antoinetta was fearless, working two jobs and taking herself to work on the subway. In a time where women were rarely seen without a man near her, Antoinetta was fully independent, taking the subways alone during the night to go to her second job as a seamstress. My mother tells me to this day that God help anyone who tried to mug her on that subway, as she would carry a knife inside her corset and was not afraid to use it. Even after she remarried, to another Italian immigrant named Tony, an elevator operator for The Morgan Guarantee Trust Company, she continued working and traveling on her own, knowing more about the neighborhoods of Manhattan then I ever will.
Craco, Italy
My maternal grandfather’s family also came from Italy to New York when they were young
children. Like my mother’s grandmother, they came through Ellis Island. The first who came in was Onofrio, who traveled the rough seas to start a new life in America. He settled down in Brooklyn, NY, as well, where he opened a barbershop on Farragut Road, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Although he never made much money, he was so proud of the fact that in America he was able to have his own business, and worked very hard gain his citizenship. For him, being a New Yorker meant being a citizen of the United States, which for him meant freedom and the right for vote. Out of all my relatives that came to the United States, he was the one who was most proud to be a New Yorker.
My father’s grandparents also came directly to New York from Italy, although much less is
known about them. According to Ellis Island records, my paternal great-grandfather went back and forth between New York and Italy a few times before he officially decided to stay in New York. When he finally did, he brought his Italian-born wife with him. The two also settled in Brooklyn right away and were slightly more well-off then the relatives on my mother’s side. However, like most immigrants, they came (and stayed) in America with the hope of obtaining a better life, including more freedom, an attempt of more money, and the more liberal approach to education.
For all of my great-grandparents, once they settled down in New York City, they stayed there for life. My maternal
grandmother still lives in the house her mother bought when she moved into Brooklyn, and her brother and sisters stayed within the New York City area as well. My paternal side did they same. They all moved into Brooklyn at a young age, most came directly from Italy, and were permanently rooted there, where they raised their families in strongly Italian areas like Bensonhurst or along Brooklyn’s famous 18th Avenue. Unlike many families, the last three generations on both sides have lived and grown up in Brooklyn, NY, giving me strong ties to the Italian neighborhoods they grew up in. In fact, it was only in later generations that a select few family members started to move outside of the city and into other areas of the United States. My uncle moved to Westchester to start a family, and, with the exception of a great-aunt who moved to Florida, the farthest any Squitieri lives is just outside of Philadelphia.
Because the American immigrants of my family all established themselves in Brooklyn, I have been raised with strong ties
to my borough, and doubt I will ever live anywhere outside of the city. In a sense, I became a New Yorker the minute my great-grandmother, the first is the family, set her little-girl feet on Manhattan soil after so many weeks at sea, where they were firmly rooted in New York City’s culture for generations, and where they will remain for generations to come.
More
Listen to some Brand New while I learn how to use this o.0!
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