The fact that I even exist, depended on the loves and lives of countless humans before me, living their stories that culminate in my 71-year-old self being here today. We can’t go all the way back to those origin stories, so here we will begin in the early 1900s, when 48-year-old Giuseppa Milazzo DiMartino sat in the Mediterranean sun on an old wooden bench outside her front door and started making plans to leave Santa Croce Camerina, an ancient village on the southeast coast of Sicily — a place where history had been handed down in stories.
I have no way of knowing for certain the reason Giuseppa decided to leave – but most likely it was the same reason hundreds of thousands of people throughout history become refugees – grinding poverty – poverty so relentless that one would walk away from everyone and everything they know for the tiniest shred of hope to have something better, if not for oneself, for one’s children. Giuseppa knew she had to figure out a way to get her seven children, two son-in-laws and six grandchildren to America. Since there is a W (Widow) alongside her name on the passenger list, and there is no record of Giuseppa’s husband, Gaetano DiMartino, arriving or living in the U.S., I can only assume she was a widow when she started making plans to move her entire family to America.
As luck would have it, there was a steamship steerage price war in 1904, and transatlantic tickets that had previously cost $30 to $40, went as low as $9, including rail transportation to the port, daily provisions on board, and a “donkey’s breakfast” (straw bedding) on an iron bunk. Children under 12 were half-price and infants under one-year-old were one-third. If Giuseppa knew about the price drop, that might have helped her to make her decision when she did. Regardless, I have no doubt that she was the impetus behind the exodus. I come from a lineage of no-nonsense matriarchs. My research shows that the women in my family made life happen.