“The Godfather” Doesn’t Represent My Italian-American Family’s Story — So I Wrote It Myself (Exclusive Essay)

‘The Three Graces of Pearl Street’ is a succession drama about the ordinary but fierce Italian-American women who are overlooked in ‘The Godfather’

I can’t remember the first time I heard The Godfather’s opening line, “I believe in America.” I must have been old enough to stomach the prolific violence, but young enough not to grasp the significance of the film in the minds of Americans — especially Italian Americans. 

Later, when I read and reread the novel, I thought of my own family. My maternal great-grandparents Theresa and Glorio fled a poverty-stricken town in Southern Italy as teenagers only to find themselves penniless in New York. They brought seven children — one boy and six girls — into the world in perilous circumstances. Five of their daughters, including my grandmother Lucia, survived childhood.

Although The Godfather’s anti-hero and mafia boss, Vito Corleone, has a far more violent past than my family’s, the broad strokes of his origin story resonate broadly with the Italian-American experience. He was one of millions of immigrants who fled violence, injustice and poverty for our land of opportunity only to find old challenges wrapped in new prejudices. 

When Amerigo Bonasera declares, “I believe in America” to Vito Corleone, he goes on to detail the ways in which the justice system — the crown jewel of our democracy — has failed his family because of their ethnicity. Only Vito Corleone can serve bloody justice to the white men who assaulted Bonasera’s daughter and walked away without jail time.

For Vito Corleone, this single favor granted to Bonasera is one in a decades-long chain of gifts and debts that he leverages to build an underground empire. Both in the novel and the films, Vito Corleone wields this influence to its upper limit, always with the aspiration that his second son, Michael Corleone, would cross the threshold into a legitimate leadership role as a senator or governor.

The most compelling scenes in the film capture the spirit and specificity of Italian American culture culture: the pot of sauce on the stove, the tension between siblings at a dinner table, tomato vines growing in Long Island. The opening scene with Amerigo Bonasera in Don Corleone’s office occurs during the backyard wedding reception for his only daughter. The wedding scene could have been plucked from any Italian-American neighborhood in 1950s New York — if you remove the mafia elements. 

That’s a big if. Alongside the truth and texture of those cultural moments is a stereotype of criminality that casts a long shadow over the Italian American community. Many feel as if The Godfather trilogy — and other mafia depictions — strengthens the prejudice people like my grandmother faced every day. 

As a teenager, I remember bringing up The Godfather with my grandmother while she made dinner. She was quick to remind me that we come from people who were harassed by the mafia, not the people who ran the mafia. “Our family was the silent extras in the background, or outside the frame altogether,” she said with a wooden spoon in her hand. The conversation was over as quickly as it started, and I sensed distress in her silence at the mention of it.

Years later, I found out that there was a single thread of connection between her and the films. She and my grandfather Sam owned a large used furniture store in Mamaroneck, N.Y., where film producers from The Godfather sourced furnishings for their sets. The next time I watched the film, I knew that my grandfather’s fingerprints and a bit of my own family story were in the frame, too. 

Beyond that connection, our family lived in complete contrast to life depicted in The Godfather.

To begin with, I was born into a matriarchy. Although I never met my great-grandmother, her daughters raised me in a swirl of love, heartening meals and no-nonsense advice. This lineage of strong women served as the backbone and the backdrop of my life. 

My great-grandmother was known for her unconditional generosity. She ruled our family and her neighborhood with an iron fist, but she was also the first person to help a neighbor, to feed an acquaintance, to pick up a child in need. When her daughters brought home friends for dinner, she would skip a meal to make sure there was enough food to go around. She would have never turned anyone — let alone a child — away from the dinner table. She was no softer because of it. 

In her grit and her grace, she embodied the kind of strength that Don Corleone — a fictional man of her same era and background — could never have matched. In fact, if she had come across someone like Don Corleone in her neighborhood, she would have taken him out by the knees with her broom and thrown lasagna in the oven afterward, all without breaking a sweat.

When I became a mother in my own perilous circumstances — managing medical complications for me and my baby — I often thought of her spirit and her strength. Holding my great-grandmother’s legacy close, I wondered what it would be like to write a succession drama that served as a foil to The Godfather: an invocation of the decency and strength of ordinary Italian-American women. I wanted to prove that women like my great-grandmother were no less interesting, or less formidable, no less deserving of a compelling multi-generational story because of their moral clarity and their humility as women and as mothers.

I found the shape of the novel in the ancient Roman myth of the Three Graces, who served as a visual allegory for giving, accepting, and returning gifts in the ancient world. In this contemporary retelling, I cast the Three Graces as three generations of imperfect women in an Italian-American family who lived in my great-grandmother’s neighborhood — up the road from our family’s furniture store. In writing this novel, I discovered that ordinary women who embody these ancient virtues are no less engaging than their opposites. The drama of human life exists everywhere, even and especially in the work of caring for each other. 

In its entirety, The Three Graces of Pearl Street is a family saga and succession story about the spirit of generosity modeled by my great-grandmother and her daughters. My grandmother would have been shocked that they inspired my novel, insisting no one would want to read about women making lasagna in her neighborhood. I know she would have been tremendously proud nonetheless.

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The Three Graces of Pearl Street hits shelves on Sept. 1 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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