Quotes from Helene Stapinski

Vita had the same crooked smile I had, and that many of the women in my family had, what we called our Mona Lisa smile, a hesitant smirk that didn't give much away. You didn't get the full-on smile until we knew you better, and then we would bend over backward for you, cook you elaborate meals, and do anything you asked. Well, almost anything. Vita

I needed a wife, goddamnit, someone to take care of me while I took care of business. But I was the wife. And mother. So

Life there had been grim, but he had a maid, a woman who took care of him and cooked for him and even bathed him. Lucky bastard. There were times when I wanted to throw his book across the room, I was so jealous of his freedom. What was a political prisoner compared with being a full-time mother? But

He could inhale a dozen pierogi in less than sixty seconds.

Thanks in good part to that 1911 congressional report and to Lombroso, the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1924, more or less ending immigration for Southern Italians and Eastern European Jews. After the turn of the century, around two hundred thousand Italian immigrants were pouring into the country every year. After 1924, only four thousand were allowed in each year. A drop of over 90 percent. By