A realistic portrayal of the Sicilian fishing community in San Diego in the 1950s, Confetti for Gino captures the mood and atmosphere of a time that now seems antiquated and hard to believe. The novel centers around the DeMarino family, in particular fishing boat captain Gino DeMarino's stubborn attempts to break away from tradition by vowing to marry a woman from outside the Italian community, and his mother's (Mamma DeMarino's) just as stubborn fight to ensure he marries someone within the community.

Lawrence (Lorenzo) Madalena (1919-1983) was born and grew up in the same San Diego Italian community that he writes about in Confetti for Gino. He attended San Diego State, where he edited the school paper and was class president. Soon after graduating, he was drafted into the Army, where he served until 1946 "in anti-aircraft squadron in the Quartermaster Unit." During that time he served in various locations and spent "six wonderful months in Trinidad, British West Indies, serving with a Negro battalion [...]." He then served "in Casablanca and Oran, North Africa, and in Italy, where [he] earned three battle stars for combat action." Following his discharge, he attended UC Berkeley, where he received his teaching certification, and then a Master's Degree from the Claremont Graduate School. He was "involuntarily recalled into the U.S. Army during the Korean War" in 1951, but this time he was stationed in New York, where he fought "the battle of Times Square, as the head of a Quartermaster School for Army Inspectors." Madalena returned to Italy in 1957 with a Fulbright Grant, teaching English in Naples and Sardinia. Madalena also recounts how Confetti emerged from "a series of short stories on the Italian fishing colony," out of which grew "a set of characters that became the nucleus of the novel [...]." The writing of Confetti took four years, during which time he "sent sample chapters out to various publishers and invariably received rejection notices." Upon his return to the U.S., Madalena sent the manuscript to Doubleday, where it was finally accepted. As to what he enjoyed in his life, Madalena listed, among other things, "Bullfights -- I go weekly to the exhibitions at nearby Tijuana [...] Las Vegas -- where I regularly deposit several hundred dollars yearly [...] Italian food -- particularly ravioli, gnocchi, cannelloni [...] Dancing -- especially with brunettes [...]" and he names his original inspiration as a writer as Max Miller's I Cover the Waterfront. 

Lorenzo Madalena's profile page

Pasquale Verdicchio teaches literature and film in the department of literature at the University of California-San Diego. As a poet, translator, and essayist, he has published translations of Pasolini, Merini, Caproni, Porta, and Gramsci. He is the author of Devils In Paradise: Writings on Post-Emigrant Cultures and the poetry collection The House Is Past, Passenger: Selected Poems (Porta, Antonio and Pasquale Verdicchio, 2000) and The Wall of the Earth(Caproni, Giorgio and Pasquale Verdicchio, 1992).

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Madalena's detailed descriptions of the food and folkways of the Sicilian community are intended to be his resistance to the overriding themes of assimilation and conformity of the 1950s. As a student of African American history and a gay Italian American, Madalena was acutely aware that social policy makers at the time refused to acknowledge the reality of Americans' diverse ethnic and sexual identity. - Kenneth Scambray