SKYSCRAPERS & RAVIOLI

Chronicles of a New York Girl

It’s here! The long-awaited memoir of a Manhattan girl’s life lived 80 to 100 years ago. I hope whoever grabs a copy from Amazon will be transported to that other world where our great grandparents, grandparents, parents, and other relations in our ancestral line left their footprints and revelries that now serve as a museum of heredity. I’ll post a link to order a copy as soon as the book goes live.

Meanwhile, here is a synopsis and the foreword.

THIS IS JO’S STORY. Manhattan in between two wars, an era of peace and financial disruption, but for a little girl growing up in America’s metropolis and coming of age at the beginning of WW2, it’s a time like no other.

Trollies traverse the boroughs of New York City, where horses recently drew people in carriages from one end of town to the other. Skyscrapers shoot up overnight, creating a new skyline that seems to cast woebegone shadows on its citizens, recalling early settlers no longer about.

The life of the city is sandwiched between the Hudson and East rivers, its inhabitants teeming after sunrise from their dwelling places in high-rise buildings. In this story, you will meet seamstresses and florists, actresses in silent film and talkies, an artisan in metallurgics, wroughting ironworks for iconic buildings such as Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, and Central Park, and children of emigrants embracing and pioneering a brave new world.

You’ll listen in on a conversation with German dissidents in a Village nightclub during the thick of the Second World War. And you’ll board buses and trains to take a dip in the Jersey Shore. Or ride in a now classic car to cross the George Washington Bridge on a Sunday afternoon.

The immigrant population from Italy and Greece, Jo’s roots, mingle into an already diverse demographic, adding artistic value to everything they touch, from individual bravura to ravioli. I hope you enjoy Jo’s story, written in first person, as only her voice can truly illustrate the life she lived.

FOREWORD

My daughter asked me to write a foreword about Jo to give readers an impetus to read my mother’s story. I hope these words inspire whoever lands on this page to embrace their mothers or guardians while there’s still time.

JO FOOKAS could have been anyone’s mother, but the good Lord thought it best to appoint her as my mom, mid-twentieth century, and I knew her as Mommy all my life. However, I didn’t really know “Jo” until after she died.

Let me explain.

While working on my mom’s memoir, posthumous, I discovered a sort of sibling rivalry in the heart of our mother-daughter relationship. Specifically, in all the years my mother tried to impart advice, for some reason, I would balk rather than consider. That is until now.

Jo Fookas was much more than my mother.

Before I came along, Jo stood taller than her five feet. She relished friendships from the war years and lived in America’s most vibrant and cutting-edge city. Born and bred in Manhattan, Jo was the product of immigrants from Italy and Greece. She lived with her parents in humble apartments worth millions today and developed that priceless sense of the street, imparted to protect city kids.

Jo developed a well of common sense and savvy that would take an educated person off guard. You see, she lost her mother at age twelve and had to more or less fend for herself in a world of adults and cousins with intact families. So, she became instinctive and knew a thing or two about survival during hard times.

Jo never had a chance to take her mother for granted. Instead, she tried to impart the wisdom of my grandmother that she had learned as a girl. I know this now and regret not listening more to the one person who knew what was best for me.

No matter what differences we had in personality and choices, my mother was also a person who had a life before I was born. As I pored through her many notes that pertained to her long life, I found that we actually had more in common. We were always friends, but we often clashed over various opinions that simply do not matter anymore.

Had we found one another serendipitously, I would have counted Jo as one of my best friends. She was all the things that define a good companion: honesty, transparency, a good conversationalist, open-minded, fun-loving and flexible, hospitable, generous, trustworthy, and friendly.

I’ve often wondered why one would balk at their mother’s take on things yet embrace the same advice from a friend or acquaintance? As an only child, there’s a mystery to sibling rivalry, but what about mother-child rivalry? I hope readers will be inspired by Jo’s story to see their own mothers as so much more, and if they’re still alive, to get to know and appreciate them despite any differences, whether personal, political, or otherwise.

Foreword by Allie Bullock