IAP 51: Marianne Leone on Love, Loss, Art and being a First Generation Italian American

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In this episode of The Italian American Podcast episode, we speak with Marianne Leone who is an actress and an author. She wrote an inspirational book about her son (who she lost way too early) entitled Jesse: A Mother’s Story (Simon & Schuster) and then a second book entitled Ma Speaks Up: And a First-Generation Daughter Talks Back (Beacon Press) about growing up with an Italian immigrant mother. In the episode, she talks her son and what she learned from him. She also talks about grief, her writing, and about her role on the Sopranos.

In the stories segment, we talk to a talented author, Olivia Kate Cerrone, who wrote a book called the Hunger Saint (Bordighera Press) that focuses on the Carusi (children in Sicily who were forced to work in the sulfur mines at very young ages). Cerrone talks about this topic in detail and what led her to write this book.

Episode Quote

“Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.”–Alphonse de Lamartine, Méditations Poétiques

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About our Guests…

Marianne Leone is an actress, screenwriter, and essayist. Her essays and op-ed pieces have appeared in the Boston Globe, The Bark magazine, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti blog. She had a recurring role on HBO’s The Sopranos and has appeared in films by John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Nancy Savoca, Michael Corrente, Larry David, and the Farrelly Brothers. She is married to the actor Chris Cooper. Her memoir, Jesse: A Mother’s Story (Simon & Schuster) is a chronicle of the remarkable life and untimely death of her child who died suddenly at age seventeen. Her latest book is Ma Speaks Up: And a First-Generation

Olivia Kate Cerrone

Olivia Kate Cerrone’s Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction won the Crab Orchard Review’s Jack Dyer Fiction Prize. She is at work on a novel called DISPLACED.

The Hunger Saint (Bordighera Press, 2017), a historical novella about the child miners of Sicily, was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a well-crafted and affecting literary tale.” SPD Books also listed The Hunger Saint as a Fiction Bestseller for May, June, July & August 2017.

Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Brooklyn Rail, The Huffington Post, New South, the Berkeley Fiction Review, The MacGuffin, War, Literature and the Arts, JMWW, Word Riot, Paterson Literary Review and elsewhere.