Outside in
"My behavior is not a Yankee's behavior. It just is not, no matter what. My family was Italian, and different from most other Italian immigrants. We did not need to melt in. We did not need to assimilate, because of who we were and what we came from. While other people were painting themselves red, white, and blue, we talked Italian, absorbed our family's history, and thought of ourselves as being what we always were. In the deepest sense, I was never taught to be a Yankee, which is a fact that comes out in any number of the things that I do and try to accomplish. Some people have the feeling that what I write and say is too subtle, or perhaps manipulative; or that I behave a bit outlandishly; but those people do not put what I do in the context of Italy, in the context of that very old, very subtle, very complicated society, which I come from"--