The Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) mourns the sudden death of Joseph Sciorra, a friend, colleague and supporter whose courage to protest the murder of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst alongside Al Sharpton, played a pivotal role in fueling the founding of IAWA by his former professor, Robert Viscusi.
We are all linked in so many rich ways and Joe added to that fabric within our ever-expansive community.
For more than three decades Joe followed his passionate curiosity, insights and extraordinary observations into the most common objects in Italian American lives that give meaning to those lives and he braided many of our lives through our various projects and pursuits.
Some people call them lawn shrines, others bathtub Madonnas, Sciorra saw these often four-foot tall pagan shrines for what they were: expressions of deep faith and they were among the very first objects that drew me and my late husband, Gil Fagiani to his work. It also led us further into IAWA.
Of those shrines, Sciorra told the New York Times,”If they put that much time and energy into building a shrine, it’s usually because of a vow,” he said. ”These people really believe that they have been helped by a supernatural entity, that a miracle happened. The shrine is part of a reciprocal, devotional act.”*
Today, Annie Lanzillotto wrote that she had messaged Joe about a question about a graffiti artist the day he passed … who better than Joe would know that graffiti artist? From the bathtub Madonnas in Rosebank, Staten Island he spotlighted early in his career to his passion for Italian Rap in Naples to ex-votos to HipHop to celebrating the Black Madonna on the Lower East Side … Joe was the go-to guy on so many of those daily expressions of who a people are.
On a personal note, when Gil discovered the poetic legacy among his relatives in Abruzzo, it was Joe who matched him up with his father, Enrico to recite the work, read it out loud so Gil could hear how dialect poetry should sound. Another link Sciorra led us to was his former professor, Luigi Bonaffini, who not only taught Gil Italian but befriended us and translated Gil’s last collection, Soundtrack of a Life, which was published posthumously.
And when the Columbus Quincentennial was being celebrated in 1992, he along with Gil and others developed a counter argument in IAMUS, the Italian Americans for Multicultural United States featuring them on the Gil Noble show, Like It Is.
We will leave the scholarly accolades to others, but for now, we at IAWA and on many other levels will miss his dynamic self for a good, long time. Much love to Zulma, Akela and Lucca and the Sciorra extended family.
* For the full essay, “Italians Against Racism”: The Murder of Yusef Hawkins (R. I. P.) and My March on Bensonhurst, read Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America (2003), co-edited by Jennifer Mary Guglielmo with Salvatore Salerno. The book was translated into Italian in 2006: Gli Italiani Sono Bianchi? Come l’ America ha costruito la razza.
