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About the Author |
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Born in Brooklyn, New York, Janice moved to Long Island at the age of five.
She remembers trips back to Brooklyn—the three story brownstone with the grapevine covered courtyard—to visit her father’s family. He was a young boy when he came with his family from Trapani, Sicily, to America in the early 1930s.
Her mother’s father came to America from the Naples area. Janice has fond memories of the peaceful summer cottage in Mastic, the beautiful garden that produced bushels of tomatoes, and crabbing with her grandfather. They would walk through the stalks of corn to the canal and bring a bucketful of crabs back to her grandmother. Janice was eight or nine years old and her favorite meal was crabs cooked in tomato sauce. Even then, she was extremely proud to be Italian.
Janice started writing Con Amore in 1999, about a year after establishing a monthly newsletter for a local Italian women’s club. During that year, she researched online and wrote brief articles about Italian heritage. In appreciation, and to help with her research, three ladies—three generations of one family—presented her with a book that really changed her direction in life, Italians First: An A to Z of Everything Achieved First by Italians written by Arturo Barone. That book opened her world to her Italian heritage.
The idea for the story in Con Amore developed from came from her belief that pizza is America’s soul food. Whether celebrating a victory, offering condolences, or simply sharing a good time, pizza is a common denominator that crosses all cultural and generational boundaries.
With an increased interest in her Italian heritage and a curiosity about the popularity of pizza, Janice combined the food, history, and culture of Italy with a story of passion and intrigue, and added recipes, maps, and photographs to create Con Amore ... with love. |
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Please credit photograph to Tim Johnson |
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©2008 Janice Therese Mancuso |
