Even in cosmopolitan New York, being an Italian Jew was a real showstopper. I relished the double take and look of bafflement that inevitably followed. Neither Jews nor Italians nor Americans knew what to make of us.“
So begins the fascinating and poignant new memoir, MIXED MESSAGES: Reflections on an Italian Jewish Family and Exile by veteran author, photojournalist and award-winning corporate writer, Eleanor Foa. Born in Italy before World War II, raised in America, the daughter of a brilliant father whose Italian-Jewish roots trace back to famous 16th-century printers, Eleanor was proud of her exotic roots, yet knew little about her lineage.
Eleanor was confused and frustrated by the mixed messages she received from her parents: her mother, a refugee from Nazi Germany, turned her back on everything from her homeland; to her, it was okay to be Jewish as long as you didn’t look, sound or act Jewish; her parents believed “family is everything” but distanced Eleanor and her sister from the extended family; her father insisted money wasn’t important but eventually wound up with a seven-figure portfolio; her parents’ marriage, admired by many, seemed so unhappy inside their home; and her father – an economist and intellectual, though proud of his family history – shared so little of it.
After her parents died, Eleanor felt compelled to learn more about her past and sort out these mixed messages. It was time to do her own investigating and, in 2006 she asked her sister to join her on a journey to Italy in search of their family history. What initially begins as a trip to understand who her parents were and how their legacy shaped who she is, eventually becomes a way to reconstruct her parents’ journey and, by doing so, empathizing with their struggles and contradictions. Eleanor uses her photographer’s eye and dry sense of humor to bring her journey to life. Readers will feel like they’re traveling along with the Foa sisters, sharing delicious meals and family secrets.
Travel as a way of uncovering a family’s past, is like an archeological dig with multiple layers, discoveries and interpretations. It is about family myths that forged our parents’ lives and, in turn, our lives.“
A beautifully written, multilayered and moving story, with surprises and discoveries at every turn, MIXED MESSAGES is a wonderful adventure that shows the power of personal history to transform lives. While it is the history of one remarkable family, it is also a universal immigrant tale of exile, family, and generational conflict.
Buy a copy from Amazon in paperback or on Kindle or buy a copy through Central Primo Levi
MIXED MESSAGES is part of Centro Primo Levi’s CPL Editions, which publishes classics and new research in Italian Jewish studies. For more information visit Centro Primo Levi. (CPL Editions; Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1941046951; E-book ISBN: 978-1941046968; November 12, 2019)
PRAISE FOR MIXED MESSAGES
Testimonials
Foa’s Mixed Messages is a moving tribute to the richness of her Italian Jewish ancestry. At the same time, it shares the fascinating history of a part of our larger Jewish community that many have forgotten. The author’s engaging writing style makes her book a wonderful way to explore how building a stronger connection to our family can also be a meaningful search for ourselves.
Jonathan Fass, Jewish Book Council Review
I finally got to read your marvelous book. It’s clear, moving, enlightening, thoughtful and and persuasive.
Victor S Navasky, former editor, publisher, and now publisher emeritus of The Nation.
In this well-written and moving memoir about her Italian Jewish family, Eleanor Foa combines archival research with a personal quest and creates amemorable portrait of a distinguished clan coping with 20th Century history, especially Fascism. It touches on the divisions between those able to flee the Holocaust for the U.S., andthose who lived through it. It’s a fascinating glimpse of one family’s history that inspired me to ask more detailed questions about my family’s history and their lives.”
Meryl Gordon is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author of three biographies: the most recent is Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend.
I just finished reading your book, and I loved it! I knew it would be beautifully written because you are such a fine writer, and it certainly lived up to all my expectations. I especially loved the epilogue: what a perfect ending.
Janice Murray
We’ve’ve adopted Foa’s “Mixed Messages” for my “Modern Jewish Italian Literature” course.
Kora von Wittelsbach,
Department of Romance Studies, Program in Jewish Studies
I have just finished reading your work and am struck by the strength and empathy of your voice throughout, and your observations and your honest appraisal of people, places and events. Weaving so many interconnected and yet disparate stories is a challenge and you managed it with grace and honor. I will order some copies of Mixed Messages. My copy is all dog eared and a bit bedraggled from being read in the bathtub in the evening.
Elissa Stancil, Decorative Artist and Board Member of ICAA NOCAL
I just wanted to let you know that I ordered your book and finished reading it this week. I enjoyed it so much. The history of your family, your complex relationship with your parents, your sister and your history were all told so well and written with compassion and detachment and was very moving to me. I knew so little about the Jews of Italy and it was enriching for me to have you as a “tour guide.” I’m very glad I that I read Mixed Messages. (Also, by the way, I love the way book looked.)
Yehuda Hyman is an American playwright, dancer, choreographer, actor, and poet.
I took today to curl up and to finish your memoir. What a glorious experience to read and ponder this book of yours. The magnitude of taking this whole effort on, organizing the book so as to have it be clear, writing it so beautifully…and of course, all the layers of substance. from history, religion, relationships, family, geography…and concepts and your pursuits…so so much to ponder.
Randye Farmer is a senior consultant with extensive experience in strategy implementation, organizational change, governance, management process, and executive coaching.
Foa’s Mixed Messages is a moving tribute to the richness of her Italian Jewish ancestry. At the same time, it shares the fascinating history of a part of our larger Jewish community that many have forgotten. The author’s engaging writing style makes her book a wonderful way to explore how building a stronger connection to our family can also be a meaningful search for ourselves.
Jonathan Fass, Jewish Book Council Review
I just finished your memoir and enjoyed it immensely. I enjoyed that the book was about your personal journey, your father’s journey and the Foa family journey And that, truly, they are all one in the same.
Cantor
Mark Kushner
© Eleanor Foa Dienstag
The Fortunate Foàs of Sabbioneta
An essay written by Eleanor Foa for the Jewish Book Council’s Paper Brigade Daily
My father, an Italian Jew, used to say that “family is everything,” yet I knew very little about the history of the Foà family. That changed when, in his retirement, my father wrote a forty-page family memoir and began to fill in some of the missing pieces. He devoted only one line to our most famous ancestors, I Fratelli Foà, printers of Bibles and Hebrew prayer books in sixteenth century northern Italy. They flourished between 1551 and 1590 in the tiny, walled city of Sabbioneta. I’d become aware of them when, a decade earlier, an Israeli cousin had sent me copies of their handsome printer’s mark, or colophon. Their books are still considered exceptionally beautiful.