Interview with Author Venera Di Bella Barles

Jul 24 2002
The Bainbridge Review

Staff Writer
Dee Axelrod

Shedding light on a dark past



ROGERICK ANAS/Staff Photo

Venera Di Bella Barles’ private recollections became public record.
At the urging of her family, the 70-year-old Di Bella Barles took up her pen in 1995 to record the anecdotes – painful and humorous – that she had recounted to them over the years.
The memoir that resulted, “Marriage, Kidneys and Other Dark Organs,” captures the tension between immigrant and first American-born generations – and the universal theme of the damage parents inflict on children.
It tells the story of an angry father with “one foot in Italy and one in America,” who left his mark on the collective family psyche, and on the sensitive Di Bella Barles in particular.
“I think if I were to say what my book is about,” Bella Di Barles said, “It’s about the search for a father’s love, and how love can be used to manipulate.
“It can take an individual a long time to see and understand that.”
Forming the core of the book is Di Bella Barles’ decades-long evolution from understanding to forgiveness, and from self-awareness to altering her own behavior.
The author enlivens the grim history with humorous anecdote, however, like the mishap of the nun who inadvertently spits her new dentures onto fourth-grader Di Bella Barles’ desk.
“I used to like to tell these stories to my family,” Di Bella Barles said. “We’d have good laughs over the tragedies, and people would say ‘You better write that down.’
In her memoir, Di Bella Barles uses interior monologue to reconstruct the framework of a child’s perceptions, as in this passage about her father’s encounter with Mussolini’s police just before the war:
“Salvatore, who enjoys pushing the limits, knows he should not have a camera...The police confiscate this film...
I’m scared. Momma’s afraid too. Grownups act so crazy sometimes. The policemen are mad at Daddy.”
Family history
Di Bella Barles’ father figures in the stories as an abusive tyrant.
Di Bella Barles forfeits her childhood to be the family peace-maker, and then suffers exile from the family when, as a young woman, she marries a Jewish man.
As the family fruitlessly tries to put down roots after World War II – first in San Diego, Calif., and then in Los Angeles – Antoinetta Di Bella’s passivity ignites Salvatore’s ever-smoldering anger.
The Sicilian reacts to the Americanization of his children by reining them in tighter.
He plans their futures: his son will go to medical school, but Venera is consigned to the typing pool.
As the adult Di Bella Barles’ sinks into madness after the birth of a second child, the interior monologue vividly conveys an emotional state that features voices emanating from the vacuum cleaner.
Years of therapy help point Di Bella Barles’ life in a positive direction, a process of redirection she says comes full circle with the publication of her book.
“You can come away from therapy with answers, but applying what you have learned to your life is something else,” Di Bella Barles said.
“Now, this book is a catalyst – a place to put it all to rest.”
* * * * *
Barbara Helen Berger, Venera Di Bella Barles and contributors to the literary magazine “Stories With Grace” will read at 7:30 p.m. July 25 at Eagle Harbor Book Company.
A discussion and book-signing will follow the free event. Call 842-5332 for information.

© Copyright 2005 Bainbridge Island Review