Armando Addati
Armando Addati (CAS’88) of Fiumicino, Italy, published I sandali al cocco (CreateSpace, 2015). The book, written in Italian, was partly inspired by his parents’ meeting. “My father, Felice, immigrated to Venezuela from Italy in the 1950s and my mother, Dorita, immigrated from Spain. They were staying at the same B&B in Caracas. Felice left Italy to have a life change, and Dorita left Madrid to look for her daughter’s father. They helped each other until they fell in love…. The book’s silent subject is the sea, but it is a romanced storytelling collage of journeys, of all the places and people I grew up with and who in some way were related to the sea or to the smell of coconut,” he writes. “Even though it is a self-published book, and is not promoted at all, readers find it on the web and then contact me. These readers who contact me are people who one way or another were searching on the internet for Italian immigration stories in Venezuela or searching for Venezuelan terms related to immigration and immigrants.”
From the Fall 2018 issue.