Letter From Lisa "Making a Mark" First Two Novels in Hardcover Behind the Scenes Upcoming Appearances On Board Listen Up!

"MAKING A MARK" Remarks at the Naturalization Ceremony United States Courthouse Congratulations! Good morning! Thank you for letting me join all of you at this ceremony and especially, thank you to Judge Cynthia Rufe, for asking me to speak today at this very happy occasion. I write books for a living, and have written eleven novels so far. They're all stories set in Philadelphia, and they're fiction. Each one features a woman who gets herself into terrible trouble and has to get herself out of it. I just finished a new book, and the most common question that people ask me about it is — "Where do you get your ideas?" The answer for the new book may interest you, because it came from the history of my family, from their experience as immigrants in America. My paternal grandfather, Giuseppe Scottoline, came to the United States in 1910 from a town called Ascoli-Piceno, in Italy, and my grandmother Mary arrived from Ascoli-Piceno in 1912. My grandfather was a laborer, he mowed lawns for a living, and my grandmother was a housewife. My grandfather was illiterate in Italian and English, but my grandmother had been an elementary schoolteacher in Italy and was literate in Italian. Over the next thirty years, they came to love this country. They lived happily in a house at 49th and Thompson Streets in West Philadelphia, where they raised four children — three girls and then a boy, my father, Frank Scottoline. But in 1941, World War II broke out, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law a series of orders that identified all Japanese-born, German-born, and Italian-born people living in the country as "enemy aliens." This was ordered though many of these people had lived in the United States for many years, violating no laws, nor giving the government any reason to think of them as enemies. The presidential orders compelled all enemy aliens to register, and speaking now only about Italian Americans, some 600,000 Italian Americans registered. The orders also authorized their arrest by the FBI and/or relocation to internment camps. As a result, more than 10,000 Italian Americans were evacuated from their homes and places of business and sent to forty-five internment camps around the country. The major internment sites for Italian Americans were Fort George Meade in Maryland, Camp McAlester in Oklahoma, Fort Sam Houston in Texas, and Camp Forrest in Tennessee. Some of the Italians interned were visitors to the United States - waiters working at the World's Fair in New York or sailors on visiting cruise ships - but many were Italian Americans who had lived in the United States for decades, lawfully and happily. And, ironically, many of the Italian Americans had sons serving in the United States military in World War II, fighting against Axis nations, including Mussolini's Italy. My grandparents were typical of this latter group. Though they were not among those interned, they were compelled to register as enemy aliens, and did so on February 27, 1942. At the same time that my grandparents were registering as enemies of this country, their son Frank — my father — was serving in the United States Air Force. These are their alien registration cards. Though I know you cannot see them well from your seat, I brought them today to point out one special thing. My grandfather could not write his name, but signed it with only an X. Someone next to his X has written, "his mark." Because my grandparents didn't speak, read or write English, they never became citizens of this country. They never took the step all of you have taken today. You have worked hard to be here today and you deserve to be congratulated. You have been fingerprinted, photographed, and interviewed. You have studied the English language - reading, writing, and speaking it. You have learned United States history. You know how many justices are on the Supreme Court, you know what the original thirteen states were called, and you know more than I do about how Congress works. You may know more than anyone how Congress works. You have maintained good moral character, and you have made the commitment to this country and to yourself to take this great step. Today you become the recipient of all of the benefits, rights, and privileges that flow from being a citizen of this great country, and from the United States Constitution and its Amendments. Today, yours is the right to free speech, to equal treatment under the law, to free association, to travel, to the exercise of religion, and, of course, to vote. We even ordered a presidential election for you. We are delighted that you have become citizens, for you bring with you your native culture, language, beliefs, and values. Above all, we delight in hearing your voice. As a writer, I remember a time in this country when every author wanted to write what was called the Great American Novel. One of our best living writers, Philip Roth, even wrote a novel that he entitled The Great American Novel. When I was young, I felt that if I were ever to become an author, my goal was supposed to be to write The Great American Novel. I have since rethought that goal, because the best thing about this country is that there is no single voice that rings true or resonates for everybody. If America is about anything it is about diversity, and so the great American novels will be a chorus of voices. In fact, a babble of voices, of conversation, of different language, of noise, a clatter, a shouting, a ranting, a diatribe. The voices of black people and Vietnamese people and white people and gay and straight, of Chinese people and Indians and Ukrainians. America is a great clamor of voices, all of them shouting and begging and yelling at the top of their lungs, in the best raucous American fashion. America is a country of boo-birds, of cheerleaders, of people who clap too long and too loud. We root, root, root for the home team, we sing the most impossible national anthem in the world. We are all about voice in this country, giving the minority a voice, giving political speech a voice, giving the disenfranchised a voice. Short of shouting fire in the proverbial crowded theatre, America is voice unbounded. My grandfather arrived on this shore in 1910, and though he could not read or write, he made his mark - an X on a registration card. Only a generation later, in this great country, his granddaughter has become an author, making a very different mark. Welcome to the United States. Welcome especially to Philadelphia, where the United States was born. Welcome home. Go make your mark. Thank you.