When Angelina discovers what has gone unspoken in her parents’ and grandparents’ lives, she is forced to re-evaluate her entire upbringing.
Angelina’s childhood in the far North Queensland cane fields is full of adventure. But it is also turbulent. Her beloved grandfather was an ardent fascist. Her father and grandfather struggle with the ferocious undercurrents of an unspoken past. Her mother, as the dutiful Italian wife, cannot speak about how she feels. Instead, she teaches her young daughter a revolutionary song that she knows will irritate her father-in-law.
As an adult, Angelina must deal with different sets of preconceived notions about who she should be and what she should do as well as the inherited trauma of the second generation. She enters corporate Australia at a time when women’s voices were only starting to be heard. Often, she is the only woman in the room and the only person with Italian heritage.
Choosing between what is expected of her as a woman and what she feels she must do will have consequences.
Through the telling of her own story, Angelina reconstructs her family’s diaspora story from World War II Italy to the cane fields at a time when Australia’s White Australia Policy was still in place. Their fractured history takes her to Mussolini’s rise to power, German occupied Crete, the Gustav line in southern Abruzzo and Adelaide’s Loveday internment camp.
After years of conforming to what she thought it meant to be ‘Australian’, she realises that her identity as a second-generation immigrant woman, one of Le Seconde, is a lot more complex.
Biography/Memoir, Italian Migrants, Women's Rights, Intergenerational Trauma, Identity, War
About The Author
Angelina Mastrippolito grew up among the sugarcane fields of Far North Queensland. Her family lived in the small town of Ingham alongside other Italian migrants—it was known as Little Italy.
After university, Angelina became the first actuary from Far North Queensland and, when she qualified in 1988, she was one of only 30 female actuaries in Australia. She worked in the finance industry while looking after her two children and an accommodation business in the Snowy Mountains.
In a career that spanned over 40 years, she was a trusted advisor to large Australian and multinational companies, and held senior executive positions, including CEO and COO, in a number of superannuation funds. She is currently a director of the Brave Foundation and on the committee of the Sydney and Inner West U3A and Inner West Speakers.
She is a director of ASEAN, an organisation that aims to build a culturally diverse community in Australia in order to promote cross-cultural relations and interfaith tolerance.
Angelina’s love of writing started in her late fifties, though she has been an avid reader all her life. Le Seconde is her first book.
Angelina lives in Sydney’s Inner West and is the proud mother of two adult children and two beloved golden retriever dogs. She took up ballroom dancing in her sixties, and in her spare time you’ll find her perfecting her Argentine tango.
