Every Generation Is a First Generation Grinding poverty and brutal murder are the inheritance of a troubled young Sicilian-American who fights for survival on the mean streets of Los Angeles in this gritty, compelling multi-generational story. Sudden violence, against-all-odds teen love, a quirky cast of Sicilian and Chicano characters, and a redeeming sense of humor drive First Generation. In the 1920s Niccolo flees Sicily after an honor killing, settling his young family into a tenement on New York's Lower East Side. Twenty years later his daughter Gina meets John Russo, a soldier bound for North Africa and the Battle of Kasserine Pass. Another twenty years finds them married with a teenaged son, living in Pico Rivera, east of East L.A., where a different kind of war is raging. Like Sicily in the 1920s, East L.A. in the 1960s is defined by desperation, destitution, revenge, and fatalism. Growing up in the barrio the narrator becomes both participant and victim in the carnage. The old ways exert a powerful pull-as if born in his blood. Gun in hand, on the brink of murder, he struggles to decipher the secret behind a horrific scar. The truth shocks him but could also set him free-if he has the courage to give up everything he knows, including his last hope for connecting with his war-damaged father, his bone-deep need for revenge, and his dream of reuniting with Teresita, his first love. First Generation is the story of a young man's struggle to survive and of a family's journey to becoming American.
About the Author: David La Piana was born in New York state in 1954. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was five years old. He attended public schools in Pico Rivera, a largely Chicano community east of the City of LA. In 1972 he enrolled at the University of California, San Diego. After two years at UCSD he spent a semester at the University of Madrid in Spain, and then completed a BA and MA in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, studying English, Spanish, and Italian literature with an emphasis on the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He is a lifelong reader and fiction writer. Beginning in 1980, David served as a VISTA volunteer, a community organizer, and a manager with food security and refugee organizations. As a CEO he led a children's mental health nonprofit through an extended period of unprecedented growth, while getting an evening MPA in Nonprofit Management from the University of San Francisco. He founded La Piana Consulting www.lapiana.org in 1998 and with his colleagues has built it into a respected national resource for the social sector. He has taught graduate level courses at both the University of San Francisco's Institute for Nonprofit Management and the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is the author of six well-respected books on nonprofit management as well as numerous papers, monographs and journal articles. He is a popular speaker and an innovative thought leader who regularly contributes to the national dialogue on organizational effectiveness and the future of the social sector. As a consultant David draws on his personal experience growing up to inform the commitment to social justice that his firm embodies. With his wife of 35 years, Mary McFarland, he has two adult daughters. Mary is a social worker and Marisa, their oldest daughter, is a social work graduate student. Tessa, their younger daughter, also eyes a career in social change or social services.