Maggie Coco Mignery

Uprooted Maggie Coco Mignery

I love our family and the Sicilian heritage of love and support that I've been blessed with. It has sustained and lifted me up throughout my life, and the older I get the more I appreciate the strong foundation it gave me. My goal in writing this memoir, lofty as it sounds, is simply to preserve the history of my immigrant grandparents' journey to America in 1901 from the old fishing village of Cefalu on the north coast of Sicily. It is a story often repeated in families all over America but it is our own unique story, that for many years, I have wanted to shine a light on. The book is composed of family history facts and short stories or vignettes about my own personal journey. Vignettes, according to Dr. James Birren, author of Guided Autobiography, "are like snapshots that focus on important moments in life-instants of discovery, turning points, moments of decision, basically the essence of living."