Puglia

Folklore traditions, ancient histories, and wild landscapes in the heel of Italy's boot.

I’m writing here about some extraordinary travel and adventure that happened in early October. This newsletter is likely changing over the next year as I begin to write about the themes related to my two upcoming books—a nonfiction book on historical and present day racial violence and a novel about genocide and its generational impact upon a body and a psyche.

Bloodlines is a collection of essays on lynch culture, and offers reportage, memoir and cultural criticism related to the last public execution in America, a legal lynching in Owensboro, Kentucky, where I was born. Ghost Life is a telling of genocide through the voices of Dmytro, a painter who survived the Holodomor, and Andi, his American-born daughter and an art historian at the Met. As these books find their way into the world, I’ll be writing about how I researched and wrote them, and how they’ve changed my way of working, as well as my activism.

In the next two months I’ll be wrapping up Wanderland as it has existed as a journal of travel and dreams during a life transition. I’ll be launching a newsletter in the months ahead around writing and adventure and will give you the option to subscribe when those changes are made. Thanks for your support as I determine how to be in the public view with these difficult stories.

My online class, Liberating Narratives with Corporeal Writing, is in May 2024, and is filling quickly. If you’d like a spot, reserve soon. I won’t be teaching workshops through the summer, but I do have a few spots for manuscript editing between now and the end of the year. You can check out how I might work with your book here.

Locorotondo street, via Alamy.

After delayed flights out of Ikaria and a wild chase through the airport in Rome, we arrived in Bari, Italy so late that our car rental agency was closed. My luggage had been lost and the Italians didn’t know if it would arrive, maybe a few days. With no buses or taxis after midnight, we thought we would be sleeping on the street, until our AirBNB owner called and said he was coming to get us. The next day we found our way to a local barbiere where Richard could get a beard trim, with a caffé  next door where I could sip espresso and read.

We’d arrived on October 1^st, and like most of the places on our journey, we were straggling behind the last of the tourists and observing the locals enjoying their first quiet after the summer season. Because we’d lived in a tourist town, we understood the necessity for this transitional moment, for remaining as unobtrusive as possible, of blending in and staying flexible. Off-season travel can involve a lot of patience as everything around closes, but it’s the best time for having sweeping spaces all to yourselves. That afternoon, we found a place that catered picnic supplies for a late lunch, and even though they were closing, they let us in, prego entra!  We grabbed our drinks and headed out to the sea, where we ate pasta and dolcetti de mandorle, and watched the Italians swim and laze about in beachbound rowboats bleached by the sun. Later that night Richard found he had food poisoning. I brought him cold cloths and he waited out the illness while I called the airlines to check on my luggage.

The road is resplendent, even when we go down. We want a steady kind of adventure, but through several decades where exploration and illness have sometimes coincided, that was proving elusive. At least we were getting good at taking care of each other.

Locorotondo from above, and from our trulli, street altar.

The next day we headed out to the airport again to scrounge through the airport for my bag, pick up my sister and her husband, and then we took off for the heel of the boot, Puglia. Also called Apulia, this region is home to folklore traditions, ancient histories and wild landscapes, from the dramatic coastline along the Parco Nazionale del Gargano to the scattered trulli in the Valle d’Itria. I’d had a recommendation from a friend to stay at a beautiful site at the center of hundreds of olive groves.

Scenes from in and around Masseria Aprile, including donkeys, the incredible breakfast buffet (slide eight is the tiramisu!) and with the guys walking the streets..

Masseria Aprile is a working farm that makes olive oil, wine, preserves, and has donkeys, chickens, and an extraordinary view of a white town on a hill—Locorotondo (say it with gusto, you know you wanna.) A masseria is a farmhouse complex built around the 16th century when the Spanish empire ruled the region and farmers repopulated deserted lands. Masseria Aprile had been renovated by a family who made these ancient houses for animals and farmhands into spectacular elegant rooms and apartments. We were greeted by Stefania, who is the thirteenth generation to  host visitors to her family’s land. She showed us down a magical lane of trulli, past a hospitality bar, and olive trees and I kid you not, due asini led by a nonno who was trying to control the animals’ stubborn braying.

A trullo, plural trulli, is a type of traditional round stone dwelling with a cone-shaped roof. They are unique to the Puglia region. Trulli are built using a dry stone construction method dating back thousands of years in the Puglia. Their construction arose out of a 14^th and 15^th century tax dodge, when property owners took off the roofs and disassembled the houses to avoid the collectors levying high taxes upon their properties. Our farmhouse was a central location to visit these white-washed towns including Martina Franca, and the UNESCO World Heritage site, Alberobello. We were within walking distance to the centro storico of Locorotondo, whose low whitewashed cummerse houses feature sloping roofs meticulously covered with small limestone slabs called chiancarelle, and have balconies adorned with flowers.

From our trullo, we walked to the breakfast room a few steps away each day for a custom coffee—the best I’ve ever had, sorry, Seattle—and a buffet of cheeses, breads, meats, and gorgeous cakes made by Stefania’s mama, who has been making these since before most of us were born. We ate a more- coffee-than-boozy tiramisu for breakfast, and were delirious for a day with joy and satiation.

Our outings included an e-bike journey from town-to-town, through vineyards and olive groves, followed by a luncheon at a nearby masseria that included twelve platters of homemade cheeses and salamis, vegetables, the housemade gelato, and of course, wine and espresso. In other places, we also feasted on Puglian favorites as burrata, teralli, orecciette with broccoli rabe, altamura bread, and panzerotti.

A few Puglian favorites after the bike ride. The local market.

One day we went to Gargano National Park, a promontory projecting itself out into the Adriatic Sea, and almost entirely covered by a massive and mountainous carsic rock. At the end of the summer season, this nature reserve on the Gargano peninsula had garbage on the beach, and a muddy ravine leading to a wild sea, but also sea-drenched wetlands against dense forests, and beautiful paths above the cliffs. We walked as far as we could go and sat in the wind until it was time for aperitifs.

From Gargano National Park, with the fam.

We also visited Sassi de Matera, an ancient town of caves built into rock and restored in the twentieth century. You might recognize it from the opening sequence of Wonder Woman, or James Bond in No Time To Die. We took a tour through the Rioni Sassi, including visiting a 12^th Century cave home and church. Something strange and mysterious happened to me there, so profound that it ignited another way of being, but not before taking my appetite for days, and altering my perception. I’ll be writing about this once I have the capacity for translating the events into language.

 National Geographic says that “Matera was once dubbed ‘the shame of Italy’ for its caves that housed the city’s poor and exploited rural workers; by the 1970s, it’d become a ghost town, the first time the settlement had been uninhabited in 10,000 years. Yet a decade later, its evocative beauty lay the foundations for an extraordinary revival, thanks to a group of enterprising local creatives (many descended from the original inhabitants) who spotted its potential.”

Matera at night and daytime, the 18th century baroque Chiesa del Purgatorio with its death decor, our guide sitting beside a burial vault. They buried their dead on the roofs over the caves, ensuring their ancestors were always above them.

Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, Matera has boutique hotels, restaurants and spas built into these caves, as well as its own film festival. Before leaving on the day of our visit, we mistakenly drove over cobblestone streets and right into its red carpet area, scoring us our first European traffic ticket in the mail after we arrived home. Oopsì.

There’s a way to see this region inexpensively, staying at hostels, using public transport, buying food at the grocery and making meals for about one-quarter of what groceries cost in the USA and Canada. We had apartment stays in Ikaria and Sardegna, making our travel less expensive in those places, but in Italy we splurged. We spent $270/couple/night (US) in an apartment with a kitchen and offering a giant breakfast that lasted us until dinner.

One of my favorite days in all of our travels was a lazy one, the four of us sitting on the porch of our trulli, watching the animals, having drinks, chatting with my sister and her husband, napping and snacking, and then taking in the sunset before we dressed for dinner.  We wanted to learn who we were again without the filter of short texts and holiday or funeral visits. In that mostly calm place, we found our way to each other.

What I’m considering after this trip:

How they created Paradise Island for Wonder Woman in Italy.

Apulian Almond Cookies.

Tiramisu Cake with Ombre Frosting. Not the one we had in Puglia, but I hope to make this soon.

What I’m reading:

This remarkable piece from my friend Cameron at The Sun.

This portrait of Solange.

This book by (not the other) Naomi, but from the one who runs UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice right here in Vancouver.

Not reading but watching and thinking about this conversation on cancel culture, out of Montreal.

You can find Sonya at~

My Instagram.

My Website.

The podcast I did with my kid.