I learned a new word today: AUTOBIOGEOGRAPICAL. As you might suspect, it combines autobiography and geography to focus on  the geolocation of personal experiences such as travel, personal migration or important happenings.

Some people write their autobiogeographies by mapping, using an online social map service like Platial Maps. This is a free resource where hundreds of thousands of people around the world share and discover all kinds of Places. Anyone can map just about anything, including their towns, lives, travels, feeds, files, photos, video and stories in one simple interface. Others of us may still prefer to write in journals the old fashioned way. Even so, we often emphasize geography and The Spirit of Place. Regardless of the method we choose, our stories matter, and our stories are shaped by our physical environment.

Landmarks, neighborhoods, and streetscapes are the surroundings that shape our everyday story. How we celebrate  these locales tells us and others about the world we live in, the path we’ve traveled. For some of us this might mean putting push pins on a map to show the places we’ve lived and worked and visited. For others, it might mean telling stories of where to find the best Halloween pumpkins instead of streets or houses. We might remember how the shoreline smells or what the neighbor was baking. For the tourist, it might mean savoring the tastes and smells of restaurants in Istanbul or Athens or recalling the soundscape of Old San Juan or Old Havana.

As you might have noticed, many of these ways of mapping our world play out right in our own backyard or neighborhood. Everyone of us has heard the expression “life is a journey.” In fact, it’s been repeated so often that it sounds more than just a little bit trite. But travel writers from Homer and his Odyssey in the 8th century BC to Elizabeth Gilbert and Eat, Pray, Love in 2007 have all emphasized that personal journeys do matter. Traveling is not just about the trips we take or the places we visit when we’re on vacation. It’s also about the road we travel through life, the traditions and culture we grew up with and the heritage we leave for future generations. Our personal journey does matter, and it’s not at all trite.

Travelogues — or road journals — have always been popular, especially the ones that settle into a locality for an extended period, allowing us to absorb a Sense of Place. In the language of ‘slow travel,’  we become rooted in community and respectful of the spirit and customs of local residents.

One such travelogue — autobiogeography really — is the story of Dan Evans. Dan moved to East Harlem in the 1960s and has never turned back. Take a look and listen. You might find that you have an AUTOBIOGEOGRAPHY of your own that you’d like to tell.

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By the 1930s, the Italian population in East Harlem numbered 80,000. Once the largest Italian community in New York City, the neighborhood was bounded by East 119th Street, the East River, East 99th Street, and 3rd Avenue. So far as religion was concerned, the new residents practiced a form of Catholicism that incorporated folk traditions and religious festivals like the Feast of the Giglio (pronounced jeel-yo).

The festival has its roots in written texts and oral legends about St. Paulinus, the 5th century bishop of Nola, Italy. Stories tell of his willingness to accept imprisonment in exchange for the freedom of a widow’s only son. When he was freed, the much loved bishop was welcomed home with lilies. In fact, Giglio actually means lily, and the earliest Giglio celebrations were simply presentations of bouquets of lilies to the Catholic Church.

The Feast of the Giglio de Sant’ Antonio was inspired by the festival dedicated to St. Paulinus. It originated in the 1880s in Brusciano, a town near Nola, when Francisco Vivolo prayed to Sant’ Antonio to help cure his deathly ill child. In exchange for bringing the child back to health, Francisco vowed to honor Sant’ Antonio in the same manner that Nola honored St. Paulinus. Francisco’s prayers were answered and the dancing of the Giglio in Brusciano was born. Many people from Brusciano immigrated to East Harlem, bringing this tradition with them.

First celebrated in 1918, the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua is now sponsored under the auspices of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Shrine Church by the Giglio Society of East Harlem. This group of men has dedicated their lives to the honor of Sant’ Antonio, their beloved saint.

The authority of the Roman Catholic Church pervades the festival. Priests sprinkle holy water on the Giglio and the ‘lifters’ or Paranza. The church is symbolically borne on the shoulders of the lifters when priests ride the Giglio as guests of the feast.

The feast begins on Saturday with a street procession through the neighborhood in honor of Sant’ Angelo. This is followed in the evening by the Dancing of the Children’s Giglio. Pains are taken to make sure that each new generation takes part in the Feast. When children reach the required height — about three and a half feet — they become lifters in the Children’s Giglio, carrying scaled down versions of the adult structures. Giglio Sunday begins with a mass for the Paranza at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Shortly after the mass is over, the Dance of the Giglio begins.

For those unfamiliar with the Giglio, it is a 75-85 foot tall wooden tower decorated with papier mache replicas of saints, lilies, and other flowers. Weighing approximately 8,000 pounds, it sometimes requires over 100 lifters to get it off the ground.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, guilds and artisans vied to produce the best design. Festive music was added in the 17th century, and soon after the Giglio began to ‘dance.’ Music is so important to today’s Giglio that just above the base of the structure there is a platform large enough to carry a multi-piece band and several singers. Music inspires the lifters to such an extent that some say the Giglio would never get off the ground and dance without it. In East Harlem the most popular song is O Giglio di Cent’ otto or “The Giglio of 108th Street.”

The Giglio festival is very much about passing on traditions, riturals, and culture from one generation to the next. One Paranza said:

“My father ‘lifted’ … my grandfather and my uncles, they all did it. It’s in my blood. If they had it in the fifty states, I would go to every state.”

Another man says:

“Everyman who puts his shoulder to the giglio is performing a religious act. We have our fanfare and we have our fun, and you’ll see us laughing and joking. But we’re all doing penance. We’re doing it for deceased members of our families — a mother, a brother — to get them out of purgatory and let them rest in peace.”

A video of the 2008 Feast of the Giglio in East Harlem follows.

If you’d like, you can access our podcast of the Giglio Festival here.

Posted by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

Slideshow by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

The Heritage Traveler has decided to take the above advice — at least for the next several posts. Instead of traveling far afield, we are going to highlight a New York City neighborhood that’s about three and a half miles from my apartment. It’s called East Harlem, and we’ll spend the next several days there.

The ethnic make-up of East Harlem has changed many times over the years. Native Americans were displaced by the Dutch and they, in turn, were displaced by the Germans and the Irish. Later, Italian and Jewish immigrants moved in.

Puerto Ricans made the neighborhood their own after World War II, participating in Operation Bootstrap, a US government initiative to supply cheap labor to the manufacturing industry. Now, many Puerto Rican families have moved out to the suburbs, and West Africans, Chinese and Mexicans have moved in.

Class change is also transforming East Harlem, although it has beenslowed by the recent economic downturn. Still, increasingly, the upper middle class has been moving in as the working poor are being forced out.

Local artists are now calling the area between 104th and 107th streets around Lexington Avenue a cultural corridor. Here galleries are emerging, and open mics and classes in music and dance are thriving. Some of the community’s best mural art can also be seen in this area.

Since the late 1980s, artists have been commissioned by families and friends to create murals that commemorate the lives of loved ones, especially those dying violent deaths. In East Harlem, the memorials are usually created by professional and semi-professional Puerto Rican artists. Each wall transforms personal grief into public remembrance.

While some people think of the art as graffiti,  the stylistically authentic and individualistic street art is most often painted by permission on the walls of apartment buildings or playgrounds. It often highlights the lives of prominent Puerto Ricans like Celia Cruz and Pedro Pietri.

Work by Tats Cru — also known as The Mural Kings — has changed the perception of graffiti as art.  More than twenty-five years ago, as teenagers, this group began their careers by creating subway graffiti. Now they are professional muralists in the forefront of mural art. Known for their powerful, expressive style, the Bronx-based group has spearheaded the battle to change people’s perception of graffiti art. Largely because of their efforts, graffiti as an art form has been included in the Smithsonian Institute’s American Folklife Festival. Their work also adorns several New York public schools and hospitals. They have lectured at Hunter College, MIT, the University of Massachusetts, Cortlandt University, and many community based organizations.

Tats Cru is sought after by graffiti writers from all over the world who want to intern with them to improve their own ‘aerosol’ art form.

The murals of East Harlem, along with the many community gardens dotting the streets,  celebrate the Spirit of Place, preserving and promoting Puerto Rican cultural traditions even though the neighborhood is in the throes of change.

To learn more about the neighborhood, its people, and its mural art, take a look at the video below.

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Posted by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.
Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.
Slideshow by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.