First Generation — David La Piana

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.