Official website of Dianne Liuzzi Hagan, author
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My Story
I live a multicultural life and write about race, ethnicity, gender, politics, and cultural issues. I grew up in an interethnic family. My father was a first generation-born Italian American, and my mother, of Irish descent, was a World War II war bride from Australia. My parents were rare in that they were open to others who were different from their ethnic, cultural, political, and religious experiences. Such an upbringing ensured I see people as individuals without the veil of prejudice. That openness allowed me to see my husband Ronald, who is African American, for the person he is, not as a dermatological mass, perceived through bias and stereotypes. We met freshman year of college, married, had twin daughters, and over forty years later, our love endures. During those forty-plus years, I learned about race and racism in America through every day experiences, from microaggressions to the truly terrifying, and I write about those experiences in my books.
I earned my MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, an MS in Professional Education Studies with a concentration in multiculturalism from Le Moyne College, and a dual BS in Speech Communication and English Education from Syracuse University.
Reviews
Reader Review, Amazon.com
5.0 out of 5 stars21st Century American History
February 23, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
I rest better at night and believe more passionately in the power of love because of people like Dianne Liuzzi Hagan, a writer from Syracuse, New York, who currently resides in my hometown, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her adult life since college (where she met her husband Ron of 40 years) has been lived in consciousness of her American whiteness and its privileges: Ron is black; they have mixed race adult twin daughters.
Liuzzi Hagan’s 2017 published book of essays, To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love (Amazon.com) judiciously and painstakingly recounts the tragic loss of young black lives in America (exacerbated through the years of our nation’s first black presidency, televised), while she mourns with the Mothers and Families of the Movement, underscoring the indecency of America’s willful abandonment of criminal justice on behalf of our slain black sons and daughters.
Dianne takes up this mantle, actualizing, authenticating, and decrying the social injustices perpetrated on young blacks, urging us all to speak, to act, to live in harmony, forward, toward our shared destiny. We must reverse policies which allow for these deadly transgressions to continue with impunity.
Liuzzi Hagan’s conversation with us throughout Mothers is nicely balanced for differing perspectives, her outrage often muted, considering the factual consciousness of her terror in American blackness, whether in public accompanied by her husband or apart in terror for him.
She preaches her loudest truth through the power of their lasting love.
This is outstanding, therapeutic writing that resonates, immortalizes to souls unborn and through spirits departed. I found healing in these pages, felt tremendous gratitude, like Dianne, to have eluded the constant terror, which caught these dear Mothers, for another day!
The ending is abrupt, but I get that. The future’s up to us, to believe in, to work toward, together for good.
My Love and Gratitude to the Mothers of the Movement.
To Dianne: Thank you for writing what clearly breaks your heart, continually, to endure. Our sons and daughters are our gifts to the world, and Mothers ennobles them, us, and all humankind.
Thanks for letting the record show.
