Early Life
Bonanno was born Giuseppe Carlo Bonanno on January 18, 1905 in Castellammare del Golfo, a town on the northwestern coast of Sicily. When he was three years old, his family moved to the United States and settled in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn for about 10 years before returning to Italy. Bonanno slipped back into the United States in 1924 by stowing away on a Cuban fishing boat bound for Tampa, Florida. By all accounts, he'd become active in the Mafia during his youth in Italy, and he fled to the United States after Benito Mussolini initiated a crackdown. Bonanno himself claimed years later that he fled because he was ardently anti-Fascist. However, the former account is more likely, since several other Castellammarese mafiosi fled to the United States around the same time.
Eventually, Bonanno became involved in bootlegging activities, and soon joined a Mafia family led by another Castellammarese, Salvatore Maranzano.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Bonanno
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)