Marginal Man

Life of Emilio Goggio

De: Paul Redvers Brown

Narrado por: Joseph Callari

At nineteen, I made a promise to my eighty-three-year-old grandfather: I would one day tell his story and set the record straight. Fifty-five years later, this is that book—and I was that boy. I had imagined a simple tribute to the man I loved, something like the letter our family received eight months after his death in 1979.

From the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, it praised Professor Emilio Goggio as “a prime example of the professor with wide interests…the kind of figure that is so desirable today.” But the truth is more complicated. In life, my grandfather’s ideals often made him anything but desirable. His outspoken multiculturalism and early embrace of fascism—landed him not accolades, but imprisonment.

In the tense years before Italy’s invasion of Africa, and later during World War II, he was arrested and held as an enemy alien in Toronto. This is the real story—not just of a beloved professor, but of a man whose convictions put everything he loved at risk.

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©2024, 2025 Paul Redvers Brown (P)2025 Paul Redvers Brown

An Amazing Story Masterfully Told

Listeners will be drawn into this riveting biography of Emilio Goggio, written by his grandson, Paul Redvers Brown, and brought to life by the skilled voice of Joseph Callari, its narrator. They tell the story of Emilio Goggio, a poor Italian immigrant, who, at the age of 14, sets off on a steamer to America to find a better life and, thorough many ups and downs, becomes a celebrated scholar of romance languages in both America and Canada. Through his perseverance, he changed the way foreign languages are taught in school today by imbedding them in the culture and history of their origin. His struggles for acceptance and recognition, during the World War II era and the rise of fascism in Europe, are fueled by his undying passion to tell the world of the invaluable contributions and influences Italians had on art, literature, and science. This true story takes us physically and emotionally through the eyes of this complicated man with the masterful retelling of the author's story by Mr. Callari. The narrator magically makes the story come to life, enabling the reader to better understand the decisions Paul's grandfather made for himself and his family, his feelings of success and failure, and the intoxication of new political ideologies. His story has relevance today that will surprise the reader; don't miss it.