Don’t Let Them Take Your Boots!
A Fable
Author’s Note: The story of Italian immigrant Giacomo Mazzone is a folkloric meditation on identity, loss, and the dehumanizing indifference of New York in the early 20th century. As in Nikolai Gogol's “The Overcoat,” published in 1842, Akaky Akakievich finds his existence defined and ultimately undone by a stolen coat; Giacomo’s stolen boots symbolize …
