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Charlie Gargiulo is the author of "Legends of Little Canada," a memoir told through the voice of his 13 year old self in the 1960's as he watched an urban renewal plan destroy his world by forcibly displacing his family and friends from their poor but tight-knit French-Canadian neighborhood in Lowell. The book gives witness to the final days of the community around Moody Street that Jack Kerouac recalled in many of his Lowell stories. His writing has appeared in Resonance, Merrimack Valley Magazine, the Lowell Review, the New Lowell Offering and the book compilation "Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell."
Following the destruction of Lowell's Little Canada, Charlie Gargiulo grew up in public housing. After serving in the military, he graduated summa cum laude from University of Massachusetts Lowell. Gargiulo became a legendary community and human rights activist and stopped forced displacement efforts like Little Canada from happening to others. In 2019, he was honored by the International Institute as one of the 100 most important figures in Lowell history who has worked on behalf of the city's immigrant population.
"I can put my hand on this old heart of mine and safely say Kerouac himself would have laughed and cried and absolutely loved this book."
-Kevin Ring, Publisher of Beat Scene Magazine
Reviewed by Carol Thompson for Readers' Favorite
Charlie Gargiulo’s Legends of Little Canada: Aunt Rose, Harvey’s Bookland, and My Captain Jack is a memoir rooted in the experience of growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts, during a time of upheaval and transformation. The book captures the author’s personal journey and the broader story of a community torn apart by urban renewal and stitched together by memory, kinship, and defiance. The narrative begins with the disappearance of Gargiulo’s father, a devastating event that uproots the family and forces a move into Lowell’s Little Canada neighborhood. Through the eyes of an eleven-year-old, readers enter a crowded tenement world where every wall seems thin, every street carries danger, and survival often depends on alliances. Gargiulo writes with honesty about his fears and the quiet strength he found in his mother and his Aunt Rose. Rose, with her steadfast faith and warmth, becomes a sanctuary for him, offering stability when everything else seems uncertain.
Charlie Gargiulo sketches the French Canadian, Irish, and Greek enclaves with humor and bluntness, exposing the rivalries, solidarities, and struggles that shaped the city. Through these stories, he highlights how working-class families coped with poverty, prejudice, and the constant threat of displacement. The memoir also foreshadows Gargiulo’s later activism, particularly when Captain Jack warns of the urban renewal projects that would raze Little Canada. The personal and political collide as the destruction of the neighborhood underscores themes of loss, injustice, and the power of ordinary people to resist. Anyone with roots in Lowell or the surrounding towns will find Legends of Little Canada compelling because it preserves a vanished neighborhood and gives voice to the families who lived there. Local readers will recognize streets, landmarks, and even cultural tensions between immigrant groups that defined the city’s identity. It’s also a book for anyone curious about immigrant neighborhoods and urban transformation.
