Award-winning author donates her work to Maplewood Library

Photo by Jackie Herships
From left, Robyn Whalen, senior information specialist at the Maplewood Library and Daniela Gioseffi, holding copies of her books.

Daniela Gioseffi moved to Maplewood five years ago, after spending 50 years in New York City. After taking a tour of the newly renovated Maplewood Library, Gioseffi decided to donate many of her books.

“I learned how wonderful the new library is,” she said. “I thought I’d be here [Maplewood] the rest of my life, I might as well donate my books here.”

Gioseffi has always believed that libraries are a great service to education.

“I’ve always been a fan of libraries,” she said. “The new library is fabulous.”

Growing up, Gioseffi said she was extremely shy.

“I hardly spoke before the age of 20,” she said. “I wanted to be an actress and was an actress in high school and college productions.”

Gioseffi attended Montclair University, majoring in English literature and speech and theatre, graduating in 1963.

“I played Eliza Doolittle,” she said. “I was a star of Montclair University Theatre when I was studying English.”

It was there she began publishing poetry in the campus literary magazine. She won a scholarship to study world drama at the speech at The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

Gioseffi began her career as a journalist for WSLA-TV in Selma, Ala. in 1961 during a summer off from Montclair State. She was abused by the KKK for going on an all-Black Gospel music show to make an announcement. The experience turned her into an activist and writer for the rest of her life.

Her anthology “Women on War: An International Anthology of Writings” won the American Book Award in 1990.

“I’ve written books on all sorts of subjects,” she said. “Most issues, human rights, poetry, social justice.”

She believes self-hatred is the root of all prejudice.

“People who have a lot of insecurity. Most people are struggling to feed their families, to have somebody to love,” she said. “It just takes a few evil ones to mess it up for the rest of us. Deep down they want to destroy everything.”

Her book “On Prejudice: A Global Perspective” was inspired to fight prejudice. Gioseffi discovered, with psychological research, that “self-hatred is projected onto someone who is different.” She has also spent a lot of her career writing about Italian American culture.

“Italians have been cruelly stereotyped in Hollywood,” she said.

Gioseffi is the author of 18 books of poetry and prose. She edits EcoPoetry.org, which receives 6,000 global visitors monthly. Her work has been in countless publications including The Nation, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Rain Taxi Review, and Chelsea Literary Review.

Her work appears in anthologies from publishers including Harper Collins, Viking, and Penguin Books, to name a few. She’s given readings in universities and libraries throughout New Jersey and New York.

Gioseffi’s next book, “Stardust Lives in Us” is coming out in November.