Most people sign their names on forms, emails and notes without giving it a second thought, but every time I write my name or introduce myself, there’s a twinge of hesitation.
Last week, I stood in a small art gallery in the East Village and stared at a list of names spelled out in black vinyl letters and affixed to a wall near the entrance. As people moved through the space looking at the actual artwork, I stood with my eyes locked on my own name, slowly analyzing each letter. I was simultaneously proud and disgusted because I couldn’t shake the fact that my accomplishments are linked to the name of a man who assaulted my grandmother, refused to acknowledge my father’s birth and doesn’t even know I exist.
In the latter years of World War II, as part of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) program, my grandmother Josephine Jovino, born and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, was shipped out to the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, where she worked as an aviation mechanic. While living there, she met Cecil. They went on a single date, he sexually assaulted her, and they never spoke again after that night. My grandmother had not only experienced a great trauma, but she soon discovered she was pregnant with her abuser’s child. She sent a letter to Cecil telling him about the pregnancy, but he never responded.
