In 1888, Talese’s grandfather, Gaetano, sailed to America in 1889, finding work as a mason in Pennsylvania. He returned to marry but returned to the U.S. without his wife and son Joseph.

His father, Joseph, a 16-year-old tailor’s apprentice from Calabria, came to Ocean City, N.J., eventually starting his tailoring and dry-cleaning operation. He met his wife Catherine at a wedding in Brooklyn, where she lived with her family in Park Slope. When naming their son after his grandfather, Catherine insisted on the Americanized Gay rather than Gaetano.