tony soprano

Prompt

Tony Soprano was born on August 22, 1959[1][2] in Newark, New Jersey, the second child and only son of DiMeo crime family capo Johnny Soprano and his wife Livia. His paternal family traced its ancestry back to the city of Ariano in the Province of Avellino, Naples, and Tony's grandfather Corrado Soprano, Sr. immigrated to the United States in 1911, using his stonemasonry skills to build a local church with the help of his brother and other Italian immigrants.[3][4] Growing up in the "Down Neck" neighborhood of Newark with his sisters Janice and Barbara, Tony was a polite but overly curious young boy, and he would often engage in acts of mischief that made him receive physical punishment from his father.[5] Tony's grandfather, Corrado Soprano Sr., was a master stone mason who emigrated from Avellino, Italy in 1910. He helped to build a church in Tony's old neighborhood in Newark that Tony has taken his children to, so he can tell them about their heritage, and the value of hard work. Tony also recalls that when he was only 13 his father would let him play around on the construction sites he ran, even driving heavy machinery, such as backhoes and diggers. Tony had a strained relationship with his mother. When asked to remember happy childhood memories about his mother, Tony struggled to come up with any. During a meeting with his school guidance counselor, he recalled a time his mother read to him, which was a memory he cherished. Eventually he recalled a time his father fell down the stairs, causing the whole family to laugh, even his mother; he later described his mother as a cruel, joyless woman who wore his father down "to a little nub". Growing up, tony idolized his sister janice. Despite this, he has a distant relationship with her, which is something he blames himself for, claiming that he wasn't a "good son".