Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum

1924 - 2024

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum
January 3, 1924 - January 7, 2024
Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum passed away January 7, 2024, having just celebrated her 100th birthday with family and friends in Oakland, Calif. Lucia was born January 3, 1924 in Kansas City, Miss. She was part of a large Sicilian American family. Her father, Turiddu (Salvatore) Chiavola was born in Sicily; while her mother, Catarina (Katie), was born in Missouri. She, a Catholic, married Wallace Birnbaum, who was Jewish and from New York, in 1945 during WWII, after meeting at a USO dance. Only a few months after meeting, they eloped, expecting resistance from their respective families. Their "mixed" marriage caused quite a disruption within the New York and Missouri families. This rift was healed when the grandchildren began to arrive and the two families from disparate cultures discovered that they had a lot in common.
Lucia was awarded her Ph.D in European and U.S. Intellectual History at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964. She had to overcome the entrenched norm that women were not suited for academia, being told often by the Ph.D Committee to "stay home and raise your kids," but she persevered with a vision. She went on to be a professor at San Francisco State, and the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she was Professor of Philosophy, Religion, Humanities, and the program in Women's Spirituality. She sometimes self-described herself as great-grandmother (LuLu nanna, Granma Cille, Granma Lucia), witch grandmother (strega nonna), feminist cultural historian, professore emerita, and nonviolent revolutionary.
She was the author of several books: "Liberazione della donna: Feminism in Italy" (American Book Award of Before Columbus Foundation), followed by "Black Madonnas: Feminism, religion and politics in Italy". Then, capping the trilogy, "Darkmother: African origins and godmothers". Lucia also gathered an Anthology of Writing in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality: "She is Everywhere". She further published: "The Future has an Ancient Heart, Legacy of Caring, Sharing, Healing, and Vision from the Primordial African Mediterranean to Occupy Everywhere". And a final publication in 2015 of the deeply personal: "Blackbird and the Pear Tree".
Lucia led several study tours to Italy and beyond with her students and colleagues, exploring the historical and spiritual roots of humanity in order "to dismantle untrue cultural and political assumptions by offering truthful historical knowledge that will accelerate the end of wars and other violence, and the creation of equal and just societies."
In 2014, at the age of 90, she led a trip to Sicily for 15 family members. She expounded on the historical significance of the sites visited, as the family's tour guide. As the family matriarch, she conducted the tour not as professorial lecturer, but encouraged the family to personally connect with their own heritage. Fearlessly, she also took a helicopter ride over Mount Etna, perhaps their oldest passenger ever.
Lucia, while achieving academic and literary success, had an even more profound effect on her family. Her loving warmth and staunch values were embraced by her husband (who passed away in 2012); her three sons; three daughters-in-law; eight grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren. Further, she has had a great influence as a teacher and mentor. Her scholarly and spiritual legacy continues through her former students and colleagues.
As per Lucia's wishes, her ashes will be scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
A remembrance gathering will be announced later.