This Maliditta Terra: Italian American Literature in the early Twentieth Century

Arne Knapen Master's thesis for Master in American Studies Academic year 2014-2015

Promotor Professor Codde

18.530 words 2

Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...... 3

2. Research Question ...... 6

3. Methodology and Theoretical Frame...... 7

4. Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant ...... 13

4.1 Biography and Publication History ...... 13

4.2 Summary and Narration ...... 14

4.3 Ethnicity and Identity...... 16

4.4 Conclusion ...... 21

5. Christ in Concrete ...... 21

5.1 Biography and Publication History ...... 21

5.2 Summary and Narration ...... 22

5.3 Ethnicity and Identity...... 24

5.4 Conclusion ...... 32

6. Mount Allegro ...... 33

6.1 Biography and Publication History ...... 33

6.2 Summary and Narration ...... 34

6.3 Ethnicity and Identity...... 35

6.4 Conclusion ...... 40

7. Conclusion ...... 42

8. Bibliography ...... 47

8.1 Primary Bibliography ...... 47

8.2 Secondary Bibliography ...... 47

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Abstract

More than five million Italians crossed the Atlantic Ocean around the turn of the twentieth century. They serve as a reference point for this study analyzing three immigrant narratives written by Italian American writers: Marie Hall Ets' Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant, Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete and Jerre Mangione's Mount Allegro. This paper contributes to formulating an answer to one of the core questions in American Studies: who, and what, is truly American? Does E Pluribus Unum hold up once times get tough? Certainly in contrast with the traditional Italian society of the nineteenth century, elements such as individualism, materialism and freedom quickly surfaced as typically American in these novels. On the other hand, the narratives also displayed systematic violence, exploitation and the unwavering pressure to assimilate on the part of American society. In the end, the analysis of three representations of the social and cultural dynamics of assimilation and ethnicity also draws attention to the humane aspect of mass immigration.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my friends and family for their continued love and support. Special gratitude goes out to my partner, Laura Coorevits, and brother, David Knapen, for asking the hard questions and helping me proofread this thing. I would also like to thank my classmates Matthew Lutwen and Pauline Marguerithe for the frequent and helpful discussions on our respective subjects. Finally, my gratitude goes out to Prof. Kennard and Prof. Kroes, for helping me improve my academic writing and supplying me with books, and to my promotor Prof. Codde in particular, for his helpful guidance and constructive criticism.

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1. Introduction

"Who was this new man, this American? We do not yet know. But finding an answer to Crèvecœur's famous query dominates our cultural history for decades."1- Howard Mumford Jones

The 20th century has been poetically named the age of wandering by Sten Pultz Moslund2; the mass migration of people caused by social, political and economic circumstances has undoubtedly transformed modern-day societies around the world. Yet, if we acknowledge the rampant globalization and consequent mobility of more recent decades, the 21st century might very well become the age of migration. Therefore, it is certainly worthwhile to direct our academic gaze to the past experiences of ethnic minorities. The unique history of the United States of America in relation to migration and ethnicity offers opportunities for a nuanced discussion.

Historically, ethnicity and immigration have always been at the heart of American society. Migrants played an important role in the rise of the US as a superpower, yet the related issues of systematic discrimination and exploitation in the past were undeniably traumatic, and remain essentially unresolved to this day. Typically, in times of extreme crisis, the American Dream and identity come under heavy scrutiny. E Pluribus Unum might still inspire hope in many hearts, yet who is truly an American when times get tough? As early as, 1904 the famous American author Henry James hits the nail on the head after a visit on Ellis Island:

"Which is the American, by these scant measures? Which is not the alien, over a large part of this country at least, and where does one put a finger on the dividing line, or, for that matter, 'spot' and identify any particular phase of the conversion, any one of its successive moments."3

If we consider literature as, "among many things, the mirror of the society in which it is conceived, created, and perceived"4, ethnic literature offers a unique perspective into the quest for inclusion by immigrants. Even though it might be impossible to answer James' question fully or correctly in this manner, the dynamics between the dominant mainstream culture and ethnic minorities can certainly be expanded upon. One of the main goals of ethnic literature is addressing negative

1 Jones, 1964, p. 394 2 Moslund, 2010, p. 11 3 James, 1907, p. 124 4 Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity: In (Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer, 1998, p. 4 5

stereotypes of racial groups on the fringe of society.5 Either by outright debunking such prejudice or by offering a truer, more nuanced, look into the lives of these outsiders, ethnic literature thoroughly embraces its role as a unifying—and universal—agent.

One of the most relevant ethnic minorities to immigration in America today are the Italians. According to figures provided by the Department of Homeland Security, exactly 5,475,321 Italians have obtained citizenship in the US starting from 1820 until 2013.6 More than 80% of those immigrants crossed the Atlantic Ocean between 1880 and 1929. Similar to the turn of the globalized twenty-first century, the turn of the twentieth century proved to be a pivotal era in world history. The advent of the Industrial Revolution brought forth a complete redefinition of time, work and community. Furthermore, the gradual urbanization of America coincided with this era of mass immigration. According to David Ward "by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, immigrants and their American-born children accounted for two thirds or more of the population of cities in the industrial center of the economy."7 It seems obvious that the large presence of foreigners in the growing metropolises induced the prominent nativist suspicion of urban values. One particularly poignant account of these societal changes can be found in Pietro di Donato's celebrated novel Christ in Concrete (1939).

The confrontation of the Italian immigrants with these American nativists was surely to be expected, yet the opposition quickly intensified and became a veritable ideology. While the first waves of immigrants, mostly Germans and Irish people around 1860, had proven a nuisance, at least they shared the same skin color. The Southern European immigrants of the second wave, however, were dark-skinned, devout Catholics. These physical and ideological differences led to a lot of racial and religious discrimination, similar to the alienation faced by Arab, African and East Asian immigrants today. Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant, a biography written by Marie Hall Ets in 1970, vividly portrays the religious life of its catholic protagonist and her interaction with protestant Americans.

Besides global changes and societal challenges, the third important component of ethnic identity, according to Anthony Julian Tamburri and Fred L. Gardaphé, is individual heritage. The dynamic between present and past is undeniably influenced by a relocation in space. Generally, reverence for the Old Country declines over generations since first-hand experiences and stories become more and more distant from the present and the future. In Jerre Mangione's autobiography, Mount Allegro (1943),

5 Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity: In (Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer, 1998, p. 4 6 Statistics, 2014 7 Ward, 1971, p. 51 6

these colorful stories and the differences between first- and second-generation immigrants are rendered from a uniquely distant yet personal perspective.

Thus, considering the particular historical experience of the Italian American immigrants and the insight into identity formation and societal mechanics offered by literature, a comprehensive analysis of these three Italian American narratives dealing with the immigrant experience in the early twentieth century will contribute to an increased understanding of identity and ethnicity in the US.

2. Research Question

The goal of this paper, then, is to perform an extensive analysis of those three Italian American immigrant narratives: Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant, Christ in Concrete and Mount Allegro. Informed by a theoretical frame stemming from literary, cultural and ethnic studies, I will attempt to contribute to one of the central questions of American Studies: who, and what, is truly American? In order to answer these question from the perspective of ethnic literature, a few other questions naturally arise. For instance, how do social and cultural power structures influence the (trans)formation of ethnic identity? What is the role of language in the representation of this process? Who really decides if one assimilates? And how do different perspectives influence the perception of the Old and the New World? The study of early ethnic literature allows for the necessary focus on cultural and social dynamics in American society around the turn of the 20th century. All three books considered have a different narrative structure and perspective: the biography of a first-generation North-Italian woman, a novel about a second-generation Central-Italian child and the autobiography of an almost fully assimilated Sicilian American man. The diversity with regards to region, age and gender offers a broad scope for the analysis. Naturally, the differences between the three books will be essential to forming a comprehensive conclusion.

When reading or writing a cultural study, one should consider the criticism of, among others, Donald Morton and Mas’ud Zavarzadeh on "dominant or experiential cultural studies that offer a description of the exotic ‘other’ and thus provide the bourgeois reader with the pleasure of contact with 7

difference."8 Instead, they claim, it should be an intervention and attempt to change the conditions which have blocked those suppressed voices in the first place.

3. Methodology and Theoretical Frame

Before diving headfirst into complex methodologies and critical theory, allow me to substantiate my choice to use Italian American instead of Italian-American. English grammar outright demands a grapheme (a hyphen or a slash) between two such terms, yet, because of the recent polemic surrounding punctuation in this context, I have chosen to use the most neutral form possible. Julian Anthony Tamburri, on the contrary, has argued in his book To Hyphenate or Not to Hyphenate: The Italian/American Writer: An Other American that the hyphen in Italian-American symbolizes the distance and cultural hierarchy between the two groups, and, thus, should be avoided. Instead, he proposes to use Italian/American since the forward slash adheres to grammatical rules and shortens the physical distance. Additionally, it keeps the dominant perspective of the latter ethnic group intact, since Tamburri is unwilling to recognize the achievement of equality that a white-space could symbolize.9 While his argument is certainly interesting and well-informed, such a militant position seems inappropriate for an outsider.

Even though the field of American Studies is assuredly in line with the inter-disciplinary mindset necessary for this extensive study, political forces in the 1960s have dictated the creation of a new academic field to deal specifically with race, ethnicity and power relations in society: Ethnic Studies. It emerged directly out of the Civil Rights movement; unsurprisingly, then, it is seen as one of the more politicized fields of study. Student organizations in the US around 1970 vehemently opposed the Eurocentric perspective adhered to by more traditional academic disciplines and organized various protests and strikes, most famously conducted by the Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State University and The University of California at Berkeley. The excessive use of force by police officers at Berkeley, deployed by the Governor of California Ronald Reagan, swayed less militant students and personnel, forcing the university's administration to found an independent Ethnic Studies department. The early endeavors of the contested discipline were very much dedicated to the study of non-European

8 Zavarzadeh, 1991, p. 8 9 Tamburri, To Hyphenate or Not to Hyphenate: The Italian/American Writer: An Other American, 1991 8

10 11 repressed and marginalized ethnic groups within the US. In recent years, however, its focus has shifted towards a more transnational approach with regard to power relations in general, similar, in a way, to American Studies.12 The growing relationship between Ethnic and American Studies is reflected in diverse manners of institutionalization; while some universities have merged both departments, others remain hesitant to do so. The methodologies and scopes of both fields converge in the analysis in this Master's thesis.

While Ethnic Studies has contributed immensely to the academic discourse on multiculturalism and identity politics, because of its political background, European American minorities remained largely out of focus for about twenty years. In the 1990s, however, famous American writer Ishmael Reed proclaimed the European American ethnic Renaissance and credited Italian American Studies for injecting some crucial theoretic models.13 Recognizing the ineffectiveness of the fixed melting pot- theory, literary critics such as Anthony Julian Tamburri and Fred L. Gardaphé developed methodological theories that acknowledge the ever-shifting intersection between ethnic specificity and American reality. Their emphasis on the fluidity of ethnic identity enabled a valuable definition based on three variables: the individual's ethnic heritage, the diverse American present and the societal challenges of an inclusive and globalized future.14 These three categories will help to inform the analysis of ethnic identity (trans-)formation in this paper.

The conscious choice to analyze three stories with differing forms of narration coincides with Fred L. Gardaphé's Vichian division of Italian American literature in three stages. Giambattista Vico, an Italian philosopher in the 18th century, was a pioneer in the philosophy of history and believed that history is essentially cyclical and comprises three stages: the Age of Gods, characterized by pure, poetical expression, the Age of Heroes, which signifies the creation of myths, and, finally, the Age of Man, or self-reflective philosophical prose. Similarly, Gardaphé divides Italian American literary history in three stages. Writers of the first poetic, or pre-modernist, phase only render bare experiences and emotions, without analytical considerations. The second, mythic or modernist, writer, on the other hand, becomes more aware of the dominant culture and engages in comparative and analytical critique. The philosophic, or post-modernist, writer has experienced both sides of the coin and can therefore take a step back, both temporally and cognitively, and consider his subject from a distance. In In

10 History of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University 11 History of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley 12 Deloria, 2003, p. 669 13 Reed, 1997, p. 20 14 Hendin, 2001, p. 142 9

(Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer, Anthony Julian Tamburri synthesizes Gardahpé's theory with similar paradigms created by Daniel Aaron (local colorist, militant protester and American)15 and Charles Sanders Peirce (firstness, secondness, thirdness)16 and created three, non-hierarchical, stages: expressive, comparative and synthetic narratives.17 Since Tamburri's paradigm encompasses and considers all three aforementioned theories, I will use his terminology to describe the evolution of early Italian American literature. Besides offering an interesting historical perspective, Fred L. Gardaphé’s ground-breaking Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative also attempts to ethnographically analyze the multicultural contexts in which Italian American literature is created:

"By approaching a text ethnographically, we can better understand it as a communicative event determined by the cultural constraints within which the writer performed. A judgment of the author’s competence and performance will necessarily be tied to the cultural contexts in which the writer worked."18

The first step of such an ethnographic approach, inspired by Gramsci’s notion of self-inventory, is to compile an inventory of specifically Italian signs that appear throughout Italian American narratives. Gardaphé describes four categories of signs that mark Italianità, or the qualities associated with Italian culture, such as language, proverbs, folklore, and certain cultural codes19: linguistic signs (for instance code-switching and the rendition of dialects), stylistic signs (meaning oral and literate narrative models), and ideological signs (which identify the dominant and minority cultures within the text or the spiritual attitudes of the Italian American writers).

Although Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant is technically a biography—Rosa, unable to read or write, asked her friend Marie Hall Ets to write down her life story—the emphatic presence of the I- narrator makes it very close to an autobiography. Jerre Mangione's Mount Allegro is undoubtedly an autobiography and Pietro di Donato also shows autobiographical tendencies in the novel Christ in Concrete. William Boelhower's book Immigrant Autobiography in the United States (Four versions of the Italian American Self) therefore certainly applies to Rosa: The Life on an Italian Immigrant, as well as

15 Aaron, 1964 16 Peirce, 1868 17 Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity: In (Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer, 1998, p. 13 18 Gardaphé, 1996, p. 19 19 Gardaphé, 1996, pp. 16-17 10

Mount Allegro. In this book, Boelhower argues that the closing of the frontier and the sudden growth of American cities, caused by mass immigration, triggered a radicalization of the American identity:

"But if the quintessential American type's topology was the land and the land was now a finite container, a boundary imposing limits he had never known, then, yes, he really did have to redefine at least his spatial self-conception. And if the metropolis was stretching hydralike across the land and proliferating ghettoes every which way, then there was no spatial relief, no homogenous topology in sight. All this led to a semantic catastrophe; the rise of Anglo-Saxonism and the quest for national conformity were the result."20

The nationalist sentiment created by the confrontation of true American frontiersmen and foreign urban dwellers strengthened a national ideology that leaned heavily on individualistic values and American exceptionalism. Thus, these true American exceptionalists essentially opposed the birth of the US as a modern and industrialized nation. In other words, the influx of ethnic diversity and the schisms it created, led to a paradigm shift in America's national values. Naturally, the sudden influx of ethnic diversity further decreased American homogeneity and had a severe impact on the US' cultural values. William Boelhower argues that the immigrant autobiography is one of the main agents in this shift:

"It is through this genre in particular, so essentially concerned with designing and defending the self and its world, that one can study the holding pattern of the monocultural paradigm of the dominant culture and the radical inversion of it in immigrant autobiographical texts. Indeed, this multi-ethnic narrative model, with its new optic and new topology, appeared precisely when America's traditional narrative panorama was undergoing a radical revision, when its boundaries were too self-consciously fixed, its habitat more and more metropolitan, its ritual self so apparently fallen."21

Thus, the immigrant autobiography of the early 20th century was both the mirror and the cause of a cultural shift in American society. The emerging myriad of diverse voices was met by the resistance of traditional American values. No longer was ethnic diversity accepted and expected to assimilate into one homogenous nation. Or, as Boelhower beautifully states, "the salad bowl substituted the melting pot."22 The narrators of these autobiographies, thus, play a significant role in the presentation of the modern condition. Somewhat reminiscent of Sigmund Freud's mental defense mechanisms, William

20 Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, 1982, p. 14 21 Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, 1982, p. 17 22 Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, 1982, p. 20 11

Boelhower recognizes four different behavioral patterns, or narrative strategies in migrant autobiographies:

"1) a confirmation of the codes of the dominant culture; 2) a variation of these codes, in which the dominant culture is respected but some of its uncontested possibilities are tried; 3) a negation of the dominant codes; 4) a substitution of the dominant culture with a counter-cultural alternative."23

In addition to this noteworthy account of the cultural and nationalistic transformations caused by mass immigration, the four described narrative strategies will certainly help to analyze and interpret both Rosa, The Life of an Italian Immigrant and Jerre Mangione's Mount Allegro. With respect to Christ in Concrete, which also demonstrates autobiographical characteristics, Boelhower believes it necessary to specifically define the genre of the immigrant novel for two reasons: literary history and the text itself.24 Firstly, the recovery of novels that had been previously categorized as, for instance, farm novels, city novels or radical novels, leads to the creation of a whole new literary paradigm which, in turn, allows for the uncovering of genre-specific characteristics. Ignoring the existence of such a genre can lead to a monocultural world view which silences these ethnic voices. Secondly, the interpretation of novels within a specific genre creates intertextuality that might previously have remained unrecognized. In order to appreciate fully the semantic coherence of a novel, it is, thus, essential to create a narrative model that takes into account these similarities.

The first step in defining a genre is to create a formal model in order to facilitate the distillation of typical qualities or series of conventions from the texts. In the case of the immigrant novel, the central theme will consistently be one of inclusion and exclusion, or as Boelhower formulates it:

"An immigrant protagonist(s), Representing an ethnic world view, Comes to America with great expectations, And through a series of trials Is led to reconsider them

23 Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, 1982, p. 20 24 Boelhower, The Immigrant Novel as a Genre, 1981, p. 3 12

In terms of his final status."25

The dynamics between the immigrants' expectations, experiences and separation from their home can be represented schematically in a fabula diagram:26

Figure 1

Clearly, the poles of tension that run throughout the immigrant novel as a genre are the Old World and the New World, as well as the idealized and experienced reality. In a chronological view, the three turning points in migrant narratives are expectation, contact and resolution. In other words, the contact with the New World leads to the disappointment of high expectations, while the separation from the Old World transforms the negative reality into an idealized past. Additionally, the protagonists often share a set of similar characteristics: They are foreigners and immigrants; they are naïve, ignorant of American life in all its facets, have a language barrier, are unassimilated, and, crucially, hopeful.27 Finally, Boelhower’s frame of reference is completed by the abstraction of certain recurring elements in immigrant novels:

Figure 2

25 Boelhower, The Immigrant Novel as a Genre, 1981, p. 5 26 Boelhower, The Immigrant Novel as a Genre, 1981, p. 5 27 Boelhower, The Immigrant Novel as a Genre, 1981, p. 6 13

The complete model created by William Boelhower in The Immigrant Novel as a Genre allows for the codification of narratives and the comparison of several immigrant narratives with regard to the strength of ethnic identity. In the end, it is not the comparative value of his model that is relevant to this paper, yet its recognition of "a pluricultural reality depicting minority cultures with specific languages, world views, customs and memories"28 enables the rooting of the American Dream in various specific historical contexts and, thus, should undoubtedly be one of the main goals of all cultural studies.

In conclusion, this study on ethnic identity formation of the early Italian immigrants in the US is heavily influenced by critical theories from social, literary and ethnic studies. Similar to the thinkers responsible for the so-called European American ethnic Renaissance, the definition of ethnic identity employed here is one based on three elements: individual heritage, American society and a globalized future. Parallel to this temporally threefold conception of identity, it presents a historical interpretation of immigrant narratives inspired by the theories of Giambattista Vico. Expressive, comparative or synthetic narratives: each stage has its own characteristics and role to play in the rendition of the ethnic experience. When we zoom in on the specifically Italian cultural paradigm, or Italianità, linguistic, stylistic and ideological signs mark the core of communal and individual heritage. When confronted with the preeminent American present, on the other hand, the narrator has four possible reactions: the confirmation, negation, variation or substitution of the dominant culture’s influence. Finally, in taking a step back and considering the universal migratory experience, William Boelhower’s fabula theory offers a sound paradigm to interpret individual narratives in the larger frame of expectation, contrast and resolution.

4. Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant

4.1 Biography and Publication History

Marie Hall Ets (1895-1984) was a Wisconsinite writer and well-known illustrator of children's books. After the death of her husband in a war-training camp for World War I, mere weeks after their marriage, her friends convinced her to leave the art world and become a social worker. Ets complied and moved to Chicago in 1918 where she enrolled at the University of Chicago to obtain a degree in social services. The university advised her to lodge in the Chicago Commons, a smaller and friendlier environment than the

28Boelhower, The Immigrant Novel as a Genre, 1981, p. 12 14

highly-esteemed Hull House. A few days after moving in, Marie Hall Ets was found weeping in her room by Mrs. Cavalleri, or Mrs. C as she was generally called. Mrs. C did not know Marie at all, yet tried to comfort her by doing what she did best: telling stories from her childhood in Italy. That day the two

29 30 women forged a bond that would last until Rosa Cavalleri died in 1943.

Around 1928, ill health forced Marie Hall Ets to give up social work, and she returned to writing. After studying at the Art Institute, she soon published a picture book for children: Mister Penny. Excited to see her friend do better, Rosa proposed she write down some of her celebrated stories. Day by day, she told Marie her incredible life-story and the result of this process was first published in 1970 as Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant. Marie Hall Ets describes the experience in the introduction to the biography:

"So, little by little, as she rested in my room I took her stories down. In the days of Rosa's childhood the poor could neither read nor write, so the stories they told were all traditional. Of course Rosa added new parts to make them more interesting, and she acted them out vividly, but when written down these stories held little that would interest moderns. It was the amazing story of her life and of the fears and superstitions and beliefs of the people of her village that interested me. These did seem worth taking down and passing on. And Rosa was anxious to have me do so."31

4.2 Summary and Narration

Rosa's biography is quite long and complex; however, a short summary will be provided in order to facilitate the understanding of the subsequent analysis. The story is rendered by an intra- and autodiegetic I-narrator and focalized internally through Rosa herself. Rosa is, thus, both the narrator and protagonist of the book. The temporal distance between her narrating and narrative is clearly noticeable in the consistently retrospective nature of the story and the conclusion being written in present and future tense. Her reliability as a narrator can certainly be questioned since she was directly involved, relies solely on memory and is prone to exaggerating stories for dramatic effect. Even though the book features an I-narrator, it cannot be considered an autobiography. Marie Hall Ets declares in the

29 Even though Ets had changed the names of Rosa, her friends and their respective villages, it was later discovered that Rosa's real name was Ines Cassettari. For the sake of clarity, however, I will continue to use Rosa Cavalleri. 30 Perez, 2010 31 Ets, 1970, p. 7 15

introduction to have selected and ordered Rosa's stories. Additionally, she was forced to redact Rosa's colorful language:

"Since Mrs. C could read and write no English and very little Italian, she could make no notes. She just had to tell me things as she remembered them, and let me put them in order. First I took down her words in heavy dialect, as she spoke them. But this proved too difficult for the reader. Thus in this more recent version I have corrected and simplified the text, trying, at the same time not to lose the character and style of her spoken words."32

The story starts off when Rosa is born in 1866 or 1867. Her biological mother, supposedly a famous actress in Milan, leaves her in the torno of a foundling hospital. Rosa then spends her first years being passed around from one foster mother to the other, until she finds a home in a little village called Bugiarno with Mamma Lena. Lena is a strict and vindictive woman, yet clearly has Rosa's best interests at heart. Even when Rosa's biological mother returns to reclaim her, Lena does not relent, proves that the actress in unfit to be a mother and officially adopts Rosa. Mamma Lena is also a deeply religious person. She sends Rosa to the convent at age 10. Naturally, the religious education has an enormous influence on Rosa and her Catholic faith will be an important factor throughout the story. Another constant throughout her youth is hunger and poverty. Rosa is constantly craving for a better life, yet does not refrain from helping others in need.

After three years in the convent, she is forced to marry a much older and better-off man. Santino often abuses Rosa sexually, mentally and physically. Even though she is pregnant, Rosa is relieved when he leaves to find work in the United States. After her first son, Francesco, is born, however, Rosa is called to leave him with Mamma Lena and reunite with her husband in Missouri. Horrible years of abuse in the mining camp ensue. When Santino demands she run a brothel in the woods for him, Rosa takes her children and runs away to Chicago. One of her best friends in the camp, Gionin, has warned his family beforehand and they gladly take in the exhausted mother and children. After a quite absurd legal procedure, in which Rosa proves never to have said yes in the first place, Rosa is allowed to divorce Santino and marry Gionin. The following years are spent in relative happiness despite the dire conditions caused by the Great Depression and racial discrimination. In the end, the family Cavalleri finds a home and the support of a community in the Chicago Commons.

32 Ets, 1970, p. 7 16

4.3 Ethnicity and Identity

"Year after year, decade after decade, they arrived by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions. (...) Who they were, what they sought, and what they found here is one of the grand themes and motifs of the American past. (...) To know the full meaning of immigration for this country we should follow them to their new homes and new jobs, observe them as they adjust to this strange land, raise families, and seek to fulfill their vision."33

Too often the immigrant experience is described and related to us by an outsider, journalists and social workers alike, but Rosa is one of the few authentic expressions of the early immigrant experience. Additionally, because the stories of young immigrant wives and mothers are both heroic and underrepresented, the historical importance of Rosa is enhanced by the fact that she is a woman. Compatible with her status as an outstanding story-teller, Rosa's account of her traditional Italian upbringing and journey to New York, Missouri and Chicago is incredibly vivid and detailed. Woven into her personal story is a valuable ethnographic narrative.34 The reader is effortlessly taken along her path and shown the family dynamics, working conditions and religious, or superstitious, beliefs of the North- Italians. Once arrived in America, she inspires admiration for the immigrants when describing the hardships of discrimination and exploitation that befall her family. Besides its historically representative qualities, Rosa is also an individual document which renders an empathetic, independent and religious protagonist. Her personal growth throughout the story is both remarkable and interesting with regard to the analysis of ethnic identity.

Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant is clearly a historically expressive narrative with regards to Tamburri's Vichian paradigm. While Rosa sometimes does make comparisons between her own and the dominant culture, they are separated from the main story by a sudden switch to the present tense. These sparse remarks are often informed by a persistent, and seemingly ironic, nationalistic pride and bare little consequence to her actual situation. Her story features neither modernist great ideas nor post-modern distance and is, thus, a testament to the immigrant firstness. In Scienze Nuova, for instance, Giambattista Vico categorizes the human need to interpret natural signs as the power of a superior being as a part of the Age of Gods, or the pre-modernist condition.35

33 Ets, 1970, p. v 34 Femminella, 1972, p. 85 35 Vico, 1725 17

"God was striking the Devil with the lightning when it hit Angelina. How would it feel to be dead like Angelina and the worms? The storm had killed lots of the strong worms in the houses had killed all our poor weak worms in the court. God and the Devil were everywhere. There was no place you could go to hide from them." (38)

Rosa here demonstrates her strong, traditional belief in God and at the same time reveals her fear of him. The figure of the Madonna plays an important role in this relationship as the mediator between the superior being and the poor women and children. Rosa acknowledges the Madonna every time she needs strength or is witness to a miracle, because as a child the whole village of Bugiarno believed that she was saved by the Madonna during the aforementioned storm. Rosa exhibits exactly such a mindset when confronted with the miracle:

""It was a miracle," he said. "It was a miracle that you didn't go with Angelina when she told you! The Madonna put it in your mind to run back. It was the Madonna who saved you!" (37)

"There used to be a lot of men, and women too, in the villages of Lombardy that the people called witches—maliardi. (...) (Nobody can witch me, though. I'm too strong in believing in God and the Madonna)." (159)

Throughout the story, Rosa takes up a dual role; the religious, hard-working daughter, wife and mother, on one hand, and the gifted story teller on the other. The former role allows her to display her personality and beliefs, yet it is through the latter that she is effectively able to convey her sense of Italianità.36 Winifred Farrant Bevilacqua believed that Rosa tried to "transcend her limited and limiting circumstances and to assert her individual self. The cultivation of the art of telling stories, which earns her the attention and pleasure of others, gives her an identity that is related to her community and expressive of her individuality, and is an outlet for the richness of her inner world, so in contrast with her external poverty."37 It is important to remember, however, that Marie Hall Ets has somewhat thwarted that side of Rosa by both redacting her language and choosing to focus on her life-story instead of the amusing folkloric stories (cfr. 4.1 and 4.2). Arguably, in the American conception of a biography the focus should strictly be on the individual, while Rosa is more used to define her identity through communal stories and shared culture. However, there are some elements of Italian ethnicity that have permeated the American filter. A phrase such as "Quiet, quiet I ran" (12), for instance, has

36 Gardaphé, 1996, p. 31 37 Bevilacqua, 1984-85, p. 548 18

obviously been translated literally from the Italian piano, piano. Her comparisons between the Old World and the New also betray some of her Italian preconceptions:

"And then we used to run to some of the other courts where there were pigs. In Italy pigs were not sloppy like American pigs. In Italy the people were feeding them better than their children." (29)

"(The Italian cows are not like the American cows —they don't have to have the fresh air all the time. They just stay in the stables.)" (40)

"Another story they used to tell—but I don't know if it's true or not —was that one time there was a terrible storm and a whole row of priests —not priests, brothers I guess you call them —were all kneeling down saying their prayers in the church, and one of those big strings of lightning ran along the floor and pulled all the little nails from the soles of their shoes. Those monks got the scare and jumped up to run away and they all found themselves barefoot! That's just a story to laugh. I don't know if it's true or not. The men in the barns on cold winter nights used to tell a lot of laughing stories about the priests and the monks, but I don't tell those stories to the people in America very much—the people in American don't understand. They think we are not reverent to our priests if we tell those funny stories. Those poor men in the barns were reverent, but they like to make the other men laugh, that's all. They didn't mean anything bad." (39-40)

Note how almost all of her—few—comparative observations involve subjects she has known her whole life: farm animals and religion. Besides her—intentionally—comical pride in the superiority of Italian over American animals, other signs of Italianità are clearly noticeable. On a linguistic level, phrases such as they don't have to have the fresh air and a story to laugh betray the grammatical influence of the Italian language. Stylistically, her narration very much resembles that of the Italian oral tradition, which is unsurprising considering her status as an exceptional story-teller.38 Praiseworthy, in this regard, is also Marie Hall Ets’ redaction; she succeeded in making Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant both accessible and authentic in its pace, wording and structure. Finally, on an ideological level, Rosa's quasi-apology for the story about the priests and her refusal to tell it to Americans, imply her wish to maintain bella figura, a typically Italian philosophy that implores keeping up appearances.39 Omertà, another typically Italian concept, also plays a role in her narrative, although she ironically betrays it by including it in her story. After Santino buys a brothel in the woods outside the mining camp

38 Carnevale, 2009, p. 107 39 Gardaphé, 1996, p. 32 19

in Missouri and Rosa refuses to manage it for him, she keeps it hidden from her children out of fear for repercussions:

"But I don't want my children to know about that bad business my husband bought. I never told them— never! I can't even tell them now. That man, maybe he's alive yet, and rich. He can kill me if I tell about him. He's got the policemen and all those high-up politicians for his friends. He makes them the present of a pile of money, and when someone tries to make him trouble, the politicians help him along." (198)

Rosa’s individual Italian heritage clearly presents itself throughout her traditionally told narrative. The confrontation with American society, on the other hand, is described much more sparsely. We can conclude, however, that, even though she is swindled by an American confidence man upon arrival in New York, Rosa is very open towards the American way of life. Her independent nature and communal culture sometimes clash in the face of American individualism, yet her overarching behavior is one of acceptance, and variation:

"As the weeks went by I grew friendly with other Americans too—with old Mr. Miller and his daughter, Miss Mabel, in the store at Union. They were the boss of the store and of the post office, but they were treating me like I was as good as them. “Here’s Rosa!” they would say when they saw me come in. “Hello, Rosa! Come in!” And when they saw how much I wanted to speak English they were helping me." (176)

"The American people on the train were sorry when they saw we had nothing to eat and they were trying to give us some of their food. But Pep said no. He was too proud to take it. Me, I would have taken it quick enough. But I couldn’t after Pep said no—even with that little Giorgio crying with his face in my lap. Those American people were dressed up nice—the ladies had hats and everything—but they were riding the same class with us poor—all equal and free together." (168-9)

Two elements consistently return in Rosa's life story: a fear of God and a fear of men. The first is presented as a good, and character-building influence, yet the latter is undoubtedly restrictive on a personal level.40 Both fears originate in Rosa's traditional upbringing in the Italian class system where she was not allowed to defy priests, look rich people in the eye or speak to boys. It is in the mediation of these fears that the most obvious transformation takes place for Rosa. To no great surprise, considering the number of miracles she has witnessed, however, her fear of a vengeful God and Destiny, constantly combated by the individual freedoms in the less traditional American society, never abides:

40 Gardaphé, 1996, p. 35 20

"The American doctors they ruin the people. I say, "People, don't go to the doctors! Let them alone!" Here in America everybody runs to the doctor. And those doctors! When you get a pain down here in your leg, they look in your mouth and say, "You have to pull out the teeth, that's all." You get a pain in your stomach, and they say, "Take off the tonsils." They tell you to take of those things and they won't cure you till you do. They won't! In Italia we don't have to take off nothing—we keep everything, and we are not sick. God gave us all those little things: what for the doctors take them off? It's not right." (252)

Even though Rosa maintains her strong religious beliefs until her death, her confidence acquired in America is translated in her emancipation from men. Significantly, Rosa divorces her abusive husband Santino in court, which would have been impossible at that time in her native country. Her final wish, then, accurately symbolizes Rosa's self-construction and transformation from an Italian immigrant to an Italian American:

"Only one wish more I have: I'd love to go in Italia again before I die. Now I speak English good like an American I could go anywhere—where millionaires go and high people. I would look the high people in the face and ask them what questions I'd like to know. I wouldn't be afraid now—not of anybody. I'd be proud I come from America and speak English. I would go to Bugiarno and see the people and talk to the bosses in the silk factory. And to Canaletto. Those sisters would not throw me out when I come from America! I could talk to Superiora now. I'd tell her, "Why you were so mean—you threw out that poor girl whose heart was so kind toward you? You think you'll go to heaven like that?" I'd scold them like that now. I wouldn't be afraid. They wouldn't dare hurt me now I come from America. Me, that's why I love America. That's what I learned in America: not to be afraid." (254)

The dynamic of Old World destiny and New World freedom is a common theme in immigrant narratives. If we consider Boelhower's paradigm of the Old and the New World, an inversion is clearly noticeable in Rosa's story. When she is forced to leave Mamma Lena and her baby-boy in Bugiarno in order to join Santino in Missourri, she is forced to leave an ideal reality in the Old World with negative expectations, contrary to the other poor people:

"Then one day we could see land! Me and my paesani stood and watched the hills and the land come nearer. Other poor people, dressed in their best clothes and loaded down with bundles, crowded around. America! The country where everyone could find work! Where wages were so high no one had to go hungry! Where all men were free and equal and where even the poor could own land." (164) 21

After Rosa flees the mining camp to go to Chicago, however, her negative experiences are eliminated and through real contact with the New World she can, once again, construct an ideal reality. Thus, instead of idealizing the Old World through separation, Rosa is able to escape that stage, attesting to her incredible strength and independence.

4.4 Conclusion

Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant is the autobiography of a young Italian woman who immigrated to the US in 1884. Rosa’s American friend Marie Hall Ets listened to many of her amusing anecdotes over many years and decided to publish her life-story in 1970. The story is narrated by an autodiegetic I- narrator and covers Rosa’s life from birth up to her dying wishes. Rosa’s transformation from Italian immigrant to Italian American can be dissected based on the threefold definition of ethnic identity offered by Anthony Julian Tamburri and Fred L. Gardaphé: individual heritage, American society and global future. Rosa’s individual heritage is twofold in nature; on one hand she is a willful, independent and pre-modern mother and wife and, on the other hand, she is an expert story-teller who displays her Italianità through linguistic, stylistic and ideological elements. While the former, combined with the individualist nature of American society, helps her to shed her fear of men and upper-class people, the latter ensures she keeps her Italian cultural heritage alive. In other words, Rosa quickly figured out how to use America for immense personal growth while at the same time holding on to her Italian identity. Because of her strong and empathetic nature, Rosa reversed the global paradigm described by William Boelhower and, after shedding Santino, the negative remains of the Old World, is able to create an ideal present in the New World.

5. Christ in Concrete

5.1 Biography and Publication History

Pietro di Donato (1911-1992) was an American bricklayer, reporter and novelist born and raised in the larger New York metropolitan area. His parents, Geremio and Annunziata, were first-generation immigrants from the region of Abruzzo in Italy. In 1923, Geremio died on a construction site when a building collapsed on top of him. The twelve year old Pietro was now forced to go out and look for a job 22

in order to support his mother and seven siblings. Just a few years later Annunziata followed her husband into the grave and Pietro became the de facto head of the family. At age sixteen, after the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, di Donato joined the Communist Party. He also attended City College to take night courses on engineering and construction. During a building strike, Pietro fatefully found his way to a library and promptly fell in love with the prose of Emile Zola. His appreciation of literature, the French and Russian naturalists in particular, inspired him to write about his own immigrant experience.41

Christ in Concrete was initially published as a short story in Esquire magazine in March 1937. The short story was an immediate hit with the public and di Donato expanded it into a full-length novel. It was published two years later by Bobbs Merrill and Christ in Concrete became an instant literary classic. Praised by literary critics as well as common readers, the novel competed with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath for the top of the best-sellers list. The British film Give Us This Day, directed in 1949 by Edward Dmytryk, was based on di Donato's novel and released in the US as Christ in Concrete. Pietro di Donato later wrote a sequel to his celebrated novel, This Woman (1958), yet it never reached the literary acclaim of its predecessor. Other works such as The Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini (1960) and an article on the kidnapping of Aldo Moro called Christ in Plastic (1978) were highly appreciated and cemented di Donato's status as one of the premier Italian American authors.

5.2 Summary and Narration

Pietro di Donato’s autobiographically inspired novel Christ in Concrete is divided into five distinct parts: Geremio, Job, Tenement, Fiesta and Annunziata. The first section focuses on Geremio, a first generation immigrant and head of a large household in New York City. The reader follows Geremio at home and as the foreman on a construction site for two days before catastrophe strikes: the building in construction suddenly collapses on top of him and his crew. Geremio is buried under liquid concrete, in a peculiar pose that reminds of one Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, hence the title of the novel. The second part, Job, renders the immense hardship for Geremio’s pregnant widow Annunziata, brother-in-law Luigi and oldest son Paul. Luigi promises to take care of the large family yet quickly loses part of his leg after another accident on the job. Luigi was distracted by the pressure of providing for such a large family by himself. Paul, merely twelve years old, is now forced to take on that role and, after being denied charity

41 Wepman, 2007 23

by both the state and the church, tries to fill his father’s shoes as a bricklayer. Helped by his deceased father's friends and colleagues, a man named Nazone in particular, Paul quickly finds a job, yet is severely underpaid because of his young age. As a result of this discrimination, Paul has to work too hard and after a while is forced to stay home more and more often. The third chapter, Tenement, explores the neighborhood Paul is now forced to stay in. He interacts with a Norwegian family and befriends a Russian Jew of roughly the same age. Together with Annnunziata, his mother, Paul also visits a psychic who ensures them Geremio is still protecting and watching over them. Finally, a hearing at the Compensation Bureau leaves them with no restitution from the insurance company or the building company that pressured its employees into violating safety codes. Fiesta, the fourth section, is slightly more optimistic and shows how Paul finds a dangerous, but well-paid job as a bricklayer on a skyscraper downtown. Luigi, down one leg, is allowed to leave the hospital and swiftly marries a friend of his sister, Cola. The final chapter called Annunziata announces the arrival of the Great Depression. Paul helps his mentor Nazone get a job at the skyscraper construction site but, after an argument with the foreman, he is pushed out of a window and dies from the impact. Paul is immensely distraught from witnessing this tragedy and tells his disappointed mother that he has lost all faith in God.

The narration in Christ in Concrete is both complex and interesting. The largest part of the novel is narrated by a heterodiegetic, omniscient third-person narrator, who sometimes even comments on the horrific circumstances the immigrants are forced to work under. His or her peculiar punctuation and linguistic style will be discussed in more detail in the next section on identity and ethnicity. Christ in Concrete features variable internal focalization, meaning that various points of view are offered throughout the story. These different focalizers interchange very organically and sometimes even cause the ever-present third-person narrator to disappear:

"Practiced fingers undid screws. A lid was raised. But none there to raise the Dead. "Ahh-hh," came the swelling and falling wave. "It is Geremio. That is he." And hands singed the cross with automatic fervor. How will she do now? It is expected she sorrows before us, for was he not her husband live, who lies there cold? Annunziata did not move. From her bulk the newly-made widow stared. (...) And she, a hostess, an important figure in a large audience!" (27)

"Luigi was sitting up. He was shaven, combed, pale and clean. He asked of home. And Paul told him of his quest for help. How can I ask further, little uncle, when I know that I have failed and there are none to help? How can I, laborer ignorant and unschooled, tell you that this our world is beyond us...? What food into your stomach can any word of mine bring? What shall I to this boy say that he may bring back as 24

help and use to the racked Annunziata? Noting-nothing may I say...and the future for these children of Christ is as a fog of stone... Ci Luigi, please tell me that I can be a bricklayer—please say that someone will let me lay bricks—please tell me that I shall grow swiftly... As Paul rose to go Luigi saw the bulge under his overcoat." (63)

Note how in the latter quote, a dual stream of consciousness temporarily eliminates the omniscient narrator and causes a switch to I-narration. This constant fluidity of changing narration and focalization is exemplary of di Donato's creative use of literary techniques that remind of modernism at its best.

5.3 Ethnicity and Identity

Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete has been interpreted as both a social novel about the American working-class as well as an autobiographical testimony to the migrant experience. The novel's evolution from working-class bible, on the fringe of the American literary canon, to ethnic masterpiece, at the very center of Italian American Studies, is certainly remarkable.42 What is clear, however, is that it sits firmly in the modernist literary tradition. The aforementioned creative narrative techniques are completed by di Donato's experimental use of punctuation. His writing, especially in times of distress for one of the protagonists, includes extremely long sentences, ellipses and dashes. The latter two techniques are employed, respectively, to slow down and speed up the story, while at the same time indicating a mental shift. When Luigi loses his leg in an accident, for instance, the reader is immersed in Luigi's frantic pace of both work and thought:

"With April morning breaking down in slanting rain—and up Luigi's pick—ten into twenty-four considering first the food for the children—down shivery hard in wall-boulder's crevice—up pick—down into slowly dislodging boulder from wall. Twenty-four parted by ten—up pick—but we shall manage with strength—down pick hard—miss aim—slide slippery boots in puddle—down Luigi—down swiftly certain stone—but?!! my leggssss..." (47)

Besides the narrative and stylistic elements, the novel's core themes also correspond to the modernist paradigm of great ideas. Di Donato is obviously very much aware of the dominant American culture and incorporates its conflict with ethnic specificity in an analytical and descriptive manner.

42 Polezzi, 2013, p. 8 25

Therefore, it can be concluded that Christ in Concrete, full of mythical elements and functioning as a militant-protester, is a comparative novel in Tamburri's historical paradigm.

The great ideas at work in di Donato's novel can be summarized as: the battle between labor, anthropomorphized as Job, and God in a world of systematic oppression. The Italian immigrants, represented in this case by Geremio and his family, are consistently dehumanized by the systematic violence imposed by Capitalism. Slavoj Žižek defined systematic violence as "the often catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning of our economic and political systems"43, which is exactly what Pietro di Donato protests against in this tragic novel. The job, or anthropomorphized Job, takes precedence over the lives of its workers and, thus, functions as an instrument of dehumanization. At the beginning of the story, Geremio and his crew are working in an unsafe environment, yet when Geremio tries to address this issue, he is met with racial insults and the sad truth that there are more desperate migrant workers than paying jobs:

"Lissenyawopbastard! if you don't like it, you know what you can do!" (9)

Essentially, similar to God, Job has a dual role: he gives (or offers an opportunity to provide) and takes away (the workers' humanity). The emasculating humiliation suffered by the Italians is mirrored in the narrator's dehumanized description:

"Geremio caught his meaning and jumped to, nervously directing the rush of work... No longer Geremio, but a machinelike entity. The men were transformed into single, silent beasts." (9)

Pietro di Donato, however, attempts to reverse this dehumanizing process and debasing Otherness of the migrant workers by presenting the characters' thoughts in enthralling pieces of stream of consciousness, as well as emphasizing their biological anatomy. The description of Geremio's death, for instance, is extremely graphic and gruesome, drawing attention to his human physicality:

"He came into a world of horror. A steady stream, warm, thick, and sickening as hot wine, bathed his face and clogged his nose, mouth and eyes. The nauseous sirup that pumped over his face clotted his mustache red and drained into his mouth. He gulped for air, and swallowed blood. As he breathed, the pain shocked him to oppressive semiconsciousness. (...) His genitals convulsed. The cold steel rod upon which they were impaled froze his spine. (...) The pressure of the concrete was such, and its effectiveness

43 Žižek, 2008, p. 2 26

so thorough, that the wooden splinters, stumps of teeth, and blood never left the choking mouth." (14- 15)

Geremio's suffering is not left to the imagination and, thus, forces the reader to conceive of him as a real person. Note also how the accident caused by Job symbolically drugs, castrates and silences him. Job's failure to protect its workers is reflected in the church's refusal to assist Geremio's helpless family. Importantly, the only goodwill and happiness for Annunziata and her children is found in the migrant community itself. Therefore, also considering his membership of the Communist Party, Pietro di Donato's biting criticism of Capitalism and the failure of the American Dream could certainly be inspired by Marxist thinking. There is, however, one big problem: to be included in the communist aesthetic, one has to conceive of the working class as one entity, or even one family. Di Donato outright refuses to do so, and his attitude is clearly noticeable in his constant use of ethnically Italian elements. Additionally, his metaphorical description of the working-man as comrade-worker Christ could certainly be problematic from a Marxist perspective.44

Christ in Concrete is heavily imbued with Italianità. On a linguistic level, di Donato uses a kind of Italian American English that is characterized by the use of (adjusted) Italian words, literal translation, specific cultural items and inherited nicknames from the Old Country. The following example, found at the very beginning of the novel, aptly demonstrates the narrator's peculiar language:

"Six floors below, the contractor called. ‘Hey, Geremio! Is your gang of Dagos dead?’ Geremio cautioned the men. ‘On your toes, boys. If he writes out slips, someone won’t have big eels on the Easter table.’ The Lean cursed that the padrone could take the job and all the Saints for that matter and shove it…! Curly- headed Lazarene, the roguish, pigeon-toed scaffoldman, spat a cloud of tobacco juice and hummed to his own music … ‘Yes, certainly yes to your face, master padrone … and behind, This to you and all your kind!’ The day, like all days came to an end. Calloused and bruised bodies sighed, and numb legs shuffled toward shabby railroad flats… ‘Ah, bella casa mio. Where my little freshets of blood and my good woman await me. Home where my broken back will not ache so. Home where midst the monkey chatter of my piccolinos I will float off to blessed slumber with my feet on the chair and the head on the wife’s soft full breast.’ These great child-hearted ones leave one another without words or ceremony, and as they ride and walk home, a great pride swells the breast… ‘Blessings to Thee, O Jesus. I have fought winds and cold. Hand to hand I have locked dumb stones in place and the great building rises. I have earned a bit of bread for me and mine.’ The mad day’s brutal conflict is forgiven, and strained limbs prostrate

44 Gardaphé, 1996, p. 67 27

themselves so that swollen veins can send the yearning blood coursing and pulsating deliciously as though the body mountained leaping streams. The job alone remained behind … and yet, they also, having left the bigger part of their lives with it. The cold ghastly beast, the Job, stood stark, the eerie March wind wrapping it in sharp shadows of falling dusk." (5-6)

Robert Viscusi interprets this peculiar type of Italian American English language as the mythical invocation of the lost Old Country, fitting perfectly in William Boelhower's paradigm of the idealized Old World:

"The Italian American writer fills his English with Italian that serves the ritual purpose of invoking and celebrating the power of a mythical Italy. By mythical I mean that this Italy has exchanged physical for psychological presence. Though the actual place be absent, the mythical Italy is a universal presence that Italian American writers devote themselves to, sometimes unconsciously. (...) Here is the language of neither Italy, nor America."45

While Christ in Concrete's narrative structure betrays little to no signs of the typically Italian oral story-telling tradition, the ideology behind the story invokes many elements of Italianità, food and religion in particular. Pietro di Donato conventionally employs food as a core element of Italian ethnicity, yet surprisingly also uses it as a symbol for the American class conflict.46 Arguably, one way to resist assimilation is to hold on to ethnic cuisine. The extravagant feast at Luigi and Cola's wedding, for instance, contrasts starkly with the dismissive priest's table, at the start of the novel. While the food for the wedding was traditionally prepared by the entire family, the priest's table was full of store-bought American foodstuffs. Fully assimilated, then, the priest sends the hungry Paul home with a piece of strawberry cheese-cake, completely negating the ethnic and communal aspect of food. Undoubtedly, hunger plays an enormous role in the class conflict in Christ in Concrete. The ability to buy, prepare and consume food becomes one of the main signifiers of success, symbolic of American materialism. Hunger, on the other hand, is constantly nagging at the poor immigrants and has an enormous impact on their physical and mental health.

Pietro di Donato, however, does not just use food as a marker of class differences and the struggle of Italian immigrants, but symbolizes its potentially divisive nature by symbolically representing its transformation into vomit. Oftentimes, after experiencing the unhealthy dynamic of hunger and excess, the Italian workers have to purge their body in search of recovering their humanity. The

45 Viscusi R., 1981, p. 24 46 Fazio, 2007, p. 115 28

emphasis on vomit and oral descriptions in the scene depicting the gruesome death of Geremio and his crew, for instance, signifies the final stage of their consumption by the Capitalist society. Additionally, the building they worked in at that time is described as rumbling and shuddering (13-14) as if truly hungry itself. The second shocking death, at the end of Christ in Concrete, is Nazone's fall from the enormous skyscraper:

"The crescent of his mouth and teeth wide askew, and mingled over the sweat of his stubble were the marine contents of his blood and brains that spread as quivering livery vomit, glistening on the bluing flesh a tenuous rainbowed flora of infinite wavering fibrins..." (209)

Once again, vomit is used to describe a body being sacrificed to Job. Similar to Job, then, food has the ability to sustain or deplete life, and Italianità, in the Capitalist American society.

Perhaps the most important theme in Christ in Concrete, clearly reflected in its title, is religion. The story starts with the concrete crucifixion of Paul's father, Geremio, on Good Friday and ends with his own rejection of Catholicism on Easter. His spiritual journey in between these two events, and that of his fellow Italian American immigrants, is full of meaning and symbolism.47 A typical trait of Italian American Catholicism, prevalent in this novel, is the mixing of sacred and pagan rituals. The migrant workers often have time nor money to attend church, oftentimes headed by Irish priests, yet their ethnic identity is still closely linked to religious practices. This inextricable connection is constantly reflected by the infusion of catholic imagery in the language of the Italian immigrants by di Donanto:

"Eight hungry little Christians to feed is enough for any man. (...) Yes, the day is cold, cold . . . but who am I to complain when the good Christ Himself was crucified?" (4)

Additionally, memories of the Catholic church's exploitation of the common people in the Old Country, linger in the minds of these first- and second-generation immigrants. In other words, socio- economic circumstances have forced these traditionally Catholic people to adapt and create their own individual religious practice. Reminiscent of di Donato's treatment of food, then, religion becomes a cultural phenomenon heavily linked to ethnic identity yet, at the same time, is subject to constant transformation. The relation between ethnic communities and their religion has been widely discussed; di Donato's novel, however, emphasizes what Linda Hutcheon calls positional ethnicity: "it changes and

47 Kvidera, 2010, p. 158 29

develops according to individual histories, individual economic and social situations and individual religious affiliations."48

This withdrawal of individual beliefs and traditions from the Church as an official institution, is characterized as cultural Catholicism by Thomas J. Ferraro in Catholic Lives, Contemporary America.49 Besides functioning as a protector of ethnic identity by preventing assimilation with other Catholic groups, cultural Catholicism's reverence for both religious sacraments and pagan rituals molds it into an aesthetic as well as a spiritual experience. In an interview Pietro di Donato explains his attraction to "the sensuality of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, its art, its music, its fragrances, its colors, its architecture and so forth—which is purely Italian. We Italians are really essentially pagans and realists."50 In Christ in Conrete, Pietro di Donato shows how cultural Catholicism constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs ethnic identity by emphasizing its performative function through act (rituals and art) and speech (idioms and imagery)51, corresponding nicely to Judith Butler's dual conception of identity creation.52

The most poignant illustration of di Donato's conception of cultural Catholicism is Paul's attitude towards his job in the eponymous second chapter. When traditional religion fails to offer him structure or comfort in a time of dire need, the confused Paul turns to another object of reverence: Job. Labor becomes so important to his existence and that of his family that it takes on a life of its own and becomes anthropomorphized. Furthermore, the capitalization of Job clearly invokes the eponymous biblical character who suffers greatly and is later rewarded for his continued faith in God. In Christ in Concrete, however, no such resolution can be found for Paul after enduring the horrors of working construction in New York around the turn of the twentieth century, although at first he seems optimistic:

"Job was establishing itself in gray of stony joint and red of clayey brick, in smell of men's gray bones and wet red flesh. Job was becoming a familiar being through aches and hours, plumb and level. Job was a new sense which brought excitement of men and steel and stone. Job was a game, a race, a play in which all were muscular actors serious from whistle to whistle, and he was one of them." (82)

Paul, forced to provide for his family at a very young age, first perceives labor as a vocation and Job as his savior, yet when confronted by its overwhelming power, he is awestruck. He quickly learns,

48 Hutcheon, 1997 49 Ferraro, 1997, pp. 8-9 50 Huene-Greenberg, 1987, p. 36 51 Kvidera, 2010, p. 162 52 Butler, 1999 30

however, that, similar to God, Job has the power to give and to take away and demands constant worship: "Paul clung to Job." (68) Individual circumstances, and the monumental power of labor in the New World, have, thus, forced Paul, representative of all hungry Italian American immigrants, to replace his traditional godhead with a new object of worship. Similarly, in the third chapter called Tenement, Paul's mother Annunziata, desperate for support from her deceased husband, turns not to the catholic priest, but to a pagan medium called The Cripple. Remarkably, di Donato does not dismiss The Cripple as a crooked imposter but as a sympathetic medium through which Annunziata and Paul can contact and revere their fallen hero. The family's two visits to the psychic are characterized as very congenial and free-flowing, juxtaposed to the formality of the church, drawing attention, similar to Paul's religious reconfiguration, to the influence of physical circumstances on the spiritual and ethnic transformation. Consider, for instance, these two rather humorous interruptions of the visit:

"Momma, Margie's actin' like a reg'lar bitch, and there's people out here!” (113)

"Margie! Margie, bring in some nice tea for the missus and her boy and me! Y'hear me, Margie?" (211)

The fourth chapter of Christ in Concrete is called Fiesta and continues to highlight the Italian American ethnic identity by rendering two important Christian celebrations: Christmas and a wedding. The workmen's celebration of Christmas Eve does not take place in the nearby Saint Prisca's solemn midnight mass but on a construction site in New York City. Mirroring the hard work that constitutes their daily lives, the workers indulge in excesses with food, wine and women. Despite their "gustatory sacramentalism"53, Nazone, Paul's godfather, still regrets the extravagant physicality of their celebration: "Man... though of the basest class, should observe the spir-it-ual." (159) The other workers mock him for his sudden piety and call him Patron Saint of the whorehouses before mock-crucifying him and singing hymns and bawdy tales. The men's visceral celebration of the most important religious feast demonstrates how they combine a traditional Catholic background with their status in the New World reality. While Luigi and Cola's wedding is held in a church, di Donato describes the proceedings in a meager seven sentences. The real celebration, however, takes place at home surrounded by friends, family and, once again, unholy amounts of food and drink. The communion of these two destitute immigrants signifies new hope for all, and is symbolized by a peculiar ritual: the eating of spaghetti without hands, straight from the table. While only men are allowed to participate, traditional religious and ethnic differences are erased by the unifying paint that is the tomato sauce:

53 Ferraro, 1997, p. 1 31

"Avrom swoggling it prodigiously, Louis spluttering, Paul's features fricaseed saucely red. (...) Santo's little Lucia laughed with tears and said one's husband was no longer distinguishable from another's, Black Mike and Nazone were chewing the same bundle and kept suck-tugging back and forth until Nazone felt teeth on his nose and let go his end, shirt fronts and shoulders were pasted with sauce spaghetti and wine, and when Amedeo who was properly drunk slipped to the floor and remained on his back Fausta dropped handfuls of spaghetti into his gaping mouth." (200)

Peter Kvidera beautifully summarizes the whole situation in his article on Christ in Concrete:

"All become part of the communal "we" within the common sauce. The "we" offers a form of spirituality created by the space and situation and functions as the conduit through which di Donato contemplates an ethnicity that not only destroys stereotypes as it retains cultural markings, but one that also, through the excess of language and detail describing religious feasts, is constantly recreated according to the contingencies of space and situation."54

These ever-changing contingencies constantly shape and re-shape the characters' ethnic identity in di Donato' novel. Towards the end of the novel, the merger of the spiritual and the physical, or the sacred and the profane, becomes more and more apparent in Annunziata's religious reconception. After Paul witnesses Nazone's murder, he openly rejects traditional Christianity by crushing a crucifix before his mother's eyes. Annunziata consequently falls into a deep desperation, which will eventually lead to her death.

"How beautiful he

Little Paul my own

Whose Jesu self

Glorified our home ...

Nadi... Nadi... Nadi...

Gifted to me

By the Madonna was he

And of this son

54 Kvidera, 2010, p. 171 32

Shall rise." (236)

Annunziata is clearly disoriented as she is forced to transform her spiritual devotion and sees in her son a new Christ. As the leader of this new worldly religion, Paul provides sustenance and communion for the other children and Annunziata implores them to worship him55:

"Children wonderful. . . love . . . love... love ... love ever our Paul... Follow him." (236)

After becoming a Christ-like figure for his family, the only way Paul can live up to expectations is by rising together with the very skyscrapers he is building, and providing his siblings with the material goods and spiritual guidance necessary for survival in the urban jungle. Christ in Concrete depicts Paul's traumatic journey from initial reverence for God and Job, through a rejection of traditional values and religion, to, finally, the realization that only his own individual experiences are essential. Paul's personal metamorphosis, thus, skillfully symbolizes the constant transformation of Italian American ethnic identity that, striving towards acceptance, is heavily influenced by the material circumstances of the New World and struggles to preserve its Italianità.

5.4 Conclusion

Pietro di Donato's autobiographically inspired Christ in Concrete is a tragic novel, clearly influenced by naturalist aesthetics and communist ideology. It can be categorized as a comparative narrative in Julian Anthony Tamburri's paradigm of immigrant stories, since di Donato is obviously aware of the dominant culture and militantly criticizes its influence on the Italian American community. Furthermore, di Donato's use of stream of consciousness and shifting focalization place him firmly in the modernist style. Christ in Concrete revolves around the hardship endured by one family, confronted with the realities of systematic exploitation in the industrialized United States. Pietro di Donato attempts to reverse the dehumanizing effects of this daily struggle by vividly rendering the inner lives and physicality of these immigrant workers. Additionally, by employing a peculiar linguistic style that combines English and Italian influences, he is able to reflect their constant struggle to maintain an Italian American ethnic identity. On an ideological level, Pietro di Donato invokes the persecuted Italianità through the use of two major themes: food and religion. While food is commonly considered as highly important to the Italians, in Christ in Concrete it symbolizes the wealth of the dominant culture and its imposition on

55 Kvidera, 2010, p. 175 33

ethnic minorities. The workers, unable to provide a healthy or steady diet, often have to purge themselves from this corrupting influence by vomiting, symbolizing their consumption by American industrialism. The high expectations of the New World, where jobs are bountiful, are quickly quelled when confronted with the reality of life in the capitalist society. While the Old World is certainly not idealized as William Boelhower predicts, di Donato's use of the Italian American English language certainly invokes certain mythological elements of the Old World. In Christ in Concrete, the Italian Americans' individual and communal heritage is constantly under siege by the unforgiving pressure of the capitalist American present. Notably, the immigrants are forced to constantly transform and reject their typically Italian cultural Catholicism because of highly exposing and confronting circumstances. In order to face the uncertain future in an industrialized and unequal world, the protagonist, significantly, has to abandon traditional spiritual guidance. The only hope for this lost soul is to reject the dominant culture of God and Job, and to rely solely on individual experience and responsibility. Pietro di Donato's biting critique of the capitalist American society of the early twentieth century aptly demonstrates how ethnic identity is constantly in flux and forced to adapt to the dominant culture.

6. Mount Allegro

6.1 Biography and Publication History

Jerre Mangione, professor of English and author of both novels and nonfiction, was born as Gerlando Mangione as the son of Sicilian immigrants. He grew up in an immigrant neighborhood in Rochester, New York and later attended Syracuse University. At university he wrote Museings for the daily university newspaper. Later, he worked for Time magazine and wrote book reviews and articles as a freelancer for a number of New York newspapers and magazines. The University of Rochester Libraries details Mangione’s erratic career path in the fields of writing, advertising and public relations, after which he became a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961.56

Before his tenure, Jerre Mangione had already started writing books about immigration, ethnicity and the clash between two cultures. His first book, Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life, narrates Mangione’s youth in a Sicilian-American community. In 1942 the book was first published as fictional novel, despite its autobiographical nature. The author preferred to have the book

56 Biography Jerre Mangione, 1998 34

published as non-fiction, whereas publishing house Houghton Mifflin thought it would sell better as fiction. In the end Mangione conceded to only one change in order to fictionalize his account: he changed the names of the characters.57

With this first book Mangione attempted to impart the specificity of Italian American culture. Curiously, many scenes were recognizable to other (children of) immigrants as well. In his preface to Mount Allegro, Eugene Paul Nasser recalls striking similarities between Mangione’s account of Sicilian American life and his own recollection of his Lebanese American family. The hard-to-classify novel was highly esteemed from the moment it was published, even making an appearance of the bestseller lists of the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune.58 Nevertheless, some critics denounced the novel for failing to represent the inner lives of the female characters.59

6.2 Summary and Narration

Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life is a collection of anecdotes or, if it is meant to be seen as fiction, a collection of short stories, which share common themes such as family, religion and social justice. While many stories revolve around notable incidents in day-to-day life, the juxtaposition between Italian and American culture pervades the entire collection. Even when not strictly relevant to the action, Italianità is almost always included in the setting of the scene. Family Party, for instance, starts with the following sentence: "Before they became Americanized enough to learn poker, my father and three of my uncles used to play briscola on Sunday afternoons." (14) Neither poker nor “becoming American enough” are relevant to the description of briscola afternoons and other family gatherings. In this chapter, scenes from family life are presented and accompanied by details about the frequency of these gatherings and the consequences of not inviting a relative. In a similar way, other chapters use anecdotes and commentary to illustrate the daily life of the Sicilian Americans. The most important characters in Mount Allegro are Mangione’s (male) relatives. His father plays a prominent role in many stories, as does his uncle Nino.

The chapters are not in chronological order per se, as they center on descriptions of Mangione’s family’s habits or on recurring occasions: family gatherings and catholic holidays. His age at the time of

57 Shattuck, 1998 58 Shattuck, 1998 59 McBride, 1992, p. 113 35

the events is rarely mentioned. Furthermore, while the first part on the book focuses on Jerre Mangione’s experiences as a child, the scope later widens to his entire family and even to the lives of all Sicilians living in the neighborhood of Rochester called Mount Allegro. In the end, the narrative returns to Mangione, now as an adult, studying at Syracuse University and travelling to Sicily.

As is typical for autobiographies, the narrator is a first-person narrator, speaking in the past tense, conscious of telling a story to the reader. Notable here is the large temporal distance between the narrating self and the experiencing self. Memoirs tend to be written by adults reflecting on their adult life, while Jerre Mangione attempts to recall experiences from a more distant past. An additional factor is the maturity distance between the experiencing Jerre Mangione, a child, and the adult narrator. The maturity distance is always visible when a scene from Mangione’s youth is described, through various humorous comments, which would not stem from a child’s perspective. However, at times the discrepancy between young and adult Jerre is heightened, as when the narrator explicitly adds information unknown at the time of the events, or when he supplements the anecdote with a link to the words of a sociologist or writer. These remarks are especially far removed from the experiencing self, who could not have had knowledge of writers and sociologists. The temporal and maturity distance between experiencing and narrating self, as well as human imperfection in terms of information perception and memory, makes the narrator slightly unreliable, though clearly not through malice.

Moreover, often other characters tell stories as well. At times these stories are summarized in free indirect speech, but they can be rendered in direct speech as well. In this way, the character speaking becomes an intradiegetic narrator. Thus, the presence of original I-narrator gradually fades away throughout the course of the novel, leaving the narration as almost trans-individual.

6.3 Ethnicity and Identity

In order to fully appreciate the innovativeness of Jerre Mangione's Mount Allegro, it is worthwhile to first consider the immigrant autobiography as a literary genre. In The Brave New World of Immigrant Autobiography, William Boelhower asserts that archetypal identity patterns are substantiated by the mythic (self-)conceptions of America.60 The anticipation of arrival in the idealized New World permeates through immigrant autobiographies, as the immigrants themselves have already symbolically become

60 Boelhower, The Brave New World of Immigrant Autobiography, 1982, p. 6 36

Americans by their dreams of freedom and prosperity. Typically, upon arrival, the protagonists undergo a further transformation called Americanization. This process includes the blending of two cultural worlds: memories of the past and the reality of the present. The conception of these immigrant autobiographies as a genre allows for the construction of a macrotext that analyzes and compares these dynamics of ethnic identity transformation. Based on this methodology, Boelhower concludes that there are three returning decisive moments, or fabula dynamics: anticipation, contact and contrast. The protagonist functions as the mobile element that travels across these fixed stages and often finds his identity transformed as a result. The dichotomy between the Old World and the New World undergoes a similar conversion in the typical immigrant autobiography: Old World reality vs. New World ideal (expectation) becomes New World ideal vs. New World reality (contact) to finally result in Old World reality vs. New World reality (contrast).61 Such a restructuring of two cultural worlds unavoidably influences individual identity and rhetoric. The analysis of individual autobiographies, then, offers a unique perspective, and counter-weight to the American autobiography, to influence and deconstruct truly American types and values.

Jerre Mangione has to be considered outside of this generalizing paradigm for a number of reasons. Important in this regard is the structure of Mount Allegro. Essentially, the book consists of three distinctive parts; the first (chapters 1 and 2) and final parts (chapters 11 to 14) depict the, rather typical, beginning and end of Jerre's journey through the decisive moments of contact with the dominant culture and contrast with his own heritage. Initially, authentic contact with the American culture is almost exclusively limited to experiences at school, as his mother enforces a strict separation between home (and the neighborhood) and the outside world:

"'You won't forget, will you?' she repeated. 'No, I won't,' I promised, lapsing into English. 'Don't speak American to me,' she snapped. 'I don't want to hear anything but Italian in this house. You will never learn it anywhere else. I don't want my children to grow up into babbi who can't speak the language of their parents." (20-21)

"My mother's insistence that we speak only Italian at home drew a sharp line between our existence there and our life in the world outside. We gradually acquired the notion that we were Italian at home and American (whatever that was) elsewhere. Instinctively, we all sensed the necessity of adapting ourselves to two different worlds." (50)

61 Boelhower, The Brave New World of Immigrant Autobiography, 1982, p. 13 37

The opening sentences of Mount Allegro are a clear indication of Jerre and his siblings' confusion with regards to America (whatever that is) as a result from living in these two separated worlds:

"'When I grow up I want to be an American,' Giustina said. We looked at our sister; it was something none of us had ever said. 'Me too,' Maria echoed. 'Aw, you don't even know what an American is,' Joe scoffed. 'I do so,' Giustina said. It was more than the rest of us knew. 'We're Americans now,' I said. 'Miss Zimmerman says if you're born here you're an American.' 'Aw, she's nuts,' Joe said. He had no use for most teachers. 'We're Italians. If you don't believe me ask Pop.' But my father wasn't very helpful. 'Your children will be Americani. But you, my son, are half-and-half.'" (1)

The status as a half-and-half Italian American follows Jerre throughout the story. His teacher, for instance, claims that being born in America makes one an American, yet in another scene, she calls him an Italian, purely based on his last name. The reader, however, has to wait until the third and final part of the narrative to discover how Mangione has managed to overcome his personal ethnic identity crisis.

The middle, and largest, part of the book, sees the I-narrator all but disappear as he nigh exclusively renders the folkloric tales of the Italians in his own family, and later of those who live in his neighborhood. Throughout chapters three to ten, official discourse of power and authority is almost completely eliminated, thus ignoring the typical feelings of anxiety and traumatic circumstances typical of the immigrant narrative, e.g. Christ in Concrete. Hence, instead of negating and criticizing the New World's harmful influence, Mangione skillfully substitutes the power of the dominant culture, and its contrast with Old World values, with a New World view that rejects the hurtful melting pot; namely, one of close-knit communities trying to re-create the Old World inside of the New World. Relevant to this concept is also the name of the neighborhood and eponymous book: Mount Allegro. Besides being based on a Sicilian village close to that of Jerre's parents, allegro also designates the typically Sicilian laid-back lifestyle that the inhabitants try to maintain in the fast and furious American society.

One element that facilitates Mangione's representation of such a closed off community is the topology of Mount Allegro. The central story(-telling) in the second part exclusively takes place inside the barriers of the ethnic neighborhood. Even though America sometimes peeps over the fence when older friends or family members criticize the New World, the emphasis is clearly on their Sicilian heritage and identity:

"It lies at the end of the Italian boot and some government clique in Rome is always kicking it around. Some Sicilians got tired of that treatment and finally left. That, Gerlando, is the chief reason most of us 38

are in this maliditta terra, where we spend our strength in factories and ditches and think of nothing but money." (19)

Even more spatially limited than the neighborhood is the typical Sicilian family home. Filled with paintings and objects that constantly remind of Italy, the house serves as a church where one can revere and mythicize the Old World. According to a theory of Roberto Viscusi, the Italian American house can have one to four specific functions; it can act as a shrine, villa, palazzo and embassy.62 In the case of Mount Allegro, the house clearly functions as a shrine, yet it is also the place where the inhabitants of Mount Allegro convene and most elements of Italianità surface. More specifically, spontaneous dinner parties and banquets ritually transform these peasani into a community and often act as the frame for riveting stories:

"There were seldom less than fifteen men, women, and children at those Sunday sessions; on the Sundays when it rained, there would be as many as thirty. It was obvious that no one else in Mount Allegro has as many relatives as I did; it was also true that no one else's relatives seemed to seek one another's company as much as mine did." (21)

Besides some Italian words and short phrases, such as strafalaria (177), la miseria (20) and destino (81), little Italian linguistic influence is to be found in Mangione's Mount Allegro. Stylistically, however, the tradition of oral story-telling is constantly invoked, reminiscent of Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant. The contents of these stories, on the other hand, oftentimes betray a sense of ideological Sicilianità, if you will; the smaller, less important characters tend to be the protagonists of the Sicilians' stories and overcome their more powerful opponents, arguably indicating their inferiority complex with respect to the rest of Italy. For instance, one particularly humoristic version of Shakespearo's Romeo and Juliet is told from the viewpoint of the pharmacist who sells them the poison. (139) Another returning feature in these stories is the concept of social justice, a concept which remains just as unattainable in America as it was in Sicily. The substitution of Jerre's own Bildung-story for the description of a closed, homogenous community and its plethora of beautifully told stories makes Mount Allegro unique in portraying the (trans)formation of ethnic identity.

Towards the end of the novel, the distant I-narrator returns to the fore and starts to comment on his own experiences during his Sicilian apprenticeship. For instance, he confesses that he would often feel embarrassed when leaving Mount Allegro with his family. One particular scene in which the

62 Viscusi R., 2006, p. 59 39

Mangione family is having lunch in a public park next to an American family, includes many of these obvious, and apparently awkward, differences, as listed by William Boelhower63:

Sicilian clan American family Modality: "pagan abandon" "subdued, well-mannered" "circus din" Definition: "eating festival" "packed baskets" Food: spaghetti, chicken "neatly cut sandwiches" Drink: wine iced tea Actors: no sense of privacy sense of privacy (baring breasts to (children left at home) feed babies) Breasts: "large and sprawling" "purely ornamental" Dresses: "silken party dresses, "crisp and oh-so-neat the kind usually worn dresses" to weddings"

Additionally, Jerre started to get annoyed with the persistent Italian belief in destino. This ill- fated constraint of destiny clashed diametrically with the American sense of freedom, which flowed all around Mount Allegro, and Mangione had the urge to shape his own future away from his genitori:

"Their Catholicism, like their lives, was enveloped in a heavy blanket of fatalism. In the last analysis, both were impervious to rational argument. (...) Here in America, my father and his relatives, huddled together as they were in one neighborhood, heard the same thing, except from their children who brought home their school-learning. The only real connection they had to their new country was their children, but they had never heard of Sicilian parents learning from their children and they did not listen closely." (79-81)

After graduating high school, he announced to his family that he was going to study at Syracuse University in order to become a professional writer. While most family-members did not comprehend why one would ever leave Mount Allegro, unless to become a dottore or avvocato (219-220), his Uncle Nino understood that, even when indeed leaving them behind, Jerre would carry his Sicilian upbringing

63 Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, 1982, p. 196 40

with him as he became a professional story-teller. After leaving his native neighborhood, Mangione was confronted with the real America and quickly underwent an identity transformation:

"I began to know America and to feel like an American, and gradually began to learn that America did not differ so much from the street I grew up on." (228)

The fact that Jerre Mangione became such an excellent writer and story-teller is testament to his evolution from Sicilian to Sicilian American as he was able to combine both the Old World oral tradition with an extraordinary control of the New World language. Additionally, after having removed himself from the ethnic neighborhood, his interest and respect for his cultural heritage grew, which, in turn, intensified his ethnic consciousness:

"Separated though I was from my Sicilian relatives, my bond with them grew stronger through the years. The older I became and the more I appreciated them, the less desire I had to cut myself off from them. The memory of my life in Rochester gave me a root feeling, a sense of the past which I seemed to need to make the present more bearable." (245)

In the last two chapters, Jerre Mangione reverses the traditional immigrant narrative and travels to Sicily as a Sicilian American. By going to the hometown of his parents, he is able to verify the value of their idealized myths and strengthen his own Sicilian identity. In the end, Jerre finds the Sicilians very similar to the folks in Mount Allegro, and quickly feels at home:

"Temperamentally, they were so much like my Rochester relatives that I realized how futile it was for anyone to believe that Sicilians could become conventional Americans in the course of a single lifetime." (272)

Here, Mangione touches on the core ideology behind his autobiography: a staunch belief in pluriculturalism and the rejection of the melting pot theory. He is, however, only able to fully consider and comment on these ideas after completing his ethnic education, leaving his neighborhood and visiting his Heimat.

6.4 Conclusion

Jerre Mangione's autobiography Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life has radically altered the genre of the immigrant autobiography. Having one foot in two separate worlds did not only provide 41

Mangione with initial identity problems, but also allowed the writer to engage with ethnic identity on a level that is unreachable by outsiders. By rendering the start and finish of his own identity transformation, but reserving the bulk of the narrative for the description of the closed environment of Mount Allegro and, more importantly, for the stories of its inhabitants, Mangione has substituted the overwhelming and often negative influence of the dominant culture with a romanticized account of Sicilian Americans' transindividual cultural heritage. Since the protagonist, and I-narrator, almost completely disappears into the dining room wallpaper, the stage is left open for the first generation Sicilian immigrants to create their mythologicized version of the Old World inside America. Naturally, then, many elements of Italianità permeate their folkloric stories. Linguistic and stylistic Italian markers are the most obvious, since the stories told are rendered as closely as possible to their orators' language and style. A few ideological aspects of Italianità, such as the importance of food and community, provide structure to the narrative. William Boelhower aptly summarized the differences between the Sicilian and American cultural representation in Mount Allegro in Immigrant Autobiography in the United States64:

The Sicilian Way The American Way Oral folkloric culture Written official culture Transindividual subject Individual subject Ethic of the banquet Work ethic Private justice Institutional justice Catholicism Protestantism Fatalism Optimism Magic and superstition Rationalism and empiricism

Because of Mangione's modern style of writing, use of imbedded stories and temporally distant narration, one could characterize Mount Allegro as a synthetic narrative in Tamburri's historical paradigm. There is, however, also a militant side to his autobiography. The contrast he creates between native Sicilians and old-stock Americans, by negating the latter's power, seems to advocate a pluriculturalist ideology, where there is room for ethnic specificity to remain intact. In typical fashion, Jerre Mangione himself most strikingly summarizes the value of Mount Allegro with regard to the question of ethnicity in the United States:

64 Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, 1982, p. 213 42

"Then I began asking myself question like these: Was it in the chemistry of human life for my relatives to become Anglo-Saxonized—the apparent goal of the melting pot theorists? So long as they believed in freedom and democracy—and their long history showed these ideals to be ingrained in them as their religion—was it necessary that they try to change themselves? Didn't America need their wisdom and their warmth, just as they and their children needed America's youth and vigor?" (239)

7. Conclusion

The ambition of this Master's thesis has been to contribute to one of the central question of American Studies (Who, and what, is truly American?) based on the literary analysis of three Italian American immigrant narratives: Marie Hall Ets' Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant (1970), Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete (1939) and Jerre Mangione's Mount Allegro (1943). In view of the ever advancing globalization of the 21st century, and the coinciding streams of mass migrations towards both Europe and America, it is now, more than ever, vital to seriously consider the past experiences of ethnic minorities on the move. The journey of more than five million Italians towards the sprawling cities across the Atlantic Ocean around the turn of the 20th century, offers exactly such an opportunity. Similar to the immigrants of today, the Italians were subject to systematic exploitation and discrimination based on race and religion. Hence, by analyzing their accounts of displacement, one can gain precious insight into the process of ethnic identity transformation and the influence of the dominant American culture.

In order to substantiate my own interpretation of the three aforementioned narratives, theoretical works by, among others, Julian Anthony Tamburri, Fred L. Gardaphé, William Boelhower and Roberto Viscusi have served as a theoretical frame for this analytical paper. Concepts such Gardaphé's Italianità, Tamburri's Vichian historical classification, their threefold definition of ethnic identity and Boelhower's Old World vs. New World paradigm have proved invaluable by providing a social and cultural structure for my literary analysis. By consecutively addressing four sub questions, presented in chapter 2, across the three novels, I will be able to form a comprehensive conclusion with regard to the main research question of this Master's thesis.

The differences regarding age, gender and region between the three protagonists, and writers, heavily influence their perspectives on the New World. As the only account of a first generation immigrant considered, Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant has a clear historical value. Additionally, as 43

one of the rare female perspectives documented, her role in 19th century society is decidedly different from that of her male counterparts. Rosa's rather horrible experiences in Italy are described in detail, and obviously affect her perception of America once she has crossed the ocean. Not only was she forced to work for little pay and married off to an old, cruel man, the fear she was taught to have for both God and men in Italy hindered her personal development. The bare and authentic nature of her story accentuates the honesty of her comparison between the Old World - and the New World reality. As the shackles of the traditional Italian society gradually fall off, she is able to emancipate and, thus, Rosa perceives America as the land of freedom. Both Pietro di Donato and Jerre Mangione, on the other hand, are, and describe, male second generation immigrants. Their respective perspectives on the New World, however, could not be more different. While Christ in Concrete is an exceptionally critical portrayal of the contrast between the expectations of the New World and the actual reality of living in America, Mount Allegro focuses on the recreation of the Old World reality inside the New World by enveloping one world into the other. Pietro di Donato's militant rejection of the capitalist American culture stems from a communist ideology, hence the equally exploitative Old Country is not idealized. Jerre Mangione, to the contrary, substitutes mythologized folkloric stories about Sicily and its inhabitants for the narrative of his personal exploration of the New World. It becomes clear, then, that each writer's personal circumstances, be it as an emancipated woman, a communist critic or a romantic story-teller, help shape their perceptions and depictions of belonging to an ethnic minority in America.

Besides personal background, another important aspect that influences life as an immigrant in America is the confrontation with established social and cultural power structures. In all three books, the dynamics between the dominant American culture and the protagonists' ethnic identity are central to the narrative. Rosa, for instance, is refused lodging and assistance in Chicago based on nativist American prejudice against catholic Italians. Yet, because American society also offers her the opportunity to be less dependent on men and shed her fear of authority figures, she is willing to accept the negative sides of American society in order to continue her growth as an individual. There are, however, ideological elements of Italian society that she is unable to cast off, such as an intense fear of God and the adherence to both Italian concepts of bella figura and omertà.

In Christ in Concrete, Pietro di Donato takes the opposite approach and firmly emphasizes the assault of the dominant culture on the poor Italians' ethnic identity. By describing how both the church and organized labor, two pillars of the capitalist system in 20th century America, outright refuse to help the needy, he is able to present a vision in which ethnicity and spirituality, in this case Italianità and 44

cultural Catholicism, are corrupted by materialism, which results in systematic violence and exploitation. This corruption, caused by America, is symbolized in Christ in Concrete by the ambivalent role of food and the consumption of the migrant workers by the very buildings they are constructing.

In Mount Allegro, finally, both the emancipating and assaulting forces of the dominant culture are spurned by a symbolical closing of the gates. Jerre Mangione's status as the inhabitant of two separate world, being a true half-and-half Italian American, allow him to take two positions in the same narrative. On the one hand, he personally experiences Americanization as a positive transformation, one that even encourages him to explore his own ethnic heritage. The stories told by the first generation immigrants in Mount Allegro, on the other hand, ward off American culture as a negative, individualistic force and vigorously emanate a deep-rooted sense of Italianità.

If we abstract the represented effects of American culture and society on ethnic minorities in these three books, it becomes clear that its evaluation is determined by the socio-cultural position one holds; while first generation male immigrants lament the individualistic character of Anglo-Saxon culture, Rosa, a first generation female immigrant, flourishes in its liberating impact. Similarly, while poor second generation immigrant workers are left to their own devices in the urban jungle, often with their demise as a consequence, middle class second generation immigrant are able to attend university and experience American society from the other side of the fence. However, there are some aspects of Italianità that seldom waver, regardless of gender or class: for instance, the importance of food as a symbol for family and community, or its undoing, and the linguistic influences of religious imagery and Italian grammar.

Naturally, the use of language plays an important role in the analysis of ethnic literature. The dynamic between the English and Italian language is, indeed, a component of the larger socio-cultural power paradigm, yet also deserves an individual analysis. The role of the Italian language in these three English texts has two different aspects: the linguistic influence of its vocabulary and grammar as well as its peculiar narrative style, deeply rooted in an oral tradition. The linguistic influence of Italian in Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant is clearly noticeable since her biographer, Marie Hall Ets, tried to keep the text as close as possible to Rosa's spoken English, full of code-mixing and code-switching. These significant Italian details and Rosa's style as an expert story-teller combine to enable her to maintain and exhibit her ethnic heritage. English, on the other hand, symbolizes her acceptance of American culture, as she quickly tries to learn the language of her new country in the mining camp in order to communicate with the helpful southerners. Similarly, di Donato infused the language of Christ in 45

Concrete with Italian and catholic tropes. In typically militant fashion, however, he does not only want to, almost mythologically, invoke the Old Country, but, by rendering many and powerful streams of consciousness, attempts to affect the New World by reversing the process of dehumanization that the workers in his novel are subjected to. In Mount Allegro, finally, the Italian oral story-telling tradition, once again, becomes an important signifier of Italianità. Jerre Mangione's own manifestation as a highly-esteemed English author, however, signals the completion of his transformation into a true Italian American: combining both the oral and written narrative traditions of both cultures. Essentially, in all three books, the Italian language and style function as protectors of the ethnic identity while English is a tool of assimilation or rejection of the dominant culture.

The fourth, and final, consideration is one of agency: who decides if one assimilates, or not? In Rosa's case it is quite clear that she decides herself to accept and engage with American society in order to empower herself and improve her personal circumstances. Christ in Concrete, on the other hand, argues the complete opposite, as the Italian Americans are constantly forced to alter and dismiss elements of their ethnic identity in order to survive under extremely harsh circumstances. Time and time again, traditional cultural and spiritual rituals are made impossible for the migrant families by material circumstances, forcing the protagonist to rely solely on his own, individual experiences. The only solution to combat this severe lack of agency proposed in di Donato's, rather pessimistic, novel is, thus, complete assimilation. Jerre Mangione, finally, states, after his visit to Sicily, that he reckons it is impossible for Sicilians to fully assimilate in one lifetime. Furthermore, why should they? He openly attacks the, then still prevalent, melting pot theory and argues that each ethnicity has something unique to offer. Corresponding to the peculiar structure of his autobiography, Mangione proposes a society where ethnic minorities can peacefully coexist without forcing social and cultural values upon one another, or in William Boelhower's words: "the salad bowl substituted the melting pot."65

In the end, all three perspectives on cultural assimilation have something valuable to offer; it can be a constructive tool, an oppressive force or refused altogether, yet it seems that in order to become a true Italian American, one has to find a way to maintain individual heritage while accepting societal realities. Who, and what, then, truly is American? Based on this analysis a number of returning characteristics can be distilled. America is systematically characterized as an individualistic and materialistic society in these immigrant narratives, especially when compared to Italy. At the same time, however, these same traits allow for emancipation and freedom from the restrictive Old World

65 Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, 1982, p. 20 46

traditions that they have left behind. America is often more cold-hearted and dangerous than anticipated by fortune-seeking immigrants. The inequalities they are bound to face are the result of an industrialized, capitalist world. Regardless of such generalizing abstractions, however, it is essential for our future that we recognize the humanizing impact of these narratives and allow them to inform our opinions and decisions when considering the lives of undocumented immigrants and ethnic minorities today.

47

8. Bibliography

8.1 Primary Bibliography

Donato, P. d. (1939). Christ in Concrete. New York: New American Library.

Ets, M. H. (1970). Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Mangione, J. (1943). Mount Allegro. New York: Syracuse University Press.

8.2 Secondary Bibliography

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Bevilacqua, W. F. (1984-85). Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant, The Oral History Memoir of a Working-Class Woman. Italy and Italians in America: Rivista di studi anglo-americani , 545-555.

Biography Jerre Mangione. (1998). Retrieved August 2, 2015, from University of Rochester: https://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=3312#Early

Boelhower, W. (1982). Immigrant Autobiography in the United States. Verona: Essedue edizioni.

Boelhower, W. (1982). The Brave New World of Immigrant Autobiography. MELUS , 5-23.

Boelhower, W. (1981). The Immigrant Novel as a Genre. Tension and Form , 3-13.

Bonaffinia, L. (1998). Review of Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative. International Migration Review , 247-250.

Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

Carnevale, N. C. (2009). A New Language, A New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States 1890- 1945. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Deloria, P. J. (2003). American Indians, American Studies, and the ASA. American Quarterly , 669-680.

Fazio, M. (2007). "Vomit Your Poison": Violence, Hunger, and Symbolism in Pietro di Donato's "Christ in Concrete". MELUS , 115-137. 48

Femminella, F. X. (1972). Review of Rosa, The Life on an Italian Immigrant. International Migration Review , 84-85.

Ferraro, T. J. (1997). Not-Just-Cultural Catholics. In T. J. Ferraro, Catholic Lives, Contemporary America (pp. 1-18). Durham: Duke University Press.

Gardaphé, F. L. (1996). Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Hendin, J. G. (2001). The New World of Italian American Studies. American Literary History , 141-157.

History of Ethnic Studies. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2015, from College of Ethnic Studies San Francisco State University: http://ethnicstudies.sfsu.edu/home2

History of Ethnic Studies. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2015, from Department of Ethnic Studies University of California, Berkeley: http://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/history.php

Huene-Greenberg, D. v. (1987). A MELUS Interview: Pietro di Donato. MELUS , 33-52.

Hutcheon, L. (1997). Cryptoethnicity. In E. A. Parini, Beyond The Godfather: Italian American Writers on the Real Italian American Experience (pp. 247-257). Hanover: University Press of New England.

James, H. (1907). The American Scene. London: Chapman and Hall.

Jones, H. M. (1964). O Strange New World: American Culture - The Formative Years. New York: Viking Press.

Kvidera, P. (2010). Ethnic Identity and Cultural Catholicism in Pietro di Donato's "Christ in Conrete". MELUS , 157-181.

McBride, P. W. (1992). Review Mount Allegro. Journal of American Ethnic History , 112-114.

Moslund, S. P. (2010). Migration Literature and Hybridity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Peirce, C. S. (1868). On a New List of Categories. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 287-298.

Perez, C. C. (2010, Fall). Biography Marie Hall Ets. Retrieved August 2, 2015, from Courseweb University of Illinois: http://courseweb.lis.illinois.edu/~ccperez2/NineDaystoChristmas/Biographical_Sketch.html 49

Polezzi, L. (2013). Of migrants and working men: how Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete traveled between the US and Italy through translation. Perspectives on Literature and Translation: Creation, Circulation, Reception , 161-177.

Reed, e. I. (1997). MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace. New York: Viking.

Shattuck, K. (1998, August). New York Times. Retrieved August 1, 2015, from Jerre Mangione, 89, Writer on American Immigrant Life: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/31/arts/jerre-mangione-89-writer-on- italian-immigrant-life.html

Statistics, O. o. (2014, August). 2013 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Retrieved from Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_yb_2013_0.pdf

Tamburri, A. J. (1998). A Semiotic of Ethnicity: In (Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Tamburri, A. J. (1991). To Hyphenate or Not to Hyphenate: The Italian/American Writer: An Other American. Montreal: Guernica.

Vico, G. (1725). Scienze Nuova.

Viscusi, R. (1981). De Vulgari Eloquentia: An Approach to the Language of Italian American Writers. Yale Italian Studies , 21-38.

Viscusi, R. (2006). Il caso della casa: Stories of Houses in Italian America. In R. Viscusi, Buried Caesars and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing (pp. 59-69). Albany: State University of New York Peess.

Ward, D. (1971). Cities and Immigrants. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wepman, D. (2007, October). Biography of Pietro di Donato. Retrieved July 16, 2015, from American National Biography Online: http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-03520-print.html

Zavarzadeh, M. a. (1991). Theory, (Post)Modernity Opposition. An "Other" Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Washington D.C.: Maisonneuve Press.

Žižek, S. (2008). Violence. New York: Picador.