Italoamericana
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Edited by Francesco Durante • Italoamericana Th e Literature of the Great Migration, 1880– 1943 General Editor of the American Edition robert viscusi Translations Editor anthony julian tamburri Bibliographic Editor james j. periconi Fordham University Press | New York | 2014 Copyright © 2014 Fordham University Press Italoamericana: Th e Literature of the Great Migration, 1880– 1943 was previously published as Italomericana: Storia e letteratura degli italiani negli Stati Uniti 1880– 1943, edited by Francesco Durante. © 2005 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other— except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the per sis tence or accuracy of URLs for external or third- party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Control Number: 2014931287 Printed in the United States of America 1 6 15 14 5 4 3 2 1 First edition Contents ix Preface xiii A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s xv Introduction to the American Edition part i. Chronicle of the Great Exodus 3 Introduction 17 carlo barsotti | To the Readers 20 ferdinando fontana | Shine? . Shine? 26 luigi roversi | For Humanity 31 rocco corresca | Th e Biography of a Bootblack 40 gaetano conte | Little Italy 51 gino carlo speranza | How It Feels to Represent a Problem 59 alberto pecorini | Th e Children of Emigrants 69 alberto tarchiani | Neither Foreigners nor Americans 74 al capone | Public Ser vice Is My Motto part ii. Colonial Chronicles 81 Introduction 111 luigi donato ventura | Peppino 131 fanny vanzi- mussini | Th e Destruction of San Francisco, April 18, 1906 138 adolfo rossi | Th e Five Points 146 giuseppe antonio cadicamo | To Giuseppe Giacosa 154 edoardo michelangeli | Two Stories 167 bernardino ciambelli | A Story, Sketches, and a Play 210 camillo cianfarra | An Emigrant’s Diary 231 thomas fragale | Two Poems 236 antonio calitri | Two Poems 251 angelo rosati | Th ree Poems 257 calicchiu pucciu | Th e Poor Woman 266 paolo pallavicini | Th e Little Madonna of the Italians 284 italo stanco | Bohemian and Detective 294 ernesto valentini | Brunori’s Fortune 303 eugenio camillo branchi | Hold Up! 315 dora colonna | Th e Two Girlfriends 328 caterina maria avella | Th e Flapper 341 severina magni | Seven Poems 346 antonio marinoni | Th e Hula Hula Flag 353 corrado altavilla | Th e Verdict part iii. On Stage (and Off ) 369 Introduction 395 francesco ricciardi | Th e Interrogation of Pulcinella 405 riccardo cordiferro | Four Poems and a Dramatic Play 445 eduardo migliaccio | Five Poems 467 tony ferrazzano | Th ree Poems 475 giovanni de rosalia | Nofrio on the Telephone 488 armando cennerazzo | Child Abductors, or, Th e Black Hand 499 gino calza | Two Poems 502 michele pane | Th e Americanized Calabrian 512 achille almerini | Dante’s Colony 516 pasquale seneca | Th e Pichinicco 522 vincenzo campora | Spaghetti House 524 alfredo borgianini | Two Poems 527 rodolfo valentino | Six Poems 531 silvio picchianti | Domestic Court 536 ario flamma | Leaves in the Whirlwind vi Contents part iv. Anarchists, Socialists, Fascists, and Antifascists 551 Introduction 605 giuseppe ciancabilla | Th e First of May 610 simplicio righi | Two Poems 613 luigi galleani | Methods of the Socialist Struggle 626 umberto postiglione | An Editorial and a Dramatic Play 643 ludovico m. caminita | A Letter and a Story 658 giuseppe bertelli | Six Poems 665 alberico molinari | Brief Discourses 675 arturo giovannitti | Four Poems 689 efrem bartoletti | Four Poems 697 vincenzo vacirca | Th e Fire 708 onorio ruotolo | In Union Square Park 715 agostino de biasi | Fascism in America 723 rosario ingargiola | Th e Light house 726 rosa zagnoni marinoni | To Mussolini, the Immortal 728 rosario di vita | Two Poems 731 umberto liberatore | Two Poems 736 armando borghi | Th e Failed Ambush 748 virgilia d’andrea | Remembering Michele Schirru 758 raffaele schiavina | What to Do? 764 carlo tresca | Two Articles 779 ezio taddei | Once Again Tresca part v. Integrated Apocalyptics 791 Introduction 801 lisi cecilia cipriani | A Story and a Poem 811 angelo patri | A Schoolmaster of the Great City 820 silvio villa | Viola 853 constantine Maria panunzio | In an Immigrant Community 867 emanuel carnevali | Th e Day of Summer 877 pascal d’angelo | Son of Italy 896 francesco ventresca | Incipit Vita Nova 909 louis forgione | Th e Torture of the Soul Contents vii 914 giuseppe cautela | Miracle 927 edward corsi | A Picture of 1907 939 James J. Periconi | Bibliography 987 Index viii Contents Introduction to the American Edition • Robert Viscusi If you do not remember who assassinated the king of Italy or who carved the great stone fi gure of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, there is no need to feel bad. You are not alone. Even Italian Americans do not always know the names of these Ital- ian immigrants—italoamericani—who did notable things. Such deeds belong to a period that lies in darkness. Th e dawn of legible memory for the English- speaking people who now call themselves Italian Americans mostly begins around the time they abandoned the Italian language as their primary means of verbal expression. Th ough the communities of italoamericani that began to proliferate and grow in the United States aft er 1880 were to become large, even massive, much of what they did, as well as almost all of what they said or wrote, has disappeared from view, along with the knowledge of the many Italian languages (“dialects”) they used. Th ey were a huge population. Many millions arrived between 1880 and 1924, when immigra- tion was shut down. Many returned to Italy. But at least fi ve million remained. Th ey swelled the U.S. population, which in 1880 was a little over 50 million; by 1924, it was 114 million. Italians alone accounted for more than 8 percent of that increase. New York City was the second most populous Italian city in the world, aft er Naples, itself the second largest city in Eu rope. All these immigrants spoke some variety of Italian when they arrived, and most went on doing so for the rest of their lives. Th ey read and wrote newspaper articles, poetry, plays, novels, es- says, histories, and all in Italian. Th ey supported a vast production in every branch of literature. If you can name fi ve of their writers, consider yourself an expert. What happened? How did all this come to be forgotten? Th is is a chapter in imperialist history. xv Th e Colony Nowadays, when we speak of italoamericani, those who came from Italy during this period, we speak of their world as an immigrant culture. Th is was not how italoamericani thought of it during the years before the Second World War. Th ey had learned to look at the world through Italian eyes. Italy saw itself as an expand- ing empire, and Italian America saw itself as a colony, one of Italy’s many colonies. It was a par tic u lar sort of colony, to be sure: not a discrete territorial entity but in- stead a series of encampments of Italian labor and entrepôts for Italian goods, ur- ban ghettos and work camps in the countryside, linked among themselves and to the homeland by ties of language, history, politics, religion, culture, family, and, above all, material interest. During this entire period, the Kingdom of Italy ex- pressed the glories of bourgeois culture by carry ing the banner of national/impe- rial ambition for Italians throughout the world, a per for mance that rose to its dizziest heights during the 1930s and led to Italy’s catastrophic military alliance with Germany and Japan on September 27, 1940. Aft er Italy declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, the ties that had joined Italian Americans to Italy and to one another began to unravel, and the nature of the colonial complex began to change rapidly. In the long string of diplomatic misadventures that blot the pages of Italian history, there is nothing to equal this one for blind folly. Some of the results are familiar. Italy, a rising industrial nation, was fl attened by the Americans and the En glish. Aft er the war ended, Italy became, and remains to this day, an American protectorate, where U.S. Air Force F-16s patrol the skies daily and the American embassy in Rome houses a detachment of four hundred U.S. Marines. Other results are less familiar. Mussolini’s declaration was not only a folly but also a betrayal, profound and unforgivable, of the italoamericani. Th e dictator had cultivated them for nearly two de cades. Support for his Fascist dream was widespread in the colonia.1 He had seduced the Italians in America. Now he abandoned them to their fate. Th e day aft er he declared war, the Ameri- can government announced that all Italian immigrants who had not yet taken citizenship (at least 700,000) had to register as enemy aliens. Some even ended in concentration camps. In the Italian neighborhoods, signs went up: “Don’t speak the enemy’s language. Speak American.”2 1. See Philip V. Cannistraro, Blackshirts in Little Italy: Italian Americans and Fascism 1921– 29, VIA Folios 17 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Bordighera, 1999). 2. Lawrence Di Stasi, ed., “How World War II Iced Italian American Culture,” in La Storia Segreta: A Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2001), 307.