Italian Immigrants in Portland, Maine, 1880-1920
© COPYRIGHT by Robin Rae Svendsen 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this work to Rudolph “Rudy” DiPietro, who passed away just one week after our meeting of round-table storytelling in the Cantina at the Italian Heritage Center. Rudy was a unique character, a stalwart of the past, and his lively storytelling will be missed by this researcher. Also, to my father, Joseph DiDominicus “Chessi,” whose tales of stickball, lobster and strong women in this Italian enclave kept my imagination full of curiosity as a child, and my feminist backbone strong. He was a loving father who survived the early death of his father, childhood poverty, three wars, and four teenagers to instill his old-world lessons of la famiglia in his children which are woven through many of the tales in this research. MIGRATORY RESISTANCE COMMUNITIES ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS IN PORTLAND, MAINE, 1880-1920 BY Robin Rae Svendsen ABSTRACT This thesis seeks to illuminate the resistance communities that existed in the rural southern villages of the Mezzogiorno region of Italy, specifically Lettomanoppello, before and after Italian Unification and removed to Portland, Maine in the United States to re-establish their matrilineal subsistence culture. Through multiple lines of evidence, including previous scholarship, documents, past interviews with immigrants and current personal communication with descendants of immigrants, this research contextualizes the presence of resistance in the immigrant’s initial interaction with capitalism. The research follows the immigrant’s continued resistance to capitalism including the concept of individualism that attacked their familial organization and sacredly held joy of communal time.
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