The Value of Worthless Lives: Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies

The Spiritual Immigrant

4The Spiritual Immigrant Of the next five autobiographies, three are of men for whom years of work gave birth to a new man—a man of God, a convert to spiritual faith. Luigi Turco, Constantine Panunzio, and Antonio Arrighi came to America as immigrant boys. They were not satisfied with the material enrichment the new land could bring; instead they looked to intertwine their immigration toward a better life with their continual search for a higher spiritual life. Immigration was not enough for them to change their existence, as Turco wrote to his son, Lewis Turco (a professor at Potsdam University, poet, and playwright): ‘‘I was never satisfied with the idea that life consisted in living three score and ten and then end into oblivion. I never was satisfied to see that life consisted in a terrific struggle to make a living.’’1 Education and Americanization are parallel to religious conversion for these workers, who, though raised Catholic, became pastors of the Protestant church, the ‘‘American’’ religion par excellence . They Americanized so deeply that they came to resemble the first Pilgrims, choosing that adopted identity over the strong Catholic heritage of their native Italy. Their autobiographies sprang from their renewed life. Panunzio’s and Arrighi’s stories are the best known, both being first compelling romances of immigration, and only secondarily spiritual accounts. The autobiography of the shoemaker -pastor Luigi Turco is instead predominantly the spiritual autobiography of a man of God. 104 luigi turco  Luigi Turco’s autobiography is the first part of a bulky essay on his religious theology.2 He wrote the book in old age, when almost blind—like Saint Francis. It portrays his life through the screen of conversion, making it a direct descendant of the ‘‘confessions ,’’ the spiritual autobiographies of conversion that from Saint Augustine pass through the New England Puritans. Turco was a shoemaker who thirsted for religious knowledge, but did not betray humility. He thus told his harshest experiences in a light style, because , as his son remembers him, he was not ‘‘some dour Calvinist or pompous Parson Goodbody.’’3 As a typical first-generation immigrant, he was a man of many jobs: a miner, a mechanic, a chauffeur for the mayor of Rome, a shoemaker, a soldier in the U.S. Army, and a writer, though his English was never first-rate, according to his son who edited his autobiography. ‘‘I was born in Riesi a little rural town in Sicily, the 18th of May 1890. It goes without saying, being an Italian, my faith was that of the Roman Catholic Church. . . . Until the age of 12, I never went to church, neither did any member of my family.’’4 This ignorance of religion pushed him into an unholy life, as Saint Augustine before him. He lived in sin—even if living in Rome, the cradle of Christianity , while he was in the military service: ‘‘even there I did not learn much about the noble teaching of Jesus, the Christ; therefore my life was not ideal.’’5 Turco immigrated to the United States in 1913, following his sister, who was called to America by her husband. He settled in a poor Boston neighborhood and worked in a shoe factory with his sister. America did not show him her welcoming face, but instead presented him with the bottom of his sinful existence. He lived with his brotherin -law, a gambler and a drunkard, and in the deepest moment of sinfulness was touched by the hand of God: ‘‘The hunger in me for a better moral and spiritual life was very deep. It had created in me a melancholy attitude; the spirit of despair! I tried to satisfy this hunger in me like the rest of the young people of my time, by drinking, eating, smoking, gambling, and other pleasures of the flesh, but to no avail. The activity of the Spirit upon me, then not clearly known to me, was The Spiritual Immigrant  105 leading me to find a better way, the real way, to satisfy the thirst of my soul for a better living.’’6 The material betterment offered by immigration leaves him unsatis fied. ‘‘After a while I found a better job, one that gave me a better income to live a more comfortable life but that did not give me the satisfaction of soul for which I was longing. . . . I was very lonesome...