Italian Voices: Making Minnesota Our Home

Preface

Preface Mary Ellen Mancina-Batinich For years now, my Minnesota Italian roots have beckoned to me. Every time they called, I hung up on them, but I did so with a little less certainty each time, until finally I gave in. During his lifetime, my father was a prodigious contastorie, a storyteller, of Italian folk tales; after his death, it was his memory, along with my mother’s encouragement , that finally gave me the incentive to begin what has become this book. Under a 1979–81 grant from the Department of Health, Education , and Welfare, I had directed the oral history component of the Italians in Chicago Project at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Chicago’s attraction for Italians between 1880 and World War I is easy to explain: job opportunities drew them there, the railroads brought them there, and firmly established Italian communities enticed them to stay.1 The same cannot be said for many of the Italians who settled in Minnesota, and this raised several questions in my mind. Who were the Italians who settled across Minnesota’s snowswept landscape? Whence had they come, and what were their lives like before they moved to Minnesota? What drew them to a state heavily populated by Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans? What was life like for them in the North Star State? And finally, had they found here whatever it was they had sought? This story concentrates not on the lives of prominenti, men and women of wealth and power who left behind ample documentation of their lives, but rather on the lives of ordinary people. In the pages of this book, blue-collar workers, housewives, and a few middle-class professionals tell their stories. The ninety-nine women and men xv whose interviews shaped this volume lived in the three areas of the state most heavily settled by Italians: Duluth and the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota; Minneapolis and St. Paul, in southeastern Minnesota; and Dilworth, on the northwestern border of the state. The men and women I interviewed told stories about family successes and failures, work and its hardships, folklore and traditions, and religious life. Their jobs ranged from sewer digger to college teacher. Most made the journey between 1902, when the borders of the United States were still fairly open, and 1930, when the country’s gates had nearly slammed shut as the combined result of changes to U.S. immigration policies and global economic depression.2 A second group arrived as refugees from war or dictatorship—either direct victims of, or those whose lives had been disrupted by, the historical events in Mussolini’s Italy. The third group, numbering fifteen altogether, came to the United States between World War II and 1960; after 1960, the period of significant Italian immigration to Minnesota in the twentieth century had passed. Each of these poor but determined immigrants came to the United States filled with bright dreams for the future; in the process of fulfilling these dreams, each battled for survival, happiness, and success. The interviews upon which this book is based were initially taperecorded , after which I transcribed the recordings, translated them into English when necessary, and edited them for clarity. I have attempted to provide a framework for understanding these stories, through the introductions to each chapter and the contextual narrative that surrounds many of the interviews, but the most important voices present in this book are those of the men and women whom I interviewed, for their voices together form that of a generation swiftly passing from the scene. The immigrants maintained a sense of their Italian identity, even as they struggled to survive in and adjust to their new surroundings. The traditions of Italian culture occupied a cherished place in family life, even as parents raised their children for a life in the United States. It was the constant interaction of ethnicity, memory, customs , and folklore that shaped the immigrants’ identities. The nine chapters of this book reflect those themes.3 The first chapter sets the Preface xvi stage by exploring the context of the Italian migration to Minnesota . Chapter 2, “Bread and Work” explores the work world of men; Chapter 3, “Women’s Work,” gives women’s viewpoints on their work. Despite the employment of men and the household economies (and supplementary wages) of their wives, few families could survive without taking in extra income by housing and feeding...