The Italian American Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories

Anthony V. Riccio’s lavish new coffee table book, The Italian American Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories, provides a fascinating look at the experiences of Italian immigrants and their children in one east coast community. The field of immigration history has certainly benefited from the wealth of oral histories collected from immigrants and their descendants. Ranging from Al Santoli’s New Americans, an Oral History: Immigrants and Refugees in the U. S. Today (1988) to works such as La Merica: Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (1985) by Michael La Sorte to Robert Anthony Orsi’s The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880 –1950 (1985), oral histories have given depth and new understanding to the lives of immigrants in a nation that did not always welcome them. Riccio writes his book for a general audience; however, he grounds it in scholarship, particularly in the history of New Haven and its immigrant community.

Riccio begins each chapter with a narrative summarizing its theme, beginning with life in Italy. Excerpts from the interviews follow each chapter introduction. The chapters cover topics ranging from Italian Americans in World War II, work life, holiday celebrations, schooling, sports, and other aspects of daily life. The interviewee’s name and the date and location of the interview precede each excerpt. Generally the interview selections are well placed, giving each chapter a cohesive theme. The chapters follow in a logical order; they are chronological where it makes sense and similar topics are grouped together. For example, following the first chapter on life in Italy, the next ones are “The Journey to America,” “A New Life in New Haven,” and “Becoming American Citizens.” The chapter on the Spanish Influenza epidemic precedes the one on responses to Sacco and Vanzetti. Four separate chapters deal with work (farm life, work experience, working in the garment industry, and organized labor), which follow each other.

Together, the interviews paint a picture of a vibrant community in good times and bad, at work and at play, in war and in peace. The interviewees discuss many aspects of their lives that are not found in traditional history books. For example, the author includes a fascinating chapter on “Witches, Healers, Herbs. ” Several of the interviewees recount the process for removing the “maloucchio” [var.: malocchio] or “evil eye,” which are all similar and usually involve some combination of olive oil, water, and the sign of the cross. As one of the interviewees states, “My mother used to do it; she believed in it. All the old people believed in it. And you’d be surprised if it didn’t work. They used to make a cross here, a cross there and dip their finger and let a drop fall in the oil ” (213). The practice of removing the “maloucchio” clearly demonstrates the marriage, in Italian culture, of folk religion with Roman Catholicism.

One of the most poignant stories appears in the chapter dealing with the Spanish Influenza epidemic. Giuannine DeMaio, who was a fifteen year old in 1918, lost her best girl friend to what the Italians referred to as “la Spagnola,” or the Spanish flu. Her friend, Anna Danteo, felt sick one day as they were going to work. Three days later, Anna died. The girl’s family sent for Giuannine, who told her “‘Jenny, you know, we believe in the best friend has to put the shoes to the dead girl, ’ Can you imagine? They waited for me to come home from work to put her shoes on, when she was laid in the coffin. Because I was her best friend. And when I picked her up I can still picture, it was like a stone and I put the shoes on ” (53–54). Other recollections ring true to the immigrant experience, especially among Italian Americans. The chapter dealing with the differences between northern and southern Italians is especially illuminating. The old prejudices followed the immigrants to their new homes in America. Northerners looked down on southerners, seeing them as backward, uneducated, and crude. Several of the interviewees who are descended from northern Italians even mention how their families preferred a marriage with a non-Italian over a union with a southern Italian. Southern Italians also discuss the biases of one region toward another. The fact that many of the southerners retained their old regional dialects in their new home, while many of the northerners spoke Tuscan, also provoked comment from the interviewees.

What becomes clear in this work, which includes both contemporary and historic photographs of the interviewees, their families, their neighborhoods, and other images, is that the Italian Americans of New Haven were very proud of their heritage, had good and bad memories of their lives, and were also proud to be Americans. Some regretted that in the effort to “fit in” with the larger American population, they never learned to speak Italian. In many cases, the third and fourth generations were the ones more likely to learn the language and retain the old traditions. Anthony Riccio began this oral history project in the late 1990s as a personal journey to illuminate his own roots in Italian American culture. He hopes that his book “will invite all Americans to gain a deeper understanding of Italian Americans” (xx). He should count his labor of love a success.