The ANNOTICO Report

 We are ingrates, if we do not remind ourselves and our progeny the "hell" our immigrant grandparents went through so that we could have the opportunities we have. This is an urban story, but there are also the coal miner, the row crop workers, the railroad construction, etc in days when there were No Unions, No Workplace protection laws, No Unemployment, No Welfare.
 Almost Nothing, except doing the Best you could, with what Little you had, and your greatest Blessing was your Extended Family, when you had one.

THE SMELL OF HOPE

The New York Times
By Melania G. Mazzucco
November 20, 2005

My father's father, Diamante Mazzucco, arrived in New York in April
1903, at the age of 12. Like millions of Italians before and after
him, he had come to "look for America"; that expression has fallen
into disuse, but it was tantamount to "look for a better life," or at
least the hope of one. He knew nothing about New York. All he had was
an address: Prince Street.

In all the years my grandfather spent in New York, his America was no
larger than the small chunk defined by Broadway, the Bowery, and
Houston and Worth Streets. He didn't know it, but he was in the city
for Italians.

The label "Little Italy" had not yet become a cliche used to attract
tourists or advertise red-sauce restaurants. Besides, it would have
been inaccurate, because the so-called Italy in which my grandfather
lived and built coffins for 25 cents a day was not in the least
little. With a population density of 1,100 people per acre, the
immigrants would have had more space in the hospital or in jail.

In this human anthill were fruit stores, employment agencies, banks,
funeral parlors, cafes bursting with music, gambling houses and an
altar to St. Rocco, patron saint of plague sufferers. It swarmed with
pedestrians, dogs, carts, horses and peddlers selling everything from
bread and tomatoes to knives and water.

Americans said the neighborhood smelled of garlic, and they ventured
there only for the folkloric religious festivals signified by saints'
processions and fireworks. Otherwise, Americans kept their distance...

For my grandfather, the neighborhood smelled of hope. He knew that
it's misery that stinks. And he fooled himself that he had left misery
behind on the other side of the ocean. New York was supposed to make
him rich and happy - forever.

His home was a dilapidated building on the corner of Prince and
Elizabeth Streets, as crowded as a refugee camp in winter, and
fortified against intruders through an ingenious system of young
sentries. Children perched on the fire escape and whistled when they
spotted a policeman, truant officer or volunteer in the fight against
tuberculosis - in other words, any institutional American. In Italy,
institutions are always enemies of the poor; Italians suspected that
the same was true here.

The narrow inner courtyard was cluttered with garbage, bins and
barrels...From the open windows would come the sounds of women
shouting, children whining, and even chickens, goats, monkeys and
bears; though the practice was officially prohibited, some people
stubbornly persevered in milking or training animals...

In the summer, only the vanquished, the ill and the troublemakers
remained in the city; the others had left in the spring for work in
the hinterland. During those months, children slept on the fire escape
and the grown-ups on the roof, where they played cards, quarreled and
cursed against a background of laundry hung out to dry.

These people kept to themselves. They were strangers and spoke no
English, or Italian, for that matter, but only the dialect of the
village they'd left behind, incomprehensible to anyone born even 100
miles away.

My grandfather used to talk about being a stranger twice over on
Prince Street. He also believed in being proud of his race. Yet he
discovered he was as welcome as a dog; in a cafe window he read a
sign, "No dogs or Italians." But that was in another part of Manhattan.

I don't know if the Prince Street house in which my grandfather lived
is the same as the one that stands there today. His street number
corresponds to a closed door, and perhaps that's precisely what the
past is, a dark room, inaccessible memories buried in shame, falsehood
and the shadow of oblivion.

In that or in another house on the corner of Elizabeth Street, one of
the many Mazzuccos ran a sort of boarding house, a dormitory crammed
with cots, cats, clothes, suitcases and dirty dishes. The house
smelled of feet, sweat, wine and desire (the women were few and the
men too many), along with sadness and fear. For Prince Street was home
to good people - laborers, masons, subway tunnel diggers, bakers,
pastry cooks -and delinquents...

I live in Rome, and I first visited Little Italy in 1997 during a
visit to the United States. At the time, I knew nothing of my
grandfather's story. Mulberry Street seemed to me like a stage set, a
sort of museum. But I didn't know what exactly it preserved: Was it
the memory of suffering, uprooting and exile? Or was it a monument to
victory and integration in an America in which Italians had become
part of the very fabric? Or perhaps it was simply a memorial to a
country lost and lamented merely for having been lost.

By the time I arrived, Little Italy had become a tiny country squeezed
between two great powers: China and Fashion. If Little Italy spoke of
the past, SoHo spoke of the present. The neighborhood teemed with
cafes, galleries and boutiques; I would have liked to live there. A
real estate agency was asking $2,000 a month for a two-room apartment,
but I could keep a dog. My grandfather paid $10 a month to live on the
same street. But he was allowed only half a mattress, the other half
being occupied by his cousin.

Cities, like people, are alive, and for this reason can be loved
passionately. You recognize a place at once, and it steals your heart.
Like people, cities are born, mature, change, grow old and decay. But
they don't die. Sometimes they are reborn.

Where the streets used to stink of garlic, where my grandfather built
coffins  there stands a museum of contemporary art. Yet the real museums
of time are cities, the only monuments to the art of memory. If my grandfather
could return, he would surely fall in love with Prince Street.
- - - -
Melania G. Mazzucco is the author of "Vita: A Novel," inspired in part
by her family history. This essay was translated by Virginia Jewiss
from the Italian.