Friday, December 12, 2008

Vincenza Scarpaci’s "The Journey of the Italians in America" a Soulful Epic

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Vincenza  Scarpaci, a historian of the Italian-American experience at the University of Oregon, canvassed the country in search of immigrant stories for four years, and had included 35 states and 164 different locations in her book, documenting the lives of Italian-American families from coast to coast.

A Brush with History

Shoshone News Press
By Nick Rotunno

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Meticulously written and beautifully photographed, Vincenza Scarpacis The Journey of the Italians in America is a work of epic scope and soulful storytelling.

    With a combination of intensive research and long-distance travel, Scarpaci, a historian of the Italian-American experience at the University of Oregon, canvassed the country in search of immigrant stories.

After laboring four years and sifting through endless information, Scarpaci had included 35 states and 164 different locations in her book, documenting the lives of Italian-American families from coast to coast. As it turned out, one of those locations was a small mining town called Kellogg, ID.    

    At a book signing Wednesday afternoon, in the basement of Kelloggs Staff House Museum, Scarpaci discussed her finished work and her encounters with the Silver Valleys Italian history. An elegant and intelligent woman, the Brooklyn-born Scarpaci spoke with the slight accent of an Italian New Yorker.

Growing up among the many immigrants of the boroughs Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Scarpaci was fascinated by the worldwide culture of the city streets. Beginning in the melting pot of Brooklyn, she has been studying American immigration, particularly Italian, her whole life.

    Clicking through slides of photographs, the historian recounted the often-difficult odyssey of the Italian immigrant  the determined newcomer to a strange land, forging out a life in this tough American world.

    For Italians in Kellogg, life, of course, revolved around the mines  the industry that Scarpaci called the nucleus of the community. One of the photographs in The Journey is a black-and-white image of Natale Truant, a Silver Valley Italian-American hard at work inside the Bunker Hill Mine. Truant is pictured adding steel grinding balls to the mines concentrator, one of his duties for many years.

    Another image several pages later is of May DAndrea Truant, Natales wife. Shes tending her garden at the couples home in Kellogg, carrying a basket of strawberries on her head. The black and white photograph is obviously old, grainy, a snapshot of a lost time.

The Truants moved to the valley in 1928, worked hard, built a home and a family. Their daughter, lifelong Kellogg resident Pierina L. Miller, was present at the book signing. Miller provided Scarpaci with her familys photographs.

The Truants, and Miller after them, are a perfect example of the books major theme: success. Scarpaci takes readers on an immigrant journey of their own; a journey from the verdant shores of Italy to the opportunistic land of America, where the going is tough but the tough persevere. While she doesnt sugarcoat the hardships of the Italian-American immigrant (many did not succeed, and some returned to Italy), Scarpaci highlights the stubborn determination of those who would not be defeated. Her book is the story of the ones who stayed.

    Following her visit to Kellogg, Scarpaci will continue her signing tour, and plans to make stops in Seattle, northern California and perhaps Florida in the spring. The Journey of the Italians in America is available at the Staff House Museum and in bookstores nationwide.

 

 

 

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