The following Book Review is taken from "Altreitalie", the most recent issue # 25,
published by the Agnelli Foundation, a RICH source for those of Italian Heritage.
<<  http://www.fondazione-agnelli.it/altreitalie >>

The "pearl" in this review is:

«The contadini’s hunger for respect was greater than their hunger for bread.»

Still, a hundred years later, with the striving, sacrifices and achievements, of  successive generations, there is Still No Respect.

Defense of our Heritage is one of the more admirable ways in which we can show appreciation to our parents and grandparents, and protection to our children and grandchildren.

This engaging and very readable book is a study of Italian immigrant life in Louisiana.

Written by two sociology professors, it looks at the values which the more than 70,000 immigrants brought with them, and it analyzes the factors which changed their culture as they experienced the new world. The book is the work of two scholars who have an obvious affection for their subject, and their study ranges in apparatus from scholarly analysis with charts and tables to fictional sketches and historical photographs.

The language of their study reveals their serious intent, as they indicate in the first chapter when they explain that «many descriptions of the Italian immigrant in Louisiana and elsewhere have far exceeded the bounds of truth and modesty.»

There is no question that these two writers have pursued their subject with a scholarly rigor. Their research is significant, and readers will find here not only pertinent quotations and analyses from earlier studies but also new material not explored elsewhere. Taking their cue from a paper by Bruno Arcudi «Italian Americans and Il Saper Vivere» (1982), they maintain, «The contadini’s hunger for respect was greater than their hunger for bread.» Even so, both bread and respect lead the way through this study, giving the title double poignance. Bread and respect are both objects of the immigrants’ dreams as well as means of sustaining their communal life and of surviving the forces that assailed the unity of their immigrant culture.
     The book traces the origins of the values of the immigrant culture in such matters as family, food, justice, and religion. The chapter on Fortune (Fortuna) provides tables on occupational distribution, appealing to those readers expecting sociological text; however, the book often waxes poetic. For example, in this chapter, one reads, «Sacrifice was the supper served; frugality was its guest at the table.» Such juxtaposition of statistics with metaphors might strike some readers as odd, but the blend is really within the spirit of this book. Indeed, in the first chapter of the book, the authors state their intention: «We wish to avoid that kind of sterility [“dispassionate analysis” and/or “disembodied history”] by including biographical sketches, personal stories, and fact-based fictional vignettes to enliven the facts as we see them.

To be sure, we want to engage not only the head but the heart as we relate the legacy of Louisiana’s Italian immigrants.» In this regard, the book is eminently successful. Readers will find here interesting case studies, based on historical circumstances but elaborated with interesting family anecdotes not to found elsewhere, as with quotations from a small-town mayor or the touching story of a family who fled in fear from New Orleans just after the famous Hennessey murder in 1891.

There is a wealth of information in this book. The chapter on food will delight both Italian and non-Italian readers, and the chapter on religion is equally fascinating with its account of saint worship....

There is much valuable information in this book. The comparison between New Orleans and Palermo is one such example. Also, the contrast between immigrant experience in Louisiana with that of Italian immigrant experience elsewhere in the United States will be an eye-opener for non-Louisianians.

There are some missing elements. Although the book does include some information about northern Louisiana, it misses the southwestern part of the state where thriving communities of Sicilians celebrated Saint Joseph altars, had large organizations, and made significant contributions. Some scholars estimate that Sicilians comprised perhaps 25 percent of all Italian immigrants to the United States, and Margavio and Salomone tell us that in Louisiana Sicilians comprised over 90 percent of the Italian immigrant population.

The book very capably points out the contributions of many Americans of Italian descent in Louisiana history, such as Joseph Maselli whose American Italian Renaissance Museum and Research Library in New Orleans is already well known and whose efforts with the Piazza d’Italia are once again in the news (an enormous project currently underway including major renovations of the old building with a major hotel scheduled for completion in the fall of 2003).

There are also older historical figures whose lives are recounted, with names perhaps familiar to native Louisianians and tourists as well (families that gave us the Monteleone Hotel in the French Quarter or restaurants like Casamento’s). Yet there are significant people and places that are not mentioned: the late Bishop Charles Pasquale Greco of Alexandria or current Archbishop of Miami and New Orleans native John Clement Favalora, as well as artists, writers, musicians. What all of this says, moreover, is that the subject is vast and rich.

Margavio and Salomone deserve credit for their good work. This book is one that will delight readers who know something about Italians in Louisiana and will be valuable to those who do not yet know much. The book is a wonderful synthesis of material, lovingly assembled, with flourishes of humor and solid intelligence. It deserves to be in libraries as well as in the hands of many readers. When I saw Anthony Margavio interviewed in a well-made video about what must be his favourite subject, I knew at once that I wanted to read his new book.

Margavio and Salomone make good use of other past research in the field (Arcudi, Scarpaci, Baiamonte, for examples), though there are several notable omissions. Paolo Giordano’s 1978 dissertation is one of the unfortunate omissions.

Nevertheless, Margavio and Salomone break new ground in many places in this book and often provide thought-provoking passages as when they attempt to debunk traditional gender stereotypes in one of the fictional vignettes. In «The Game of Love», starring Vita and her husband Vito, apparent domestic fury and anger subside to reveal the inseparability of a couple «blessed» at the heart of the relationship.

The photographs found at the center of this book are superb additions, and readers will delight in images ranging from old New Orleans businesses to strawberry farmers in Tangipahoa Parish, from the now-almost-impossible-to-find outdoor ovens to a famous mausoleum of the Società Italiana di Mutua Beneficenza a Nuova Orleans (which some claim, founded in 1834, is the first such society established in the United States).

From photographs of First Communions and weddings to Nick LaRocca’s Original Dixieland Jazz Band, these images are delightful and assist well in documenting what the last chapter reveals by its title, «Becoming American and the Hunger of Memory.»

The authors acknowledge in their first chapter, «Strictly speaking, the narrative we have written is neither a history nor a sociology of the Italians. To be sure, it contains historical facts and sociological observations – the particular and the general.» Apparently, they were working on this project back in the 1980s but came to the conclusion at that time that it «wasn’t worth reading.» The years of successive work have paid off.

They no longer have to confess being «more than a bit red-faced» for what they were writing twenty years ago. This new book is thoroughly readable and enjoyable. Indeed, its authors have succeeded with their intention to engage both the head and the heart.

Reviewed by Leo Luke Marcello