La bell'America: From La Rivoluzione to the Great Depression: An Italian Immigrant Family Remembered »

Graziano, Professor Emeritus, SUNY Buffalo, has written 15 books and 50 articles on research methodology, childhood disorders, parent training, and many related topics. He is also known as an exceptional Italian chef. His brother, parents, and extended family emigrated from Italy. He says, "This is a book in celebration of immigrants. It speaks to us because we are all immigrants."

From La Rivoluzione to the Great Depression: An Italian Immigrant Family Remembered

Publishers Weekly

Five generations of Italian immigrants carry on a love affair with America in this sprawling, exuberant memoir. Graziano's narrative, padded with reams of invented dialogue, stretches back to his 19th-century ancestors in the Italian village of Maida, a semifeudal society whose rigid class hierarchy and hopeless poverty are reinforced by a church-inculcated fatalism. (The author's anticlericalism is pronounced.) But for those with gumption, America beckons: a harsh but dynamic place where opportunities abound despite anti-Italian bigotry. The story gradually refocuses on Graziano's lush reminiscences of his Depression-era boyhood in Nyack, N.Y., where his family weathered hard times thanks to clan solidarity and his father's Herculean work ethic. The author includes iconic vignettes of steerage and arrival, lengthy digressions on Italian history and sociological exegeses of the ways in which immigrants adapted Italy's peasant culture to America, along with novelistic domestic scenes—family dinners, street vendors, wash-day rituals—that are almost Proustian in their detail. The book is a bit schmaltzy and sometimes feels like an overstuffed photo album full of rose-colored stories about half-remembered cousins, but its evocations of family life make it a rich study of the immigrant adventure. Photos. (Dec.)

Preface ix

I Revolution and Promise

Chapter 1 The Turquoise Room (Nyack, 1935) 3

Chapter 2 Invaders and Popes (475-1700) Napoleon's Italy (1792-1815) 15

Chapter 3 The Barn and the Castle (Maida, 1815-1840) 27

Chapter 4 La rivoluzione (1840-1871) 48

Chapter 5 La rivoluzione mancata (1871-1900) 73

II Coming to America

Chapter 6 Lady Liberty (1900) 99

Chapter 7 Mario, Paolo, and Friends (1896-1902) 109

Chapter 8 Views of Maida: Teresa (1901-1909) 137

Chapter 9 The Giant at the Top of the Stairs (1909-1914) 165

Chapter 10 La Grande Guerra (1914-1919) 189

Chapter 11 Views of Maida: Teresa and Michele (1919-1927) 212

Chapter 12 The Move to America (1927-1930) 233

III The Great Depression

Chapter 13 The Depression (1932) 255

Chapter 14 The Lady from Rochester (1932-1936) 277

Chapter 15 The Sewing Machine (1936) 295

Chapter 16 The Truss (1937) 312

Chapter 17 The Visitors (1937) 324

Chapter 18 A Midsummer Knight's Dream (Nyack, 1938) 341

Chapter 19 The Stranger on Sidney's Porch (1939) 362

Chapter 20 An Angel Passes By (1939) 372

Chapter 21 'Nando's Wonderful Shoes (1939-1940) 388

Chapter 22 The Depression Eases (1940) 408

IV War

Chapter 23 The Map (1940-1941) 423

Chapter 24 "Time goes slow when you don t do nothin'!" (Nyack, 1941-1945) 449

V Promises Kept

Chapter 25 Good Years (Nyack, 1945-1950) 471

Chapter 26 At the Top of the Hill (Nyack, 2009) 489

Photo Album 501

References 513

Index 521

Author 523