Description
Book SynopsisMemories of Belonging is a three-generation oral-history study of the offspring of southern Italians who migrated to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1913. Supplemented with the interviewees’ private documents and working from U.S. and Italian archives, Christa Wirth documents a century of transatlantic migration, assimilation, and later-generation self-identification. Her research reveals how memories of migration, everyday life, and ethnicity are passed down through the generations, altered, and contested while constituting family identities. The fact that not all descendants of Italian migrants moved into the U.S. middle class, combined with their continued use of hyphenated identities, points to a history of lived ethnicity and societal exclusion. Moreover, this book demonstrates the extent of forgetting that is required in order to construct an ethnic identity.
Trade Review"it is a nearly irreplaceable book for classes in research methodology, oral history, and immigration history". Susanna Garroni, in H-Net Reviews, June 2021.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ... ix List of Figures, Maps, and Tables ... xi Family Tree ... xiii Introduction ... 1 1 Oral History Methodology and Networks of Memory ... 48 2 Transnational Migration Networks: The Paese in the Rising Global Economy ... 81 3 Memories of Everyday Life I: Hard Work and Family Life ... 115 4 Memories of Everyday Life II: Rural, Urban, and Suburban Environments ... 160 5 Memories of Italianness: Pride, Prejudice, and Consumption ... 188 6 Memories of Elvira and Giovanni Soloperto: In the Shadows of Memory and Dante’s Divine Comedy ... 251 7 Memories of the American Dream: Migration, Assimilation, and the Homeland ... 266 Conclusion ... 308 Epilogue: Italian Americans as the Poster Children of the Immigrant Paradigm? ... 316 Appendix ... 321 Bibliography ... 357 Index ... 404
