Memories of belonging : descendants of Italian migrants to the United States, 1884-present
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Memories of belonging : descendants of Italian migrants to the United States, 1884-present
(Studies in global social history / series editor, Marcel van der Linden, v. 17 . Studies in global migration history / editor,
Brill, c2015
- : hbk
- Other Title
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Memories of belonging : descendants of Italian migrants to the United Sates, 1884 present
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [357]-403) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Memories 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.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ... 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
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