Passage to Liberty recaptures the drama of the 19th and 20th century immigration to America through photos, letters, and other artifacts -- uniquely replicated in three-dimensional facsimile form. In the tradition of Lest We Forget, Chronicle's bestselling interactive tour through the African American experience, the text uses the stories of individuals and families -- from early explorers, through the wave of 19th century impoverished families, to contemporary figures -- to recapture the rich heritage the Italian people carried with them over the waves, and planted anew in the American soil. Among the topics covered here are: The roots of American democracy in Roman history The migration of 15 million Italians, 1880-1920 Catholicism in Italian-American culture Food, music, and other Italian cultural traditions The Mafia: myth and reality Cultural icons: DiMaggio, Sinatra, Madonna & more As vibrant and packed full of history as previous volumes in this extraordinary series, Passage to Liberty is a splendid and loving tribute to the Italian-American experience.

The Italian Emigration of Modern Times examines diplomatic issues that arose between Italy and the United States over a series of lynchings of Italian immigrant labourers before World War I. The work explores a significant epoch in Italian economic and diplomatic history which became intertwined with American ethnic and race relations issues. On one level, the book emphasises the pragmatism and restraint which characterized Italy’s official reactions to these repeated episodes of murder of its nationals. On another level, it shows that the diplomatic crises which swirled around the lynching of Italians pushed onto the American political scene the question of whether there should be a federal anti-lynching law. Naturally, the lynching of Italian nationals in the US produced wide public outrage in Italy. Italian domestic outcries presented the Italian government with a serious dilemma. Emigrant savings and financial transfers to family members remaining in Italy were an important economic asset. Italian diplomats launched investigations and protested vigorously, but ended up accepting federal financial compensation for the victims’ families. The consistent pragmatism and restraint of the Italian government through these episodes of violence is the unifying theme of the entire work.

Between 1880 and 1915, thirteen million Italians left their homeland, launching the largest emigration from any country in recorded world history. As the young Italian state struggled to adapt to the exodus, it pioneered the establishment of a “global nation”—an Italy abroad cemented by ties of culture, religion, ethnicity, and economics. In this wide-ranging work, Mark Choate examines the relationship between the Italian emigrants, their new communities, and their home country. The state maintained that emigrants were linked to Italy and to one another through a shared culture. Officials established a variety of programs to coordinate Italian communities worldwide. They fostered identity through schools, athletic groups, the Dante Alighieri Society, the Italian Geographic Society, the Catholic Church, Chambers of Commerce, and special banks to handle emigrant remittances. But the projects aimed at binding Italians together also raised intense debates over priorities and the emigrants’ best interests. Did encouraging loyalty to Italy make the emigrants less successful at integrating? Were funds better spent on supporting the home nation rather than sustaining overseas connections? In its probing discussion of immigrant culture, transnational identities, and international politics, this fascinating book not only narrates the grand story of Italian emigration but also provides important background to immigration debates that continue to this day.

Remembering Italian America: Memory, Migration, Identity examines the life of Italians in the United States and the role of migration and collective memory in the history of the construction of Italian American identity. Employing the concept of communicative memory, the authors explain the processes that gave shape to Italian identity in America and the ways in which a symbolic identity became concretized in Italian American oral histories. The text explores the Italy migrants left behind, transatlantic networks, the welcome received by the Italian newcomers, the socioeconomic fabric of Italian America, and the singular worldview that grew out of the immigrant experience. In exploring the role of memory in the construction of Italian American identity, the book analyzes the commonalities in the lives of immigrants, allowing the Italian American experience to speak to the circumstances of newer immigrant communities and allowing these new immigrant communities to speak to the Italian migrant history. Looking at Italian American culture from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume brings various theoretical perspectives to bear on "what, why, and how" questions concerning the Italian American experience. This book will be of interest to students of ethnic studies, immigration studies, and American/transnational studies, as well as American history. Winner of the 2022 Italian American Studies Association Book Award

In this carefully researched and engaging book, Kenneth Scambray surveys the lives and contributions of Italian immigrants in thirteen western states. He covers a variety of topics, including the role of the Roman Catholic Church in attracting and facilitating Italian settlement; the economic, political, and cultural contributions made by Italians; and the efforts to preserve Italian culture and to restore connections to their ancestral identity. The lives of immigrants in the West differed greatly from those of their counterparts on the East Coast in many ways. The development of the West—with its cheap land and mining, forestry, and agriculture industries\--created a demand for labor that enabled newcomers to achieve stability and success. Moreover, female immigrants had many more opportunities to contribute materially to their family’s well-being, either by overseeing new revenue streams for their farms and small businesses, or as paid workers outside the home. Despite this success, Italian immigrants in the West could not escape the era’s xenophobia. Scambray also discusses the ways that Italians, perceived by many as non-White, interacted with other Euro-Americans, other immigrant groups, and Native Americans and African Americans. By placing the Italian immigrant experience within the context of other immigrant narratives, Italian Immigration in the American West provides rich insights into the lives and contributions of individuals and families who sought to build new lives in the West. This unique study reveals the impact of Italian immigration and the immense diversity of the immigrant experience outside the East’s urban centers.

Offering a kaleidoscopic perspective on the experiences of Italian workers on foreign soil, Italian Workers of the World explores the complex links between international class formation and nation building. Distinguished by an international panel of contributors, this wide-ranging volume examines how the reception of immigrants in their new countries shaped their sense of national identity and helped determine the nature of the multiethnic states in which they settled. In Argentina and Brazil, Italian migrants were welcomed as a civilizing influence and were instrumental in establishing and leading syndicalist and anarcho-syndicalist labor movements committed to labor internationalism. In the United States, by contrast, where Italian workers were greeted by the American Federation of Labor's hostility to socialism, internationalism, and unskilled laborers, they organized in ethnically mixed unions, including the radical Industrial Workers of the World. The xenophobia they encountered in the land of opportunity ultimately encouraged sympathy among Italian Americans for Mussolini's modernizing, imperialist ambitions for the Italian state.Covering the work of republican Garibaldi boundaries of historical nationalism.

Paolo Labela was born in about 1765. He married Anna Rosa Telesca. They had one known son, Giuseppe. Giuseppe Labella was born in about 1785 in Avigliano, Potenza, Italy. He married Donata Maria Pace and they had three known children. Descendant, Paolo Labella was born 18 February 1870 in Avigliano. He married Caterina Santarsiero 21 January 1892. They had eight sons. They emigrated in 1903 and settled in New York. Paolo died in 1919 in Port Chester, New York. Ancestors, descendants and relatives lived mainly in Potenza and New York. Includes Corbo, Zaccagnino and related families.

This second volume of New Italian Migrations to the United States explores the evolution of art and cultural expressions created by and about Italian immigrants and their descendants since 1945. The essays range from an Italian-language radio program that broadcast intimate messages from family members in Italy to the role of immigrant cookbook writers in crafting a fashionable Italian food culture. Other works look at how exoticized actresses like Sophia Loren and Pier Angeli helped shape a glamorous Italian style out of images of desperate postwar poverty; overlooked forms of brain drain; the connections between countries old and new in the works of Michigan self-taught artist Silvio Barile; and folk revival performer Alessandra Belloni's reinterpretation of tarantella dance and music for Italian American women. In the afterword, Anthony Julian Tamburri discusses the nomenclature ascribed to Italian American creative writers living in Italy and the United States. Contributors: John Allan Cicala, Simone Cinotto, Teresa Fiore, Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra, Laura E. Ruberto, Joseph Sciorra, and Anthony Julian Tamburri.

A vividly human presentation of the Italian migration to America. Real people appear here, with ordeals and hopes, successes and failures, in all of the circumstances envisioned by the marriage vows. Unions, churches, the rackets, the press, even ideals and ideologies come into focus on this meticulously comprehensive canvas.''--The New Republic ''Yans-McLaughlin has demonstrated effectively that Buffalo's Italian families did not disintegrate or experience major transforamatios under the pressure of immigration and life in a radically different environment. . . . points the way for further significant study of immigrant families.''-John Briggs, International Migration Review ''Methodologically speaking, Yans-McLaughlin's most important conclusion is that quantification is not enough. Statistics, she insists, can give us only the form of group structures; they do not assist the historian in penetrating to the cultural content of those structures. . . . Her book's great strength is its intelligent and painstaking analysis of the key institution of the family among Italian immigrants.''--New York Historical Society Quarterly.

A colorful narrative of the "Italian experience" in America traces the history of this ethnic community in the new world and celebrates its accomplishments from Frank Sinatra to Lee Iacocca.