Michael Immerso traces the history of the First Ward from the arrival of the first Italian in the 1870s until 1953 when the district was uprooted to make way for urban renewal. Richly illustrated with photographs culled from the albums and shoeboxes in the private collections of hundreds of former First Ward families from all across the United States, the book documents the evolution of the district from a small immigrant quarter into a complex Italian-American neighborhood that thrived during the first half of this century. Book jacket.

Leaving Little Italy explores the various forces that have shaped and continue to mold Italian American culture. Early chapters offer a historical survey of major developments in Italian American culture, from the early mass immigration period to the present day, situating these developments within the larger framework of American culture as a whole. Subsequent chapters examine particular works of Italian American literature and film from a variety of perspectives, including literary history, gender, social class, autobiography, and race. Paying particular attention to how the individual artist's personality has intersected with community in the shaping of Italian American culture, the book reveals how and why Italian America was invented and why Little Italys must ultimately disappear.

Italians first settled in the Newark area in the 1880s. Italian Americans of Newark, Nutley, and Belleville shows these immigrants and their families from 1900 to the 1950s. The street peddler, the barber, the baker, the undertaker, the macaroni maker, the concert musician, and more are portrayed here in the grace and dignity of their work. Outings to the shore or Branch Brook Park balanced hard work and long hours. Family gatherings, weddings, first communions, and processions for the feasts of St. Gerard, St. Rocco, and St. Bartholomew were all a part of the life of the family and the vibrant Italian neighborhoods. More than 200 vintage photographs from family albums tell these stories.

Newark has many histories including G. Antonio Basso who emigrated from Italy to Newark, NJ in 1900. Antonio Basso was my Grandfather who came to America at age 14. Newark has many artistic roots including Armenia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, France which are featured in Newark, Italy + Me.Immigration is a ongoing event.The past is indeed prologue to our present and future. Welcome to my Newark, Nevarca and the new old sod in New Jersey. Daniel P Quinn also wrote: ""Exits + Entrances, 25 years off-Broadway, Opera and Beyond""; Short Plays to Long Remember (TNT) and ""organized labor"". These books are for sale at Lulu.com; B+N.org; Amazon Books or order at your independent book store or on the web.

The entire Italian American experience—from America's earliest days through the present—is now available in a single volume. This wide-ranging work relates the entire saga of the Italian-American experience from immigration through assimilation to achievement. The book highlights the enormous contributions that Italian Americans—the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States—have made to the professions, politics, academy, arts, and popular culture of America. Going beyond familiar names and stories, it also captures the essence of everyday life for Italian Americans as they established communities and interacted with other ethnic groups. In this single volume, readers will be able to explore why Italians came to America, where they settled, and how their distinctive identity was formed. A diverse array of entries that highlight the breadth of this experience, as well as the multitude of ways in which Italian Americans have influenced U.S. history and culture, are presented in five thematic sections. Featured primary documents range from a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus announcing his discovery to excerpts from President Barack Obama's 2011 speech to the National Italian American Foundation. Readers will come away from this book with a broader understanding of and greater appreciation for Italian Americans' contributions to the United States.

The migration of Italians to the area began in 1864 with Raffaele Bracaccini, who was attracted by the beauty of Lake Erie and the countryside. By 1938, Erie's 18,000 Italians comprised the third largest ethnic group. Erie had its own Italian language newspaper from 1915 to 1940. St. Paul's Church was built with the contributions of Italian immigrants. Columbus School, Columbus Park, and Rose Memorial Hospital were established. Societies and businesses flourished. This book contains more than 200 photographs collected from local families representing the collective memory and history of Erie's Italian community from the 1860s to the 1950s.

For the first time in forty years, the story of one of America's most maligned cities is told in all its grit and glory. With its open-armed embrace of manufacturing, Newark, New Jersey, rode the Industrial Revolution to great prominence and wealth that lasted well into the twentieth century. In the postwar years, however, Newark experienced a perfect storm of urban troublesùpolitical corruption, industrial abandonment, white flight, racial conflict, crime, poverty. Cities across the United States found themselves in similar predicaments, yet Newark stands out as an exceptional case. Its saga reflects the rollercoaster ride of Everycity U.S.A., only with a steeper rise, sharper turns, and a much more dramatic plunge. How Newark Became Newark is a fresh, unflinching popular history that spans the city's epic transformation from a tiny Puritan village into a manufacturing powerhouse, on to its desperate struggles in the twentieth century and beyond. After World War II, unrest mounted as the minority community was increasingly marginalized, leading to the wrenching civic disturbances of the 1960s. Though much of the city was crippled for years, How Newark Became Newark is also a story of survival and hope. Today, a real estate revival and growing population are signs that Newark is once again in ascendance.

The Italian/American Experience: A Collection of Writings represents a meaningful attempt to inform Italian Americans about their group’s varied experiences in America. This book, unlike many works on the Italian American experience, contains writings that explain why popular negative notions of Italian/American life are inaccurate. The Italian/American Experience lists a number of organizations and journals specializing in Italian American culture and provides brief descriptions of many leading researchers in the field of Italian American studies. This unique text also contains an annotated bibliography of key books that deal with the lives of Italians and Italian Americans. This collection of eleven works offers readers an in-depth view of Italian American culture and heritage.

In the late nineteenth century, many Italian immigrants settled in Newark. For these newcomers, the Church became a source of community and strength. Feasts of Patron Saints from their paese, or village in Italy, were a tradition that helped make the new country feel more like the old. At St. Lucy's Church, parishioners held the first Feast of St. Gerard Maiella--the unofficial patron of mothers, children and the unborn--in October 1899, and it has been held every year since. As the decades have passed, generation after generation of Italian Americans return annually to celebrate their heritage and Catholic faith and express their gratitude for St. Gerard's powerful intercession. In this way, the Feast of St. Gerard, the treasure of their grandparents, has become part of their descendants' heritage.

Stories of Newark’s postwar decline are easy to find. But in The Fixers, Julia Rabig supplements these tales of misery with the story of the many imaginative challenges to the city’s decline mounted by Newark’s residents and suburban neighbors. In these pages, we meet the black nationalists whose dynamic organizing elected African American candidates in unprecedented numbers. There are tenants who mounted a historic rent strike to transform public housing and renegade white Catholic priests who joined black laywomen to pioneer the construction of low-income housing and influence housing policy. These are just a few of the “fixers” we meet—people who devised ways to work with limited resources and pull together the threads of a patchwork welfare state. Rabig argues that fixers play dual roles. They support resistance, but also mediation; they fight for reform, but also more radical and far-reaching alternatives; they rally others to a collective cause, but sometimes they broker factions. Fixers reflect longer traditions of organizing while responding to the demands of their times. In so doing, they end up fixing (like a fixative) a new and enduring pattern of activist strategies, reforms, and institutional expectations—a pattern we continue to see today.