L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2015 www.italoamericano.com L'Italo-Americano 7 T h e o n l y c o r r e c t i o n t h a t needs to be made to Riccio's w o r k i s h i s c o m m e n t t h a t " I t a l i a n A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e i s largely unwritten yet transmitted through the spoken words." The Italian American narrative, the novel and memoirs, dates to the nineteenth century. By 1974 Rose Basile Green in her The I t a l i a n - A m e r i c a n N o v e l : A Document of the Interaction of Two Cultures listed more than three-hundred and fifty Italian American novels in Italian and English. Today, hundreds more h a v e a d d e d t o t h e I t a l i a n American narrative. Riccio divided his interviews into fifteen chapters, covering S o u t h e r n I t a l i a n h i s t o r y , women's journey to America, and their struggle for settle- ment in their new home i n C o n n e c t i c u t . O t h e r c h a p t e r s cover their roles a s w i v e s , f a r m i n g women, factory workers, labor organizers, and work in war-time factories during WWII. A point that Riccio makes that is too often overlooked in official histories is that women in the workforce in America before 1960 often made more than their husbands, especially i m m i g r a n t w o m e n b e f o r e 1945. He tells us that "women working in the shirt and dress factories made more money than their husbands or fathers did." The reason is that men more often worked for an hourly wage w h i l e w o m e n w o r k e d p i e c e work. Another fact often over- looked is that women working in clothing factories or in canneries were skilled laborers, whose skill could not be duplicated in the short run by new workers. It would take weeks if not months for an inexperienced worker to reach the production of an expe- rienced, highly skilled woman w o r k e r o n a l i n e o r s e w i n g machine. In California before WWII, hundreds of canneries serviced both the fishing and the agricul- tural industries, employing over thirty thousand women. Often the workforce in these canneries would be composed of eighty to ninety percent women, while the men worked the heavy equip- ment and dock loading, jobs that did not require a highly skilled worker. By 1920, for example, in California's canneries, experi- The role that immigrant and first generation Italian women played in the workforce before 1960 is not well-documented. Aside from such dramatic and t r a g i c s t o r i e s s u c h a s t h e Triangle Shirtwaist fire, immi- grant women and their daughters have not been given sufficient credit for their role in America's factories and canneries. Less known, as well, is the role that women, more often as silent but important partners, played in the formation of labor unions, from t h e e a s t t o t h e w e s t c o a s t s . A n t h o n y R i c c i o ' s F a r m s , Factories, and Families is an important contribution to the role that Italian women have played in American life, espe- cially the workforce. As an oral history, it includes scores of w o m e n w h o m R i c c i o i n t e r - viewed in nursing homes, senior centers, and their homes. In their own voices, the women give us an intimate view of what their lives as family members, wives, a n d w o r k i n g - c l a s s I t a l i a n w o m e n w e r e l i k e i n Connecticut. Since this is an aging population, it is also a very timely work. Many of the immigrant women Riccio inter- v i e w e d w e r e w e l l i n t o t h e i r eighties and nineties, and their stories would have been lost for- ever if he had not documented their experiences. Oral history is vitally important. It tells histori- ans where to look for the real story of America, insuring that official histories do not just focus on the history of power- brokers: politicians, industrial- ists, and generals. enced adult women typically made up to sixteen dollars a day. B e c a u s e o f t h e s k i l l l e v e l required, new hires under eigh- teen were started at lower wages, about twenty-five cents an hour, which increased as they became m o r e p r o f i c i e n t a t c a n n i n g . Common labor for men in the fields was little more than $1.50 to a $1.75 a day while unskilled f a c t o r y w o r k e r s m a d e u p t o $5.00 a day. Skilled workers in the building trades in California made between $ 4.50 to $8.00 a day. Coal miners' wages ranged from $2.50 to about $5.00 a day before World War I. On the family farm at the time, f r o m Connecticut t o S e a t t l e a n d C a l i f o r n i a , w o m e n were integral to the opera- tion of the farm. As Erminia Ruggerio reports, "If you were old enough to walk you could work on the farm. Five or six years old you started carrying bushels of eggplants, cabbage." She tells Riccio, "I never had a childhood. . . . I didn't have one t o y w h e n I w a s a child." Erminia's mother had her and her eight siblings at home with the aid of a midwife. "After two, three days," Erminia says, "she was back to work on the farm." Erminia's is a familiar story. While women were central to the operation of the family farm, they additionally shoul- dered the burden of having the children, raising them, and main- taining the household. Included in her work was canning the sur- plus of the annual crops, fruits and vegetables. As Erminia says, it was a labor-intensive, full- day's process. Canned fruits and vegetables were essential t o t h e f a m i l y ' s w i n ter diet. As skilled workers, outside the home and farm, women have been unsung participants in the A m e r i c a n l a b o r m o v e m e n t . They, after all, were the skilled w o r k e r s w h o c o u l d n o t b e replaced overnight with- o u t s e r i o u s l y d a m a g i n g p r o d u c - tion, especial- ly in the canning industries where per- ishable fruits, vegeta- bles, and fish could not wait to be processed. In the chapter Italian American Women Raise their Voices: Empowerment in the Union Movement, Riccio interviewed Nick Aiello and Natalie Aiello Adamczyk who report that the young women in their garment factory went on strike first and were followed o n l y l a t e r b y t h e m e n . J i l l Iannone became a labor organiz- er. Being trilingual, speaking Italian, English, and Spanish, she could communicate with all the women in the factory. Riccio records more than a dozen other such stories in which women took leadership roles in union- ization. With the outbreak of World War II, women entered the fac- tory jobs vacated by men. Their contribution to the war effort is as indelible as it was central to the outcome of the war. In I t a l i a n A m e r i c a n W o m e n Entrepreneurs, Italian immigrant women owned business, from grocery stores, restaurants, and taverns to dress shops and facto- ries. From these visible positions many women went on to become community leaders as alder- women and congresswomen. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro explains that her mother was an alderwoman for thirty- five years, "the l o n g e s t p o l i t i c a l c a r e e r i n N e w H a v e n ' s history." Riccio has made an invaluable contribution to the Italian American woman's narrative. The women he inter- viewed speak in their own voic- es, unfiltered by the bias that too c o m m o n l y h a s m a r g i n a l i z e d women in history. It is the type o f r e s e a r c h t h a t d i s m a n t l e s stereotypes and gives women a more visible place in our social order. It is a study that will serve as a resource for broader works a b o u t t h e r o l e o f I t a l i a n American women throughout the U.S. Ken Scambray is the author of A Varied Harvest: The Life a n d W o r k s o f H e n r y B l a k e F u l l e r , T h e N o r t h A m e r i c a n I t a l i a n R e n a i s s a n c e : I t a l i a n Writing in America and Canada, S u r f a c e R o o t s : S t o r i e s , a n d Q u e e n C a l a f i a ' s P a r a d i s e : C a l i f o r n i a a n d t h e I t a l i a n American Novel. KENNETH SCAMBRAY Far ms, Factor ies, and Families: Italian Amer ican Women of Connecticut by Anthony V. Riccio. Foreword by Mary Ann McDonald Carolan. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014 Anthony Riccio

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