These pages really highlighted the importance of community, and more importantly, family in East Harlem. For a large majority of the immigrants, family was all they had. One of Orsi’s lines that struck me was “Ellis Island can be seen as a point of reunion, a moment in a larger family strategy” (19). When I think of Ellis Island in the 19th and 20th centuries, I picture weary immigrants enduring a myriad of examinations before being admitted into the country (or being rejected, if they are not deemed worthy). Prior to the reading, I had never really thought that for immigrants with family already in the country, Ellis Island can be a time of relief and joy as families are reunited after months or even years apart. Rather than entering the country not knowing where they are going to work and live, immigrants with family in the United States arrive at Ellis Island knowing that they will be at least somewhat taken care of.

The line on page 19 also made me think about how much harder things must have been for the first Italian immigrants who came to the United States before any of their family members. I can’t imagine how alone and scared they must have felt, especially because family was so important to the residents of East Harlem.

Orsi stated that as long as there remains contact between the immigrants in East Harlem and their family back at home in Italy, the immigrants will always have an          attachment to the mother country. I couldn’t help thinking that today’s technology has made the “staying in touch” so much easier. Now, we have modern inventions such as phones, email, Skype/Oovoo/Facetime/Insertvideochattingprogramhere, etc.that greatly facilitate interactions between immigrants, their families, and ultimately their culture in Italy.

Lastly, Orsi mentioned the fact that the Italians immigrants’ insistence on succumbing to their bosses/authority at work regarding horrible conditions caused major conflict among the native born Americans who formed labor unions to demand better conditions. Since elementary school, I had been taught from one perspective, that those who formed the labor unions were wholly correct to stand up for their rights and anyone who disagreed was simply wrong. Reading from the Italians’ point of view, I can now understand that these people had little choice. Any job was better than no job, no matter how bad the conditions were. The immigrants needed to be reunited with their families in order to feel whole and they were willing to do anything to make that happen.