Orsi goes to great length to describe the depredations of Italian Harlem. Crime is rampant, people are poor, and privacy is nonexistent. People desperately miss Italy, even though they may well have been worse off there. Yet after providing such extensive support for this thesis, after labeling the area as miserable, he changes course. At the end of Chapter 2, numerous people talk about Italian Harlem fondly. To them, t was dirty, it was cramped, it was alien and dangerous, but it was home.

This surprised me. How does one go so rapidly from one nation to the next, especially when in the latter nation you are treated poorly at every turn? How can someone call decrepitude their home, especially when that decrepitude is an ocean away from their culture? Do different groups of immigrants experience this differently?

It seems like the Italian immigrants of that era settled in quickly if uneasily. Is that the ‘average’ experience of an immigrant? Are there certain groups who feel more comfortable more quickly here? Conversely, are there people who never weave themselves a place in our social fabric?

The second thing I found interesting was Orsi’s mention of Italian Harlem’s diversity. The name ‘Italian Harlem’ suggests a sort of monolith, solid and homogenous, but according to Orsi things were never that way. In fact, Italian Harlem’s history is one of tension: first with the Irish, then the Jews, and then with the Puerto Ricans and African Americans. In the presence of such diversity and tension, how were Italians able to express their culture as jubilantly as they did during the festa of the Madonna? Maybe the feeling of isolation inspired solidarity, and the festa was a challenge as well as a ritual. Perhaps it is when a people feel most alone and threatened that they produce their most extravagant public displays.