“…The Italian home and family, what I have been calling the domus, is the religion of Italian Americans (pg. 77).” This quote surprised me. After reading chapter one and learning all about the  annual religion celebration of the festa of the Madonna on Mount Carmel on East 115th Street, such a statement about the domus is confusing.  What exactly does Louis Giambastiani mean when he says religion? It seems that he implying that the domus is like a religion because it functions like many organized religions.

One of the most important ideas surrounding the domus is the idea of self-sacrifice.  There are no individuals, rather just the community. The individual sacrifices their own needs, desires, and emotions, in order to serve a greater good, which according to the Italians is the family unit.  Many times what the second generation immigrant is giving up is not something trivial. It might even be a potential job because it would force someone to live far away, which threatens the domus.  New alliances may be made far away from home with new people, such as the Americans, who cannot be trusted. Many organized religions have some aspect of self-sacrifice to a god, a saint, a church. By being apart of a religion, you accept that sometimes what you want and what your religion deems right are not the same.

The domus rules about marriage follow a similar pattern. Many religions have rules about being endogamous, or marrying within a certain group, in this case, Italians.  There is fear that if Italians do not marry other Italians, the union will ruin the Italian blood.  But more than that, young children “picked up (pg. 77)” family values by living in the domus, which are very important, apparently more important than being educated at school.  If a man chooses a wife that is not Italian, she does not know the Italian values because she has not grown up in an Italian household or domus, so how can she pass them on to the next generation?  His wife is probably a fine young lady, but she is lacking in the understanding of the domus.  According to Robert Orsi, educating the children was a cultural task, so how can this woman do that, if she is not part of the culture? This is intertwined with the fear of assimilation and becoming American, two undesirable effects of living in East Harlem and marrying a non-Italian. The religion, or domus centered society of that culture is lost.

Often the rules in the domus seemed suffocating and old fashioned, but they were ingrained in the second generation, just like any religion which was practiced at home would be.  Whether they liked it or not, the domus was their form of organized religion without the godly aspect and was going to dictate how they lived their lives.