Orsi’s book in general focuses on contradictions. The domus is a source of both extraordinary pride and bitter resentment for its inhabitants—not in turn, but at the same time. It is this psychic mingling that Orsi most enjoys describing, and it is at its apex when Orsi describes the role of women in the domus.

Italian women in East Harlem were part of a comically complex system. They were indirect power brokers: it was they who determined how money was spent and who could call the domus theirs, but at the same time they had to remain publicly subservient to men. An unmarried woman, who was a member rather than a leader of a domus, had it the worst. Her condition was one of unending and unfair submission, to her brothers, her father, her mother, and the obsessive eye of the community.

I found it strange that East Harlem allowed women to play these opposed roles. Why did the matriarch, who ran the central unit of Italian life, have to express her power in indirect ways? It was no secret that women ran the domestic show, and the public subservience of the matriarch was therefore an elaborate and wholly unnecessary spectacle. Men futilely attempted to show that they had power, and the roots of their actions were in vindictiveness.

For while matriarchs were revered for their wisdom, they were also despised for their cunning. An effective matriarch oppressed her daughters, undermined her husband, and pitted her sons against each other. Thus, whenever men were given control over women’s lives, men’s decisions seem to have been guided by a repressed pool of resentment. Thus we see the men of East Harlem ruining the reputations of young women, and demanding ridiculous public displays of obeisance. These actions were often ridiculous means of compensation, but they were born in bitterness.