It is no secret that the festa was a time when community came together, when “individual domus and the neighborhood” (178) combined to become one large entity and domus. In Italy, celebrations of this sort were not Italian celebrations, but regional celebration of a town’s saint (an example is the May festival of Saint Ubaldo in Gubbio). When different regions came together in Italy, however, they could not celebrate in unity individual saints, and instead celebrated la Madonna – the saint of the domus. The festa emphasized the fact that “no one existed only in the domus” (182) for street life was also extremely important – everyone watched everyone else.
What was the true purpose of the festival, though? Was it actually to strengthen the community domus? At first, the festa “was a brave declaration of presence” (182) against the Irish and German Catholics that lived nearby. It later “defined the boundaries of the community” (183) as the procession marched through all the streets of Italian Harlem. The true importance of the festa, though, was it’s symbolic representation of the “divine domus.” It represented stability that perhaps the individual domus lacked. It represented the power of women – though Orsi goes on to state that the festa also defined women and confined them even more into the definition of a “good woman.”
I agree that there are always several sides to a story, but perhaps Orsi is trying too hard to prove that women were powerless. Yes, men happened to be in charge of the organizational aspects of the festa, but Orsi doesn’t neglect to tell us that some women were as well. Does it diminish the fact that these women were more socially mobile than most? Does this make them less womanly and hence prove that women were still powerless? I think not. The entire procession was a celebration of the mother and the woman. Yes, perhaps la Madonna is a perfect example of a “good woman” and therefore makes it hard for real women to live up to her, but isn’t this true for all women of the time? The 1930s-1950s were a time of idealized women in general, especially in white America!
Marina B. Nebro
