Erica Davis

The beginning two paragraphs of Robert A. Orsi’s “The Madonna of 115^th Street,” explore the struggles of families who came to America in search of a better life, often finding there “a world often not very different from the one they had left. It was a place of hope and ambitions, where fear of failure, despair, and uncertainty were just a given” (48). The Italian Harlem Orsi describes was “a place of separation where people came to work on behalf of those from whom they were separated” (48), and while “the decision to emigrate was a family decision,” still, “the pain of the separation—on both sides of the Atlantic—was no less real for this” (23). Italian Harlem was a place in which both the longing for home, which anecdotal proof from the passage shows led one woman to die after “a long depression brought on by the dislocations of immigration” (20), and the unyielding endurance of wanting to make this new land a home for families combined in such a way that while some lost their Italian identities upon reaching the shores of this new land, others discovered it after living in the area for ages and letting the community change them.

At the epicenter of the balance between longing for this new home and the place people came from was a strong and continual dedication that these immigrants had to their faith. The description of the festa of Mount Carmel and the procession of la Madonna provide a powerful and edifying glance at the gravity of the people of Italian Harlem’s emphasis on prayer. Their promises to la bella Madonna, among which were marching with candles that were the same weight as the one carrying them, licking the pavement of the alter, crawling on hands and feet through the searing streets in procession, and spending money that family’s didn’t have on clothing and donations to the church in an attempt to go to any lengths necessary to win the favor of la figura, were taken extremely seriously, with generations taking on the burdens of their predecessors promises years after their passing. The emphasis on religion as something that brought the Italian community from places as far apart as California and New York together was something that I thought was a true indicator of the dedication these immigrants have to their tradition and their beliefs. The saint’s statues were seen as a “rallying point” that united the entire community and gave them a sense of comfort and community despite the miles and miles that separated them from Italy. The strength of togetherness brought out in these ceremonies, processionals in which the strong helped the weak, the rich the poor, and all out of the goodness of their hearts and with nothing to gain but good favor in the eyes of the Madonna, is a truly potent image that Orsi describes beautifully.

Outside of the traditions of this festival, which spread beyond the church and religious practices themselves to a neighborhood wide cleaning, cooking and hosting spree in which the community transforms into a bustling center for cultural appreciation for an indeterminate period of time, the realization that Eastern Harlem was an area crumbling around these immigrant people also rallies them together. While “the residents of Italian Harlem did not need outside researchers and statisticians to inform them about the plight of their community” (43), and many “improved their lot,” and “left the neighborhood [when they did]” (45), “while they lived in the neighborhood they found it a secure and supportive community where neighbors helped each other in times of trouble and shared in each other’s celebrations” (45). An appreciation for their home and want to better it is something that made the Italians of Harlem a very powerful group, drawn together not only by their appreciation for their customs and neighborhood wide plights, but in their want to share in the experiences with the people around them. These people worked tirelessly and devoted themselves so fully that shrines in their households were not uncommon, and through it all they managed to stay a devoted and united community.

Reading about the life and trials of the Italian immigrants in East Harlem got me thinking about several points. It made me think about the circumstances that would lead one to take the plunge, to make that monumental decision to emigrate from their home country and completely restart their lives. Some of my ancestors were forced to do it due to religious persecution, but the Italian immigrants did it of their own volition, due to economic hardship – but what exactly propelled them to try and better their situation?

Again and again the answer seemed to be, for the immigrants, family. I noticed as I read the incredibly strong familial ties that connected and motivated the immigrants, and the way the immigrants worked through downright atrocious conditions simply for the prospect of earning enough money to send for their families. Meanwhile, fast forward several decades and there seems to be a substantial change – the respect for family and culture is something that is seriously lacking these days. I will admit to taking for granted and sometimes disregarding the fact that my family was there to support me, especially as a younger teenager. After reading about the devotion these families had to each other, I wish that in certain circumstances I had behaved differently.

Some other things that struck me were the devotion that the Italian immigrants had for the Madonna and the lengthy preparation for outsiders to arrive. As someone who does not lean towards being actively religious, I was at first skeptical of all this effort being put in for one day, but I grew to understand it as I continued to read. The Madonna is such a central figure to the religion and to their beliefs, and it is beautiful to read about their celebrations.

Be it to their religion, their family, or both, many of these immigrants had a high capacity for devotion and a willingness to work for what they believed in – a lesson that should continue to be imprinted across generations.

The second chapter of The Madonna of 115th Street presents a very interesting paradox in the life of the southern Italian immigrants to America.  This is the idea that the first generation parents want their children to know Italian culture and their dialect, but many of the parents did not, according to Robert Orsi, romanticize the old country or paese. They told their children about the poverty and all the problems of southern Italy. This is a paradox on multiple levels. The first is that while parents are not glossing over the hardships of life in Italy, they still want their children to connect to the Italian culture. That connection seems unlikely if the children associate their culture with poverty and exploitation.  “They remembered and told their children stories of poverty and explotation of the mezzogiorno (pg. 21).”  The parents would need to actively create that positive association with Italian culture.  The conditions in Italy clearly did not add up to a good quality of life which is why the parents left, but telling the child about suffering would not make him eager to identity with southern Italy. The neighbors who do yearn for Italy would not have enough of an impact on a small child as their parents would.

The next level of this paradox, which Orsi also mentions, is the fact that if the child just simply opens his eyes he would see “exploration, endurance, unemployment, difficulty, and separation (pg. 27).” To the child, what makes America better than Italy? There are very limited opportunities for the immigrants to make a living in Italian Harlem. Desperate, they accept any job they can find, no matter the pay or conditions.  What Orsi does not mention is the effect this has on the second generation, or the child.  Home is clearly not Italy, but this home in northern Manhattan looks equally as bad as the parents made Italy sound. There is nothing the parents, and certainly nothing the child could do to improve the conditions, but now the child is even more confused. My parents left poverty to live in a different poverty across the ocean? The child has no positive connection with either Italy or America.  Which leads to a bigger question: how will the child identify himself when he grows up? Italian-American, American-Italian, just Italian, just American, none of the above?

The last layer of the paradox is another idea that Orsi discusses: “We must be wary of the powerful distortions of memory (pg. 45).” Because Italian Harlem does not exist any more, people sometimes became nostalgic, and romanticized what used to be.  This is the same idea that Foner mentioned in the beginning of chapter 2 when New Yorkers often remembered their communites as close knit ethnic neighborhoods and not for all the hardships they endured. It is this final layer of the paradox that is most interesting.  Regardless of whether some immigrants later romanticized Italian Harlem, there is testimony that men and women came to love the neighborhood. Some never left, while others did but wished to be buried by the neighborhood’s funeral director.  Why is it that Italy was neither the subject of romanticization or eventual love, while northern Manhattan, which had many of the same difficulties, was both? I think it is because of the mind set the immigrants had when they arrived.  Conditions in America were not perfect, but the immigrants came with the idea that they would have to work.  The assumption was that their lot could only get better, which it did.

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.

The opening paragraphs of the first chapter of Orsi’s The Madonna of 115^th Street create an indubitably convivial and joyous atmosphere. The day of the festa has arrived and all of Italian Harlem is bustling with activity. It was exciting to read the descriptions provided by Orsi as they enabled me to visualize a neighborhood full of lively conversations, various foods, bright decorations, and smiling inhabitants. In addition, the deep veneration of la Madonna during this period of time helps to characterize the Italian immigrants as staunchly devoted to their faith and beliefs as Orsi describes all of Little Italy going to great lengths to pay tribute to the Virgin.

After reading Chapter 1, Italian Harlem seems like an ideal place to live. It is depicted as a place where a sense of community and belonging is pervasive and where strong ties to the homeland are maintained. This is why I was very surprised upon reading the following chapter, which talks about all the banes that afflicted Little Italy at the time. Orsi paints a picture of a neighborhood in which sidewalks are cluttered by garbage, streets are dominated by gangs and juvenile delinquency, and residents are forced to live in squalor. There is a clear discrepancy between how the immigrants envisioned their lives in America and reality.

Orsi states that The Italian immigrants were traveling away from the world of “la miseria,” which was riddled with overpopulation, disease, and over taxation. Sadly, however, the quality of life in East Harlem at the time was nowhere close to matching the saccharine expectations held by these immigrants. At the end of the second chapter, Orsi goes on to say that despite the incongruity between their dreams and reality, the Italians of East Harlem grew to love their home, a place where everyone shared in both the joys and tribulations of each other and a place where cultural ties were strongly clung on to. At first, I wondered how anyone could come to so dearly love a place plagued by so many issues, but I went on to realize that many immigrant groups, not just the Italians, faced a similar situation upon settling down in various neighborhoods in the city. Although the quality of life was definitely not as great as it could be, these immigrants were able to overlook this reality by finding strength and hope in one another.

The first two chapters of “Madonna of 115^th Street” made me think a lot about the role that religion plays in people’s lives. It appears that, for Southern Italian immigrants in New York City, particularly in Harlem, their deep devotion to the Madonna was not just a belief system. It was a system of renewal and rejuvenation throughout their hardships. I found it so fascinating to read the first chapter of the book, that present this magnificent and vibrant celebration and to then contrast it with the second chapter, which focused on the horrible living conditions that Italian immigrants endured. The two chapters almost seem to be describing two completely different societies, and yet they are one and the same.

When I though about it more, however, are realized that this seemingly paradoxical lifestyle was not a paradox at all. Religion, by its dictionary definition (although many people will interpret otherwise) is “the belief in and worship of a superhuman or controlling power”. Here are these displaced and homesick immigrants who came to New York to seek a better life. Orsi explains, however, that Italians who came to New York experienced the same extreme poverty and run-down living conditions that they had attempted to escape in Italy. The irony of it all would be enough to drive anyone into total depression at the thought that there is no better life out there.

That’s where religion comes into play. When one believes in a higher power, there is hope. These immigrants worked so hard and earned so little, and they needed all the hope they can get. I think that religious beliefs are the strongest in the face of hardship. There is a saying “there’s no atheist in a foxhole”, meaning that the times of our greatest fears and hardships are the times when we are most inclined to believe that there is a greater power above everything. When it seems that all hope is lost, the natural human inclination is to turn to a higher power. Sometimes the only way to move forward is to believe that there is a bigger plan of which we are simply unaware. I think that in their crowded and difficult lives, the Italian immigrants the needed their incredibly deep devotion to the Madonna in order to survive.

On the first day of class, we discussed the importance of tradition in immigrant communities. Familiarity, identity, and order/stability were a few explanations given as to why traditions play such a significant role. The festa della Madonna del Monte Carmelo in East Harlem seems to encompass most, if not all, of these features. According to Orsi, the custom resulted from a tension that existed between the continuity of Italian tradition and the immigrants’ deeply felt pain of separation. As Orsi writes, there was “continuity within the context of disruption” and this practice emerged in the interstices between them. In this sense, the festa linked Italian immigrants to the old paese (familiarity), while also serving as a practice essential to the community’s understanding of its own history (identity).

Orsi concludes the second chapter by describing Italian Harlem as a “theater of extremes.” It was a place of hope and ambition, yet it was also a place of despair, unemployment, overpopulation, crime, and disease. It seems rather difficult to understand how a place with such hardship and struggle can be so beloved to its inhabitants. It becomes quite sensible, however, as one begins to understand the extent to which Italians valued family and, therefore, community. Emigration was a family decision for family preservation. Loyalty to a place was family-centered. Only when most family members emigrated or passed away did an immigrant’s attention shift to the new world. Orsi uses an interesting choice of words to describe these immigrants: “Americans by attrition.” The place itself did not matter as much as the people within. As someone who is extremely family-orientated, I can definitely relate to this seemingly absurd attachment to a place with so much conflict.

Also, like Zoe, I always sympathized with the efforts of the labor movement and understood their frustration with “strikebreakers.” Now, however, I have a better understanding of why Italians had little choice but to take whatever work they could get.

The festival celebrating the Madonna seemed to be a source of hope and pride for the Italian Americans. Although the festival has remained, more or less, in the same area, Italians are no longer the majority in “Little Italy.” I can’t help but wonder how non-Italians currently feel about the festival. Furthermore, I wonder if any traditions were modified because of this ethnic change in the community. Many traditions are no longer in practice; however, I can’t help but wonder how some were created in the first place.

One aspect of the festival I found interesting was the barefoot parade. It is interesting to see such a tradition in New York City only because realistically, it must have been highly unsanitary. It’s almost ironic that this tradition was formed as a way to alleviate a type of pain by suffering in another way. In reality, it could potentially just make the situation far worse, especially if they were hoping to cure a disease. Of course, I understand this wasn’t the point of the parade – being barefoot was simply a means for the Italian Americans to pray and hope to receive divine aide.

Another aspect of this passage I found interesting was the act of donating clothing. According to tradition, if children were cured by some ailment due to the prayers of the last festival, those children would wear new clothing during the current festival, and later donate it to the church for the poor. This act is very similar to the idea of “paying it forward.” Perhaps this tradition was created simply because they could not physically repay a divine source, or perhaps it was created because charity was considered an act of repayment. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see that the idea of helping another as a payment for receiving the help from someone else could have been used decades before the idea was popularized and labeled as “paying it forward.”

This passage has definitely left me curious, and I hope to one-day experience the festival firsthand. I would love to see which traditions have prevailed throughout the years, traditions that could have been created over time, and traditions that are no longer done.

-Christina Torossian

When reading Orsi’s first two chapters in The Madonna of 115th Street, I couldn’t help but notice a strong difference to our previous readings by Foner. Foner’s work has been very historical and fact-based, yet Orsi tries to make his information sound almost like a story. For me I connected to this reading a lot more easily due to the personal characters described in Italian Harlem. After all, the history of immigration is deeper than just statistical facts. It is a tale of a multitude of characters.

The one thing that truly stood out to me was the strong emphasis on family and community. After reading the first chapter and the accounts on the festa for la Madonna, I couldn’t help but wonder what other elements there were to this culture of Italian-Americans. Chapter 2 truly highlighted these points. Italian Harlem and its members faced many problems throughout its existence such as crime and filth on the streets, “neighborhood isolation…degradation in the eyes of the surrounding community, and persistant conditions of poverty in the neighborhood” (page 45). Italian immigrants came through Ellis Island and flocked to Harlem immediately in order to be with people of similar descent and with previous immigrant family members. Living this life was certainly no simple task. Men and women both faced tough conditions as they worked incredibly hard for low wages (which they’d save some of in order to bring more family over from Italy). Tenements were in very poor conditions and were generally filthy, cramped, and falling apart. Crime became a persistant problem as gangs began to form and some of the youthful generation fell into patterns of delinquency.

As if these external pressures were not enough, internal struggles were prevalent as well (such as separation). Being separated from their families, immigrants felt the need to save up what little they did make to bring their families overseas. Some would manage to go home and visit their family, but when it came time to come back to America the departure would be just as hard as the first time. Plus, Italian Harlem itself faced issues of separation from the rest of New York City due to its negatively perceived reputation.

What I found most fascinating about these first two chapters is how when you compare the two, they sound quite different in tone. They highlight the highest and lowest features of the community. Chapter 2 discusses in depth just how difficult life in Italian Harlem was. Yet, despite these poor conditions and negative factors, this was still a community of people bonded together through culture and love. Such a strong emphasis on family is what made this community so unique. No matter how hard times got, you could always count on your personal family and the community family to be there. This main point runs throughout the entire chapter, and is also the main focus in Chapter 1. The festa and the veneration of la Madonna in such a theatrical, prophetic, and significant way shows just how strongly bonded this community and culture became. Thus, I felt the juxtaposition of these two contrasting chapters really added to the comprehension of life in Italian Harlem.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, it’s no secret that la famiglia is a big part of Italian culture.  And once immigrants were able to bring over their loved ones, they were able to hold onto this important tradition.  These Italian-Americans came from the lowest rungs of southern Italy.  Orsi makes an important distinction about their love of the homeland – they “did not know an Italian nation – they only knew the domus of their paesi” (78).

The domus – “the Italian home and family… the religion of Italian Americans” (77) – was deeply ingrained into the Italian Harlem society.  Parents, along with their friends, comari/compari, and extended family, would raise their children with a strong sense of family values.  Growing up in the domus represented to the Italian-Americans a fundamental piece of a child’s education – ben educato.

The domus, however, was not without its problems.  From what Orsi says about the domus, it seems to be chock-full of problems, making it seem to be a negative system.  The main issues that I took out of the reading were generational tensions and gender tensions.  Because I think that all cultures and people struggle generationally, I want to focus more on the gender tensions.

The Italian domus is heavily hierarchical and patriarchal.  That being said, the mother is the “boss.”  How can this be so?  It seems almost contradictory to say that the mother was in control of everything, when there was a father around.  Often times, because of this complicated hierarchical power system in the home, men would struggle to control their women.  “Italian fathers ‘are simply mad.’  They rage against their wives, whom they perceive as rivals for the respect of their children” (119).  They also had a rivalry with sons, whom had a strong tie to their mothers through a “blood-bond.”  Younger sons, who resented older brothers for their seat of power in the house, would act out by controlling their sisters.

As younger generations grew up finding these problems within the domus, they had trouble breaking free of the highly structured lifestyle.  In the end, most children accepted their place in life – not as individuals but as part of a domus.

Marina B. Nebro