The public-private dichotomy between the mother and father that was so characteristic of life in Italian Harlem reminded me of the concept of dramaturgy that I learned in my sociology class last semester. From a dramaturgical viewpoint, people play roles in their daily lives, almost as if they are always actors. The part of dramaturgy that reminded me of the dichotomy of Italian Harlem was the concept of front stage vs. backstage. Like it sounds, backstage represents the private aspects of our lives. In Italian Harlem, the backstage occurred inside the home, where outsiders could not witness the authority of the mother. The backstage was so private in this case that great precautions were taken to prevent anyone outside the home from seeing it. As the curtain comes up, or as a family ventures onto the streets, backstage is almost forgotten as the family is now performing for the masses. In this front stage (the place that we want people to see), the father has all the authority. This whole “act” that was put on by families in East Harlem is similar to the idea of drama and chaos backstage at a theatre and the neat, polished performance given to the audience.

On a different note, the second section of this reading clarified some confusion I previously had when reading the very first chapter of the book. When I read the detailed description of the festa in Chapter 1, part of me didn’t understand how people could be so reverent to the point where they would lick the aisles of a church. This reading made me understand the reason that this devotion was so important to the residents of East Harlem. The festa symbolized so much for the immigrants: connection between generations that might otherwise have been vastly different, the bridging of New York City and their hometowns in Italy, and a return to one’s roots (in particular, the mother). Without this celebration, many of these immigrants would have nothing to pull them through the difficult other 51 weeks of the year. In a way, their devotion is what held them together and reminded them why they fought so hard to protect the domus.

These chapters showed me that my stereotype of Italian family life was incorrect. I had always imagined Italian families from that generation to be far warmer than what Orsi describes. The huge number of Mafia movies set during that time period that I watched portrayed Italian families obsessed with rispetto and disdainful of outsiders, but also tremendously warm and gregarious with one another. This stereotypical family refused to let its sons and daughters date outside the community, and it had nothing but contempt for those who did not support their families with hard work—but it also wrapped its members in a cocoon of endless gatherings, gifts, and feasts.

Orsi would tell me I was wrong. To him, rispetto was colder and more complex. Mothers denied their children the chance to play or even to go outside; fathers gave their children little except tyrannical posturing. At first, this was contradictory to me. If the chief concern of the domus is to protect its own, why would those within it be so needlessly cruel to each other?

The answer, it seems, is that a family in Italian Harlem was not made up of individuals who cooperated to ensure one another’s well being. The domus was not a family as we know it; it was a body that disregarded the individuals within it, that judges its parents and its children based not on their ability to make each other happy but on their ability to show rispetto to one another and the outside world.

We may think of this structure as oppressive. There can be no doubt that the children of immigrants did. In some cases, it seems, even their parents had lingering issues with it. Yet the domus could not be given up. While it and its emphasis on respect were external, its values were internal. No one taught children rispetto; it was so deeply engrained in Italian Harlem that children merely absorbed it like air or water. It was so pervasive, so deeply rooted in people’s minds, that it was nearly impossible to escape.

The paradox of Italian Harlem continues. Previously, many immigrants expressed no desire to return back to Italy, with the exception of seeing loved ones, but this sentiment changes. While clinging to culture in order to retain the sense of community, comfort, and stability is understandable, Italian Harlem’s rigid adherence to a domus-centric society comes across as counterproductive towards achieving the American dream.

The rules governing life in the domus seem to directly contradict the ideas of liberation from an oppressive homeland; they are extremely restrictive in nature and demand segregation and complete submission. They not only enforce the idea of segregation but also went so far as to criticize others outside of their ethnic community. Italian Harlem was an isolated region of old-fashioned Italy itself, where Italians married other Italians, to produce and raise more Italians, who only adhered to ‘Italian’ domus-centered lifestyles. Immigrants who left to pursue a life in America simultaneously condemned what they considered the “American way” and feared their children will grow up to be American. One man expressed that although his children did “’things in the Italian manner,’ [he was still] afraid that they were ‘thoroughly American’.” This is a catch-22 for the younger generations, because they, having grown up in America, would never be able to meet the high standards of maintaining pure Italian values.

Additionally, the entire domus structure comes across as a paradox to me. First off, stress on both blind loyalty to relatives and strong moral values seems like a contradiction to me; one of the ‘rules’ stated is that you should stick by a relative whether they are right or wrong, but their being wrong might entail unethical or immoral behavior. Overall, the domus system breeds it’s own destruction. The stress on respect and authority within the family is revealed to create more rifts than ties, whether it is due to the rivalry between the eldest son and father, the husband and brother-in-law, etc. Italian men were perpetually angry not because the domus was dying but because its values were clung to.

[On a side note] Though not entirely surprising based on the abuses of the Church in Italy, I thought it was interesting that, while being “Christian” was synonymous with being a good citizen, there was avid anticlericalism sentiment and parents discouraged their sons from joining the clergy.

Overall, Italian Harlem is a region of extremes to me. Not only is the domus like a Chinese finger trap, but the entire community’s resistance to American influence and cultural integration is as well; the more the immigrants and older generations struggled to maintain the domus, traditional ‘Italian’ values, and separate themselves from their ‘American’ peers, the more conflicts and tensions seemed to arise.

In discussing the domus community of the Italians in Harlem, Orsi delineates the codes and norms the immigrants maintained and distinguishes their lifestyle from the way of the native Americans. I found this tension of immigrant life very interesting in that while the Italians actively came to settle in America, they came not for ideological, but rather for practical, reasons and thus they attempted to transplant themselves proudly in America while refusing to be American; instead seeking to keep every bit of their roots maintained, done through the method of Italian domus lifestyle. Even while living in America, “when immigrants wanted to criticize their children’s new ideas … they accused them of being American,” a jab at the very country in which they chose to reside (78). And in describing the lifestyle they expected for their future generations, planted in American soil, descriptions were based upon Italian circumstances, such as one woman’s “warning to her children to be faithful to Italian ways,” wherein she expected them to “have a house like [her] grandfather had in Italy” (78).

Even then, the notable characteristics of being American were independence, individualism and rejection of traditional nuclear family life, and the first-, and even second-generation Italians chaffed at such American ways. They, instead, relied upon the constraints of domus life to keep them all in line with Italian morals, claiming that Italians were the only ones who knew how to raise a family properly. I found it quite interesting as to how such an open, fluid and vibrant domus community could flourish on the shores of a foreign and counter environment. Orsi gives countless pages of description of the vibrancy of the domus and comments that “the life of the domus spilled out into closely watched streets and hallways” (92). Both private and public life for the immigrants were influenced by their heritage, and while the fourth chapter offers some harsher, more critical perspectives of domus life, it yet admits that “American-born generations … always remained bound by the demands and values of the domus” (129). Somehow, the first-generation immigrants were able to create a tight enough community life that the following generations still maintained ties to whatever extent, even while dabbling in integrating into their American identity.

“…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.

To continue on the topic of “paradox” that we discussed in class, I found that these two sections introduced more paradoxes and contradictions. The first section painted the picture of a loyal, close-knit supportive life in the domus. The domus, Orsi explained, was a way for immigrants to feel grounded in a new, unstable society. People were very close and had a strong sense of community and support for one another. The second section of the reading seemed like the “behind the scenes” or “behind closed doors” aspects of the domus. Beneath the domus’ supposedly positive exterior, life inside the domus was far from picture perfect.

The main paradox I found within section two was the idea of authority in the domus. The Italian parents demanded the utmost respect from their children yet Orsi writes that the eldest son often claimed more authority than his father. This makes little sense to me. I feel that this discrepancy over who has power, who should bow down to whom, etc. would provide for much confusion as well as the sending of mixed messages within the domus. Perhaps, because my upbringing was a stark contrast to the “domus” lifestyle (think Gilmore Girls), I just don’t truly understand the mechanics of family life in the domus. Maybe it is not as confusing as it seemed, but I certainly would not want to be the father nor the eldest son in a domus because of the conflict and rivalry that existed among the members of the family.

Orsi’s description of the domus in the second section appeared, at times, cult-like. I was particularly annoyed at the number of times the Italian immigrants spoke badly of America. Orsi quoted them frequently putting down America’s methods of child rearing, education, etc. These people came to America for a reason and their disrespect of our values and methods doesn’t seem right. Many immigrants appeared to feel superior to the “American” way of life. Why are they here, then, if they hate the lifestyle so much? This is not to say that all Italians, or all immigrants, think in this way, but I always find myself tired of foreigners in America putting down the way we live.