The Italians are a passionate people. They are passionate about their beliefs, about their family, and about their culture. What impresses me is that, despite being thousands of miles away from home, the Italian immigrants of East Harlem managed to hold onto this passion while simultaneously creating a new life for themselves.
Even while creating a new life in New York City the Italians kept their religious beliefs close to them. The festivities of the festa show just how seriously the Italians took their beliefs. “A woman would begin crawling on her hands and knees from the back of the church toward the main altar, dragging her tongue along the pavement as she went” (11). If this isn’t passion, I don’t know what is. I was even more amazed when I read about the significance of the candles the Italians carried with them to the Church of Mount Carmel. The weight of these candles “corresponded to the seriousness of the grace” the people were asking, and the candles and weight could be as much as “sixty pounds or more” (3). One man even carried a weight of 185 pounds because that’s how much he weighed. I think this really reveals how important religion was to the Italian immigrants, if they were willing to carry such heavy candles under the sweltering sun and through the crowded streets to show their thanks to the Madonna. It also impressed me that these Italians kept the promises they had made to the Madonna. It reminded me of all the times that I have tried to make a deal with God (If you give me this, I promise I’ll do that….) but never actually taken it seriously. There was no such room for a broken promise in the Italians beliefs, however, and I think that’s a lesson I can learn from them.
Another lesson that I can probably learn from the Italian immigrants is the importance of family. I remember last year, my Italian teacher had this piece of advice to offer us: Don’t mess with an Italian, because if you do, you mess with his (or her) entire family. “The Madonna of 115th Street” showed me exactly why my teacher would have said something like that. The Italian immigrants who first came over to New York worked not to buy new cell phones, or Ferrari’s, but to bring their family over to live with them. Sometimes it could be years before the family joined them, but they kept at it, even if it meant taking menial jobs that exploited them. The Italians also formed a sort of extended family within their communities in East Harlem. In the words of an informant, “Everybody was friendly… you helped one another…” (46).
