Like Silky, I related to the lifestyle depicted in this week’s reading, namely chapter 4 where the domus was examined. I still have never had a friend over at my house nor travel to a friend’s house, for it is a concept that my immigrant parents still would not understand. This is similar to Italian elders not being able to understand why the domus was not “society enough for their children” (102). The notion of keeping family intact while being in a country like America was something that I also related to. My mom always tells me how she can never understand how parents can let their kids go so far away for college. Like the Italian elders in these chapters, my mom views this type of separation from your family as a “bad American” tradition.
I felt as if the concepts of freedom and open expression were grouped together as “bad American” traditions. Openly talking about sex, using profanity in the presence of family, etc. It’s a concept still prevalent in New York City, with so many immigrants holding on to their strong values that they bring from home. Raising children in America is especially a big concern. The first page of chapter five bears the quote “What good are the laws of this country if a child is given liberty to talk back to his parents?” It’s hard to instill respect-fear into a young child living in the states, especially now with certain laws in effect. I know my younger cousins can tell our grandparents that they hate them without getting beaten with a bamboo stick pulled right from the backyard like it would have happened in Guyana. (There are other, less graphic ways of instilling respect-fear, I was just listing the worst case scenario.) The younger generations also more prone to assimilation (I say “prone” to label it as a negative thing, the way the elders may have viewed it) so religious values, family values, these traditions disintegrate. Watching the original values fade as the younger generations blend in can make the “American” ways seem like a product of evil. Silky actually does remind us that we can all relate to this idea of a “family-centered” culture.
There was this unsettling balance between oppression and freedom when it came to women. La Madonna was a female figure that seemed to have represented strength. The Italians looked to her when someone needed to be healed, protected, guided. The feste was a big celebration which allowed females to step to the front. It’s even stated that “women were the symbols of the domus. Young women were the symbol of its continuity but also its fragility…” (141). This thought continues on to say blatantly that women are central to the domus in a domus-centered society. Yet with women so centered, they were so oppressed when it came to the men in their lives. Young girls faced tension and hostility when trying to receive “too much” schooling. Their families were fearful that this would scare off suitors with less education, or that the lady would even start to look down upon men with less education. The women had to put all the schedules and preferences of their male relatives before their own schedules and preferences. From the same paragraph that I pulled the previous quote from, it is stated that “fraternal violence, which was as much against their sisters as it was on their behalf, was one of the prices women paid for their centrality in the domus-centered society” (141). It is clearly admitted that women were central to this culture. It seems as if the female presence was a mere figurehead, and the male presence did all the string pulling. (Yet at the same time, it was stated at the end of chapter 5 that women were pulling the strings of their men, forcing them to do certain things and make certain decisions; it’s a confusing concept).
