This is a picture of my maternal great-grandparents – who officially became American immigrants from Italy in 1910 – and some of their children and grandchildren (including my gram). I would like to take a moment to thank William Howard Taft and his administration for supporting an immigration policy that welcomed Italians at the time, despite a well-known national hostility towards Catholicism. That was…brave.
The older woman in the lower right is my great-grandmother Maria. She didn’t speak a lick of English when she arrived, and was forced to function as a single mother when her husband died tragically shortly after their arrival. That man seated next to her is my great-grandfather Francesco – the best friend of Maria’s deceased husband. Upon learning Maria had been widowed and was considering a return home, he committed to marrying her as a point of duty. He had emigrated a few years earlier, and the law allowed this, despite the ugly strain of violent organized crime associated with men whose names sounded like his.
(That they wed and had nine more children seems to suggest they found each other’s company…palatable, or at least that their situation was come dio comanda – an old Italian expression meaning things are as they are supposed to be, or “as god commanded”).
Why did my great-grandfather leave his homeland for an unfamiliar country thousands of miles away? And why did Maria and her first husband do the same? America (the idea) represented an opportunity to escape poverty – or whatever else somebody may have needed to escape. It was a place where all were welcome, despite the circumstances of their history.
They raised their ten kids in a small home in northern Minnesota, and though they experienced discrimination at the local level, they enjoyed the same full protection under the law as their Irish, German, and Swedish neighbors, all of whom practiced a variety of religions. Their story is inspirational, but no more so than millions of other American origin stories. In fact, it’s the aggregation of these family histories that comprises The Full and Complete American Story. This history, which has continued to get written every day, is at risk.
Donald Trump cleverly tapped into the burbling fear of a weak-minded electorate, and he is quickly taking steps to reorganize America in the vision of his sweaty and bloated consigliere, Steve Bannon. The Italians have another expression – gli ha piu’ garbo un ciuco a bere a boccia – which loosely translates to “a donkey drinking from a bottle has better manners.”
They’ve said it better than I can.