The Value of Worthless Lives : Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies

The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not Gwords,G making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. Ilaria Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacyGthe autobiographies written by immigrants. Here she looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries, and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, Serra recovers the voices of the first generationGbootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstressesGcompelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often thickly accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities of work, survival, identity, and change. Moving between history and literature, Serra presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience. "In this innovative portrait of the Italian American immigrant experience, Ilaria Serra offers the first comprehensive study of the largely ignored legacy of immigrant autobiographies, bringing to light fifty-eight works written from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Scouring Italian and American archives, discovering memoirs, life stories, and tales in private houses and forgotten drawers, Serra looks at an extraordinary range of writings, some unpublished, some self-published, many written late in life."--BOOK JACKET Autobiography : The Literary Genre Of Immigration -- The Working-class Writer -- Immigrant Artists -- The Spiritual Immigrant -- Immigrant Women -- Toward Success. Ilaria Serra. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 215-228) And Index. In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, Ilaria Serra looks closely at 58 representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration