Anthony Riccio Photo
Riccio’s grandmother.
Growing up in New Haven in the 1950s, Anthony Riccio never understood why his grandmother immigrated from Italy, the land of Bernini’s masterful sculptures and Giuseppe Verdi’s beautiful music. When he asked her why she moved to the United States, she simply said, “I don’t like.”
Ricco also didn’t understand her grandmother’s reaction when he and his father ran to tell her the news that the first man had landed on the moon. She could even see it on the television if she wanted, they told her. She was unimpressed: They certainly made up that story, she said. Then she went back to washing the dishes.
Decades later, Riccio sought to better understand his grandmother’s story and the stories of other 20th century Italian-American female immigrants to New Haven. In a talk titled “The Italian-American Experience in New Haven,” he previewed the results at the New Haven Museum this past Wednesday night, presenting some of the photos and stories he collected over the years while preparing a forthcoming book focused on women’s experiences.
“My grandma not answering the questions I asked her just made me more curious, and I wanted to explore my roots and go back to Italy,” said Riccio, who studied for a few summers in Italy and did a masters in Renaissance art history in Florence. “I began to explore my grandmother’s past with my camera, and photographing those areas where she came from. I went on this grand tour on my own and just traveled extensively, photographing the south.”
In addition to taking his own photos, Riccio has been collecting old photos of Italian families and neighborhoods in New Haven. At Wednesday’s talk, he showed photos of what areas like Long Wharf, Wooster Square, and Church Street South looked like decades ago. Audience members murmured in recognition when he showed an old photo of Libby’s Italian Pastry Shop on Wooster Street.
For people like Riccio’s grandmother, America represented a land of hope and freedom. Immigrants came from all different backgrounds: Some moved from farms in Italy to farms in the New Haven area, while others opened up their own shops or peddled their own goods. Riccio showed a portrait and told the story of an Italian-American who made bleach in his basement and walked door-to-door selling containers of bleach. For these people, the American dream was coming true.
Riccio also took the time to tell the darker side of the story: the obstacles that Italians, particularly women, faced upon immigrating to the United States. Those who moved to New Haven were eager to take on work to make money for their families, and many women started working in sweatshop factories.
“The Italian American Experience in New Haven” by Riccio
Riccio described how New Haven started to become the epicenter of the garment industry in the early 1900s. The Chamber of Commerce in New Haven ignored poor labor conditions, which included brutal working hours, barely one bathroom for a whole factory of women, mistreatment from bosses, and no heating or air conditioning, he said.
“There was a whole generation of women that had just arrived that were eager to work because of the dire economic needs at home,” Riccio said. “These sweatshops became these horrible places where women were subject to all sorts of horrible abuses. … I’m a product of this, because my own mother worked in these horrible places.”
Riccio, who published a book in 2006 titled The Italian-American Experience in New Haven, said that as he continued interviewing and researching people, he realized that the Italian-American women immigrants had their own rarely-told story. He shifted his focus to their narratives. and Farms, Factories, and Families: Italian-American Women of Connecticut, his next book slated to come out next year, tells the story of these women.
“When these women got to America, they had a cash flow they never imagined from work, and with what little money they made, they saved for their children’s education, invested, bought houses… It’s a story that’s never been told,” Riccio said. “So my new book traces the trajectory of [the women] breaking away from the old culture to the new, and what the American dream gave to these women.”
For Riccio, transcribing all these oral histories ensures that the stories stay alive even after they pass away. While his upcoming book highlights Italian-American women’s experiences immigrating to New Haven, he emphasized the importance of capturing as many different stories as possible.
“This history isn’t really written anywhere, so I turned to the oral tradition and it’s a wonderful tradition that’s not only reserved for Italian-Americans: it runs through many cultures,” Riccio said at the beginning of his talk. “But the sad part is that if you don’t catch the histories – if you don’t capture these moments people had and record them – the culture eventually fades and ultimately passes away.”
Riccio said he is unaware of anyone else who is trying to transcribe these same histories. Though he has been doing this work for years, he has still been kept busy by continuous interviews and research.
“It’s like you can’t keep up with all the oral histories: you feel like you have this fever because you’re always trying to catch people’s stories before they pass away, because once they pass away, the stories are gone forever,” Riccio said. “You have to keep working. You have to keep getting the next story.”
Riccio is a great guy. I appreciate his "fever". Its just sad that the American dream died along time ago. Theonly way someone can come to New Haven and save enough to buy a house is if they're lucky enough to land a job at Yale. As far as i know, they are the only local employer who offers a living wage, healthcare, and first-time homebuyer incentives. Everyone else thinks the American Dream is a cruel joke played on the poor.