From Newsletter Volume 6, Number 1
By Anthony Riccio
Come this July, I anticipate the publication
of Cooking with Chef Silvio: Stories, Social History and Authentic Recipes from
Campania, by SUNY Press, which looks at the fascinating social history of
Italy’s Campania region through food and oral history stories. The book
highlights the cuisine our ancestors brought from the farmlands of Campania to
the city of New Haven – those hearty and delicious meals our grandparents made
from simple, earth-based ingredients. Highlighted in this book is the
unknown history and unheralded role of the Italian woman whose resourcefulness
and ingenuity in “la cucina della povera gente” the kitchen of the poor, often
meant survival for large peasant families with few resources in the
poverty-stricken south.
A second book in progress, also by SUNY Press
(Spring ’11), is Farms, Factories and Families: Italian American Women of
Connecticut, a woman’s history woven together by oral histories from elderly
Italian American women storytellers from many cities throughout
Connecticut. The book begins with recollections of small village life in
Italy through the eyes of young women who reconstruct the social history of the
south through their experiences at home, in schools, at work and during their
arduous journeys to America. This Italian woman’s history documents the
sewing tradition beginning with the ancient Samnites of Campania and how the
centuries-old craft was absorbed by New Haven’s garment industry when the city
was an epicenter in the 20s and 30s, employing thousands of Italian immigrant
women and their daughters who were eager to support their families at the cost
of foregoing their dreams for professional careers. The book chronicles
the union movement of the Amalgamated in New Haven, tracing its origins as a
woman’s movement whose outspoken leaders – Jennie Aiello, Jill Iannone, Carol
Paolillo and others profiled in the book – broke the traditional role of the
subservient southern Italian woman and stood up to male factory owners and the
barbaric sweatshop conditions they imposed to form their own union.
Through their organizing efforts and willingness to risk their own
livelihood, these gallant women turned the tide in favor of the common working
person, gaining better working conditions and fair pay, setting in motion a
union movement that reverberated through the city for generations.
Several of Anthony Riccio’s photographs of
Italian American Garment Workers are featured in the GNHLHA exhibit, “New
Haven’s Garment Workers,” on display now at Fairfield University.