"Against My Destiny": Reading an Italian Immigrant's Memoir in the Early 20th-century South

<p>Giuseppe Emilio Rocconi's life narrative, The Story of My Life (1958), represents the hardships of immigration and assimilation through meditations on home, family, and religion. I read his narrative in contrast with white elite narratives that express nostalgia for sharecropping and the segregation era. I see his narrative as a reflection upon the costs of integrating into the white patriarchal economy and his sense of being neither fully Italian nor fully American.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year

2011

Author dc:creator

• Santucci, Bethany

Contributors dc:contributor

• Steeby, Elizabeth
• Piano, Doreen
• Lackey, Kris

• Life narrative
• segregation
• race
• class
• gender
• New South
• doubleness
• identity
• Italian
• immigrant
• isolation
• Catholicism
• sharecropping

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1344

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-2328