If my house was on fire, and I could only rescue one object, this is what I would take. It is a portrait of my great-great-grandmother, Palma Fantasia. It is the only item that still survives my family’s passage from Italy through Ellis island in 1907. This is what my great-grandmother brought to remember her mother.
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My great-grandparents traveled to America with the intent of meeting each other. My great-grandfather’s brother and my great-grandmother’s sister had immigrated a few years before and had met and married. They wrote to their siblings in Italy saying they had found a spouse for them. With that, my great-grandparents left their respective homes and families behind to start a new life together in America.
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My grandmother was born in 1920. At the time, there was a lot of discrimination against immigrants, southern Italians in particular. My great-grandparents wanted their children to fully assimilate, so they decided that they wouldn’t teach their children Italian. Their family would communicate in juxtaposed tongues, my great-grandmother speaking in Italian and her children replying English. They lived between worlds, trying to remember their homeland and forget it at the same time.
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Like many immigrants at the time, my great-grandmother never returned home, and never saw her mother again.
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When I first traveled there myself, I felt as though I was retracing my ancestors steps, although 100 years later and in reverse.
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~shared by @ancestorsabroad