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• Assignment FEB 18    Thanks to Ifakat Kiyat

Looking back at the first six chapters of the book, the emotional content depicted by D’ Angelo, truly moved me. I believe the emotions expressed within the first six chapters made the book worth reading. Without the emotional impact, I feel I would have been bored with the book, and less interested in learning more about D’Angelo’s life.

For instance, within the first few chapters D’Angelo, focuses on the emotional toll of deciding to leave his family behind and go to the “New World” with his father. The overall heartache and anxiety I felt for D’Angelo was so surreal. I thought about how it must have felt for a young boy to leave his mother’s side to enter the world of the unknown. I was able to feel a sense of heartache for a family that was about to be divided.

D’Angelo has a way of writing that allows the reader to feel how his emotions took over so much of his young life. The fear and agony of not knowing what to expect is relatable in so many ways. For me, I was able to feel the fear he was experiencing on his journey to America, because I felt empathy for his life conditions. Although I was not on that voyage with D’Angelo, I felt his agony.

After I closed the book, I felt a sense of sympathy for D’Angelo, his family, his “gang”, and above all, sympathy for all immigrants. The book is based on D’Angelo’s life and his experiences, however I found myself thinking about all the Italian American immigrants who entered the world of the unknown during 1910. Then, I found myself thinking about immigrants who risk their existence for a chance to make a better life for themselves in the “New World”, in America. It is heart wrenching to think of all the families who were divided during these journeys.

-  68: None of us, including myself, ever thought of a movement to broaden our knowledge of the English language.  Pidgin language.

 p. 71: 4 years of the same monotonous work.
-- Toil. List of locations.

----pick and shovel man, even to this very day. (see 65: And we set to digging and handling our picks and shovels. And I have been handling them ever since.)

72-- all my works are lost.
brutality of enforced labor.
 “You cannot feel from the cold roads and steel tracks all the pains, the heart aches and the anger I felt at the brutality of enforced labor. Yet we had to live. We laborers have to live. We sell our lives, our youth, our health—and what do we get for it? A meager living.”

Discussion: The Black Hand, The Skyscrapers of New York

The Black Hand

Documentary NY construction workers

THE SKYSCRAPERS OF NEW YORK

LUMIERE FACTORY

LUMIERE TRAIN

LUMIERE COMEDY

THE BIRTH OF A NATION

LECTURE 
Part 1

The Great Migrations 1

African Americans and how they share in the nation's history of migrations

ONE WAY TICKET
CLICK   MOMA INTERACTIVE EXHIBIT

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS
CLICK  audio

We will return to the importance of the African American experience in the re-definition of the "discourse" of equality and integration when we will read THE GODFATHER.  The Civil Rights Movement is at the core of the progressive interpretation -- and partially the success -- of Puzo's book.

QUESTIONS: THE GREAT MIGRATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS FROM THE SOUTH

• When did the Great Migration of African American from the South take place?
• What were the main reasons of the Great Migration?
• Why can we compare it to other mass migrations from foreign countries?

  LECTURE
 Part 2

 THE GREAT MIGRATIONS

  Irish, Jewish, Italians 

Irish Jews Italian questions

• What is the main reason of the mass immigration of Irish people.

• With reference to the Jewish immigration to America, what were the pogroms, where and when did they take place?

• What was the advantage that Irish and Jews respectively had when they immigrated?

• What was the professional background of the majority of Italian migrants?

 LECTURE
 Part 3

LOMBROSO

Where RACIST "scientific" theories come from

ARE YOU LEFT-HANDED?
You MAY be a criminal.
 

LOMBROSO the "father of criminology"

• What are the BASIC ideas of Lombroso's theories?
• How can we connect THE APE CARTOON to  LOMBROSO'S theories?
• Are today's studies into DNA and the brain going to bring us back to the same point?
  Are you sufficiently informed about genetic theories to take a position and sustain an argument?

WHAT IS PHRENOLOGY?

   LECTURE  
   Part 4  

Let Leonardo DiCaprio tell you in DJANGO (clip from one of the most morally revolting films ever made)

This is what in those days passed as "SCIENCE"

Phrenology questions

• What is the concept of SUBMISSIVNESS?

• Apparently the "dimples" are in everybody's skull. However, according to this demented theory,
  they appear in different areas in different "races."  What does their location (allegedly) indicate?

• In white people, the location of the dimples happens in what area?

 LECTURE
 Part 5

NATIVISM

Start with the document that interests you the most, then read the others.

   ... AND TO CONCLUDE   (dulcis in fundo)

LECTURE
PART 6

New Orleans 1891

QUESTIONS ON NEW ORLEANS 1891

• What kind of connection exists between the FIRST ANTI-ITALIAN CARTOON you saw (published in the New Orleans'
  periodical The Mascot) and these events?

• What kind of atmosphere did Italian live in, in New Orleans?

• The cartoon and events are not DIRECTLY connected, of course. But is one predictive of the other?

Introduction, discussion.