by Jim Dessicino

What does it mean to adopt a new homeland, language and way of life? What kind of conditions make someone abandon their country, moving sometimes across oceans without prospects, without papers? What land will that immigrant's children and grandchildren feel to be their own? These are questions that "Without Papers" seeks to answer through personal narrative, sculptures and historical documents.

All of my ancestors immigrated to the United States before the first World War, before immigration papers were required. They, unlike many other Southern Italian immigrants all found their way to South Jersey. These families have called places such as Atlantic City, Egg Harbor City, and Hammonton home for over 100 years. My family is American in everything but cuisine, losing the language, religion and all cultural customs that our ancestors carried with them from Italy.

Growing up I associated being Italian with a level of shame. I wanted nothing to do with the portrayals of Italian-Americans that I saw in film and television. Without a knowledge of Italian language, these caricatures were all I could grasp of my ancestors.

It was a combination of impending war, political, and economic uncertainty that brought all of my ancestors to America from Italy. One hundred years later, my disillusionment with the Iraq war became the catalyst to my trying to find my roots, an identity that was something other than American. I made a bet with some classmates that if George W. Bush were to be re-elected that I would leave the country. I obviously lost the bet. I signed up for Temple University's Rome study abroad campus for the Fall of 2005.

From 2005 until 2010, I lived and worked seasonally in Italy, much like how early Italian immigrants to the United States would travel back and forth between the two countries. But in late 2009, when the financial crisis really began to affect Italian tourism, it became increasingly hard to do my job as a tour guide. Though I had found my dream job, and the country I wanted to call home, my lack of citizenship made staying an impossibility. Having experienced the fear of deportation, as well as the desire to succeed and become accepted in my adopted home, I empathize with the plight of the immigrant, but I am fully aware of the privilege my American passport gave me compared with immigrants I met from the Middle-East, Bangladesh and Africa.

As the subject of illegal immigration has become a heated issue of debate in this country in light of the current refugee crisis, I think it is all the more important to examine our own immigration history to the United States, no matter how long ago, or how legal the status.

I recently became the care-taker of my grandmother's house in Egg Harbor City, a town founded by German immigrants escaping the persecution by Know-Nothingism in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In moving to this house, I have discovered documents closely tying my family to Egg Harbor City, Hammonton and to their ancestral homes in Italy. Shockingly, I have discovered that my last name was historically Tessicini, but the T became a D when my family came under the influence of German consonant sounds in Egg Harbor City. These documents, previously unknown to anyone in my family save my grandmother, tell the story of our family's immigration to the United States and give a first hand account of life as a first generation Italian immigrant in Hammonton, NJ. "Without Papers" refers to these documents that are the basis of the artworks created for the show.

By exploring my family's immigrant journey from Italy to South Jersey, "Without Papers" is an exhibition where my familial experiences in Hammonton and Egg Harbor City will contextualize an empathic understanding of immigrants both past and present.

I am interested in feedback and information from Italian/Italian American cultural organizations about the show and would appreciate any response.

www.jimdessicino.com