WTI Magazine #70    2015 October, 16
Author : Joseph Giordano      Translation by:

I wrote Birds of Passage to honor the memory of my father and grandparents, all of whom emigrated from Naples to New York. The great wave of Italian immigrants started after 1871, when Italy had been consolidated, but il Risorgimento, did not create a nation. As one statesman put it, "Italy has been made. Now we must make Italians." The south spoke different languages, had been dominated for centuries by foreign powers, and had distinct cultures.

Many in the north of Italy held southern Italians in disdain. The south of Italy, or Mezzogiorno, was already poor when Italy was united. The economic policies imposed by the North made economic conditions worse. As a result, many Italians emigrated to North and South America to find work.

In Argentina Italians were early immigrants and welcomed. Pope Francis's parents were Italian immigrants. In Brazil, Italians replaced blacks on coffee plantations. Treated little better than slaves, Italians moved to other pursuits. Today the richest State in Brazil, Sao Paulo, has more people of Italian heritage than the founding Portuguese.

The Italians who arrived in New York found the Irish and Tammany Hall running the city. If an Italian wasn't a mason, a tailor, a barber, or a shoemaker, and didn't open a shop with his family, he was consigned to manual labor. The padroni system for finding employment exploited new comers. Italians were often recruited in Italy and controlled by a padrone in New York who took a cut of their wages. Italians occupied the bottom rung on the socio-economic scale. They were the "human steam shovels" who built the skyscrapers and subways of New York.

Birds of Passage was the name given to Italians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries because they were the first immigrants to the United States who returned to their home country. Italians left seeking work and returned after earning money. Many made multiple trips. After World War I, when U.S. immigration laws tightened, Italians could no longer guarantee their return, so many decided to stay in the U.S. and bring their families.

As with the character, Guido Basso in Birds of Passage, both my grandfathers were ragmen. Their labor was dirty and backbreaking, but they were their own padrone. My father was the last immigrant in my family. He acquired just a seventh-grade education before he set out to work. Unemployed for a long period during the Great Depression, he found a job in a warehouse. Working rapidly to impress the boss, he reached up for a box atop which a vase had been left. The glass knickknack slipped and shattered onto the concrete floor. My father was fired on the spot. Not deterred, he started his own business. My mother was one of five daughters employed at home doing piece work so her family could earn enough money to leave the tenement.

Eventually her family purchased a home in Brooklyn. Despite the prejudice Italians experienced, they never saw themselves as victims. They were too busy working, trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. When I was growing up, if my father and I passed a man doing hard manual labor, my father would say to me, "See that? Go to school." I listened. My success was built upon the foundation given to me by my parents. Many Italian-Americans stand upon the shoulders of those intrepid enough to try and make a better life in a new country. Birds of Passage is not a biography about my family, but I'm old enough to have known people who were born in the nineteenth century. In the novel I tried to capture how Italian immigrants of past generations thought and acted.

In 1905 Leonardo Robustelli, and Carlo Mazzi arrive in New York from Naples. Leonardo seeks his fortune. Carlo is an aristocrat, but has committed murder and been smuggled into New York. Later the two men meet Azzura Medina. She's ambitious but strictly controlled by her mother. Carlo and Leonardo vie for her affection.

Azzura, Leonardo, and Carlo confront con men, Tammany Hall politicians, the longshoreman's union, Camorra clans, Black Hand extortion, and the Tombs prison.

Birds of Passage is set at a time when the streets of New York were paved with violence and disappointment.

Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, said of the novel, "With Birds of Passage, Joe Giordano delivers a rollicking, wholly entertaining take on the Italian immigrant story. His rich cast of characters arrives seeking the usual: Money, honor, love, respect, a decent shot at the pursuit of happiness. But things get complicated fast as they plunge into the rough-and-tumble world of rackets, scams, and politics of early 20th-century New York City. Giordano serves up a thick, satisfying slice of the entire era in all its raw and brutal glory."