26. While in the earlier part of the nineteenth century the immigrants came primarily from Northern Italy, towards the latter part of the century there was a shift as more and more Southern Italians left Italy. In addition to exploitation and agricultural depression, other factors must be taken into consideration—for example, “the role of the Italian state in encouraging temporary labor migration to the Americas . . . tied to the earnings emigrants remitted to their households and to Italian banks” (Friedman-Kasaba 77–78). (This exodus continued, at a decreasing rate, throughout the twentieth century, though it has more recently included primarily trained professionals, reflecting a change in the Italian economy as well as in American immigration laws, which now discourage the entrance into the United States of untrained laborers.)

27. Anna Giordani’s family similarly leaves Italy for political reasons. In the introduction to his translation of Antonio Gramsci’s The Southern Question, Pasquale Verdicchio writes: “Gramsci’s analysis of North/South implicates the history of Italian unification, the first phase of which took place in 1860 with Garibaldi’s ‘liberation’ of Sicily and the South from Bourbon rule. It soon became obvious to the Southern masses that the effort was to benefit them much less than they had been led to believe. The collaboration of Northern ‘liberators’ with Southern landowners further rooted the imbalances that had been established by the Bourbons” (4). For a discussion of North-South Relations in Umbertina see Tamburri, “Looking Back: The Image of Italy in Umbertina” in A Semiotic of Ethnicity.

28. For a discussion of women’s art, especially sewing and quilting, see Roszika Parker, The Subversive Stitch, Hedges and Wendt, “Everyday Use” (1–73), and Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.

29. On domestic ideology in Italian American culture see Baker and Vitullo’s discussion of Nancy Savoca’s film Household Saints.

30. Mary Cappello’s memoir Night Bloom highlights the importance of the recovery of material culture, as do the videos of Kym Ragusa and the sculpture of Nancy Azara (see Rando). On Italian American material culture see also Robert Anthony Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street. This concept can be extended to reconfirm the importance of “recovering” Italian American books like Umbertina.

31. For a discussion of the myth of Persephone in the works of Italian American women see Giunta, “Persephone’s Daughters” and Messina’s “Soul-food and Transcendent Ways of Knowing in Household Saints.”

32. On the female kunstlerroman, see Jones.

33. Marguerite’s class transition is further complicated by her geographical move to Italy. See Tamburri, “Helen Barolini’s ‘Comparative’ Woman: The Italian American Woman” and “Looking Back: The Image of Italy in Umbertina” in A Semiotic of Ethnicity.