New York, New York
Contrary to the covert racism that some associate to the statue (Stovall, 2017), the Statue of Liberty epitomized freedom and opportunity for Maria. More so, it embodied for her the essence of the United States, a country that she loved dearly; in third grade, I had interviewed her for an "autobiography" that I had to write for class, and when asked what her favorite memory was, she told me that it was coming to America. Whenever I think of her experience prior to arriving, the bold section of the following poem (The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus) comes to mind, and it usually causes me to tear up:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The War had been something that Nonna did not bring up frequently. I had my curiosities, but I had to be careful because I knew that she harbored sad memories, and if I prodded too much, she would get a distant, pained look in her eyes. However, there are a few stories that I recall:
Most of the men in her town and in the surrounding areas did not want to fight in the war. Whenever the military came in order to force the men to fight, they would flee. Many of them hid in their attics, which had entrances that were not easily found. One time, the locals were tipped off that they needed to hide. The majority of men ran to a bunker, but the military arrived just in time to see the last few people going in. They were all taken away to fight, and most of them came back, but Nonna said they came back changed people.
Nonna's brothers oftentimes hid in the cornfields so as not to be discovered. One of her brothers, Domenico, had been with a friend, and they had set an alarm to go turkey hunting. However, Domenico's alarm never went off. As for his friend; a bomb took his life that very day.
During the war, she witnessed the presence of both the axis and allies. While she never explicitly stated it, I think that doing so was a humanizing experience. She recalled how the Nazis took all of the livestock from the local people, including the single cow per family that most homes had for milk. There was a little girl, perhaps five years old, who was crying inconsolably and following alongside a soldier. She was begging him for the cow back (in Italian" "Please! I need this cow for my nonna. She is very old and needs the milk. You cannot take it from us!" Obviously the soldier had absolutely no idea what the girl was saying, but he had the compassion to return the cow to her. Nonna jokingly supposed that he was afraid the girl would follow him all the way back to Germany, but nevertheless this act showed that even the enemy is human and has a heart.
The last interaction to note was the one she had with an American soldier during the liberation. He came up to her and requested "acqua, acqua." She ran to get some for him. He was the first black person she had ever seen. Until conducting research for this project, I took this encounter for face value and thought nothing more of it. I did not think twice about the segregational practices of the United States nor its role overseas. However, after a semester focused on ethnicity, I decided to do a quick search, resulting in my findings: this man must have been part of the 92nd Infantry Division, the only black division that participated in infantry combat in Europe during World War II. Wondering about the intersection between ethnicity and experience, I read the testimony of Ivan J. Houston, author of Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of WWII. He had this to day about his experience as a black man in Italy (which also made me cry):
----------------------------------------As we liberated the towns and villages in that part of Italy we were joyfully greeted by hundreds of starving people. The hugged us and kissed us. They gave us wine to drink and threw flowers at us. Some of the women could be seen crying. These were white Italians and we were black Americans, but they made us feel like heroes. We were never treated like that in our own country where we were still second class citizens.
I don’t think they treated us differently because of our skin color. I think our soldiers, all black, many from southern states, may have found that they had a lot in common with these poor and hungry people. When possible, we shared our food with them and gave them their first chocolate. Some thought that we were the “Mori”, the Moors that came from Africa during the middle ages.
When she got to Ellis Island, Maria received her "ADMITTED PERMANENT at New York, N.Y." stamp, and upon arriving onto the mainland, she and her family took a multi-day train ride straight to San Francisco. The train had uncomfortable wooden chairs, and the ride was overall not too pleasant. Pia Pierini had taken the same train ride many years before. While en route to San Francisco, she saw her first banana. Being unfamiliar with the strange plant, she ate the whole thing, peel and all! There was obviously a lot that she (and later her family) would have to be exposed to before getting used to the norms of America.
In this story, New York City, aside from being the port of entry, is completely bypassed; my family saw nothing of it, as would be expected when considering their situation. However, they would get more than their fair share of experiences in San Francisco.
