Religious Rituals of the Italian Community in Pietro Di Donato’s Novel Three Circles o f Light

Year 2023, Issue: 60, 73 - 96, 31.12.2023

Matteo Cacco

Abstract

Italian immigrants arriving in America after the Italian
Unification hoping to conquer the American Dream faced misery,
inhumane working and poor sanitary conditions in the tenements
where they were living. Pietro Di Donato, born in the tenement of
West Hoboken in 1911 to a family of Vastese immigrants, worked in
the construction scaffolds after his father’s death. Self-taught in the
literary field, Di Donato became, along with John Fante and Pascal
D’Angelo, a fundamental reference in Italian American studies,
especially through his social novel Christ in Concrete. He represents a
unique socio-historical source, as he was able to narrate the traditions,
superstitions and religious rituals of the Vastese community in New
York. This essay focuses on the 1960 novel Three Circles o f Light,
which did not achieve much financial or critical success, but recounts
in particular the living reality and the religious rituals of Italians in
America.

Keywords

Italian Americans, Italian religious rituals, Italian traditions, migration literature

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