Michael Parenti 1933 - 2026

Most of his primary works can be downloaded here, with some omissions such has his 1962 Yale dissertation Ethnic and Political Attitudes: A Depth Study of Italian Americans, published in 1975 for Arno Press' 38-volume The Italian American Experience series, but of course Piri' Miri Muli' has you covered:

"Even the Italian's religion suffered from alien adulteration.  In architecture and ambience, the church facade and interior bore little resemblance to the old village chiesa.  Near the altar, where the immigrant may expect to be comforted by statues of Santa Lucia, Sant' Antonio or other dearly loved celestial patrons, he would be startled by the presence of Saint Patrick stepping on snakes.  The lay ceremonies, festas, and semi-pagan rituals and superstitions that were either doctrinally forbidden or peripheral to Catholicism but central to the peasant's way of religion were nowhere to be found."  (27-28)

 

  

The building that responds most forcefully to this phenomenon is Watts Towers, which has a chapel and a baptistry.  The shape of the towers has been linked to costumes worn in a "semi-Pagan" festival in the Southern Italian town where Rodia's family was from.  He attempted at first to build it in Thousand Oaks but the neighbors would have none of it, so he moved to Watts where the local kids brought him their broken ceramic ware.