Overview For Social Change Interview:

The interview above captures my conversation with Gabriel Gozzoli, my Nonno (grandfather in Italian), as we discuss his life story of emigrating from Italy to New York. Nonno reflects on his upbringing in Italy, the decision to move to the United States, and the challenges his family faced during the immigration process. He details the lengthy wait for visas and the rigorous screening process, highlighting the bureaucratic hurdles and quota systems in place at the time. Gabriel recounts his journey to the United States by ship, emphasizing the allure of America and the dream of a better life that motivated his family’s migration. My interview provides a personal narrative that reflects broader historical trends of Italian immigration to the United States in the mid-20th century. Gabriel’s story aligns with the wave of Italian migration during this period, characterized by economic hardship in post-World War II Italy and the great allure of the “American Dream”. Gabriel’s journey, marked by the struggle to adapt to a new language and culture, is a cultivation of the common experiences of many Italian immigrants during this era, while his eventual orientation to the new world and successful career represents the resilience and opportunities that awaited those who made the journey to the United States. My interview covers key topics such as the decision to immigrate from Italy to the United States, the bureaucratic challenges of obtaining visas and navigating immigration quotas, the struggle with language barriers upon arrival, and the eventual assimilation into American society. Themes of family, resilience, cultural adaptation, and the pursuit of opportunity emerge as Gabriel recounts his journey from Italy to New York and reflects on his life as an Italian American. This interview was recorded in April 2024, several decades after Gabriel’s initial arrival in the United States. 

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Biography:

This is an interview with my grandfather, Gabriel Gozzoli on his experiences emigrating from Italy, the process of obtaining legal citizenship, his conflicts with becoming a fluent English speaker, and how he reacted to the change in his life. My Grandfather (at 10 years of age) from Pistoia, Italy, immigrated to New York City on June 9th, 1955, aboard the ship Andrea Doria.  He, for the rest of his life up until. The element of social change that I am focusing on is the concept of immigration, including the hardships of his family adapting to the post-World War II United States.

 

Transcript:

Christopher Blasone
Hello, everyone. I’m Christopher Blasone. And I’m here with my Nonno (Grandfather in Italian). Gabriel Gozzoli. And today we will be talking about his life story of emigrating from Italy to New York. So Nonno, first of all, can you describe your life and where you lived in Italy before you left?

Gabriel Gozzoli
It was pretty good, you know. before I left, I finished the first four years of elementary school. Okay. So let’s see, we were okay. I mean, you know, we had some help from, you know, from my grandparents who were already in New York, and once in a while, they would send us a little bit of money. So we were doing better than that the average Italian you understand? Okay. And so that, in that respect, my father even even had a bicycle. You know, one of the better, you know, better off people in the neighborhood, you know, got in a bicycle. We didn’t relax much, but we were okay. But anyway, you know, it’s nothing like being in the United States. I mean, there’s not there’s no comparison to the standard of living, it wasn’t as good. So my father wanted us to come here. And I already had my grandfather and my grandmother in the United States. So, you know, it’s kind of an odd story, how my grandfather got to New York because he came as sort of a refugee in 1938. And, and he was undocumented. But after World War II, there was an amnesty and he was able to become a legal immigrant, okay. But then after a few years, he became a US citizen. Now, once he became a US citizen, he was able to, apply to have my mother my father, and myself, come over to the States they bought it took us seven years of waiting for a visa. Okay, so we could come here legally, you know, and we had to go to the, you know, to the American Consulate, and, you know, for X-rays and pass the physical exam. And then there was a check on your police record. I mean, not me, I was just a child, but for the adults to check to make sure you didn’t have did not have any kind of, you know, what to call it, any kind of, you know, convictions any kind of criminal record, you know, that you were okay. So after all that eventually, we got our visas united, and we were able to come here. My father actually came to the States in 1954, a year before my mother and I came. That’s about the size of it. We came by ship in 1955, not too many people, you know, traveled by plane, you know. They didn’t have jet planes yet. So anyway, we came by ship from Genoa, Italy. And it took us nine days to reach New York. And the Trans-Atlantic that we used was interesting. It was the Andrea Doria. It was the ship that sank, you know, that was hit in a fog about a year and a half later and sank.

Christopher Blasone
Wow.

Gabriel Gozzoli
It didn’t happen to us, thank god.

Christopher Blasone
So, do you know why your father chose to come to America, rather than like any other country during that time?

Gabriel Gozzoli
Oh, because it was everybody’s dream to come to America, I mean, you listen to the standard of living of the United States in those days, and even today, I mean, people are coming from all over the world to be here, you know, no other country, you know, it has the same set of the living opportunities, freedoms, you know, stuff like that, there are people who come from countries where you know, that are afraid of the police and that kind of thing, you know, is, you know, like dictatorships or places where it’s very difficult to get a job. You know, where it’s hard to find employment, to feed your family you know other countries, I am not talking about Italy, nowadays Italy is a modern country. But, you know, after World War II things were tough. Even there, you know.

Christopher Blasone
So, were there any obstacles that you know, your family faces when adjusting to a new country?

Gabriel Gozzoli
Coming here? obstacles?

Christopher Blasone
Yeah, yeah.

Gabriel Gozzoli
No, the only obstacle was that we, you know, like, what is it called the long wait data for the papers to come through, the immigration services was a slow kind of thing. Plus, there’s a quota. The quota, and only and if in those days, only so many thousands of people from Italy could emigrate to the United States in any given year, plus, there were preferential quotas within the quota, let’s say, you know, in other words, if you were like, the wife of an American citizen, even though you’re a foreigner, you will get preferential quota, you will come here in a couple of months, you know, a few months, but the other family would take longer, in the sense. It was a complicated bureaucratic situation, it was not easy, and they did not make it easy at all.

Christopher Blasone
Okay yeah, that’s…oh were you saying something?

Gabriel Gozzoli
Yeah. No, I was gonna say it was tough. Not knowing any English, you know, and going to school, even I had to go to school. So they put me in fifth grade. But you could imagine I know in English, I couldn’t do it, the worst of the other kids were doing. And I went to like, initially, I was like, probably the best students in my class. And I came here and I was the worst student because I didn’t know anything, you know. And the teacher, you know, whenever she could whenever the class was busy doing something else, she would have called me up to her desk, and she would have me read out of like a, you know, first-grade book. And it was kind of embarrassing, you know, everybody in the class could hear me read in broken English, you know, it was bad, you know. But, you know in fifth grade, you’re already aware of girls, you know, and you don’t want anybody laughing at you, you know, it was embarrassing.

Christopher Blasone
Of course.

Gabriel Gozzoli
So anyway, it took me a couple of years to really get some decent knowledge of English.

Christopher Blasone
At what age would you say that you were fluent in English?

Gabriel Gozzoli
I don’t know about fluent, but to be fluent, that may have taken me even three years, you know, but I could get by after three years, you know, I could translate when my mother wanted to go shopping for something. Okay. So she wanted to go to Sears to buy a TV set, and she will take me along that I will be her interpreter, you understand?

mhm.

And so even though my English was not perfect, I could get by, you know, I could ask her to translate what she was asking. Anyway, so that said, yeah, it was very tough for the language barrier. It was difficult to overcome, you know, and it was, it was tough.

Christopher Blasone 11:38
So would you say the language barrier was your number one obstacle?

Gabriel Gozzoli
Yeah, but probably the number one obstacle Yeah, that was. I knew some French, at the time, and my 5th-grade teacher had studied French. So we could not communicate in English but she could give me certain basic instructions in French… so but then even, you know, knowing another foreign language helped.

Christopher Blasone

Oh, yeah. definitely.

Gabriel Gozzoli

no, but it was tough enough, let’s say moving, you know, what it’s like, moving away from let’s say, your home in New York, and not having your friends nearby. You know, I came from Italy, I left all my friends back there. Okay. And I came here, and I knew nobody, you know, so eventually, I got some from school, and I started to make friends. And, you know, that kind of thing. And I did make friends eventually, you know when I started making building model airplanes, and with other kids, you know, something like that.

Christopher Blasone
Are you still in contact with any of your friends from Italy?

Gabriel Gozzoli
Yeah, there’s one. There’s a good friend of mine, my friend Mario, we’re still friends.

Christopher Blasone
Yeah?

Gabriel Gozzoli
I mean, we’re both. We’re both paid off. 79-80 years old, almost. Okay. And we grew up together. I mean, we’d like, we’re just like, a few months apart, you know, like he was born, maybe it’d be three months before me. So like, our mothers would walk us in Italy, would walk in baby carriages, you know, kind of thing. Early on, and that we were all like 5 or 6, we would play together, you know, run around, and oh! Then we went to first grade. And we were in the same class. Yeah, I saved some black-and-white pictures of the entire class with my friend Mario there. And we still sound after all these years. But I mean, I had many I had many other friends but I lost touch with the other ones.

Christopher Blasone
I see I see. Fast, fast forward to like late in your life. So did your background have an effect on your career path? First, I mean, what career path did you choose? Once you come in?

Gabriel Gozzoli
Well, there was a false start. Okay, because I wanted to go into engineering, electrical engineering. And I did manage to get to get a two-year degree through the College of Technology, but I couldn’t do the math you know, for engineering itself, I couldn’t do the calculus. I wasn’t that strong in math. So I switched. Okay. And I switched to, you know, to a liberal arts major with the idea of becoming a teacher of Italian, which eventually I did. Okay, so I taught Italian, in New York City High Schools for 31 years, before I retired. So that’s how knowing a foreign language, you know, helped me.

Christopher Blasone
That’s true. If you didn’t come from Italy you probably wouldn’t teach Italian.

Gabriel Gozzoli
yeah. I mean, it’s theoretically possible to become a foreign language teacher, and not have been born in Italy. But it’s certainly a plus, to have a native language, you know, native knowledge of the language is just, you know, it’s hard to beat, you know, it’s hard to beat. So, I never had any problem with the subject matter, you know, I was able to get a master’s degree in Italian eventually. First, I got a Bachelor’s then I got a master’s. Actually, the degree, the Master’s is not in Italian. It’s a Master of Arts in romance languages. Okay.

Christopher Blasone
Okay.

Gabriel Gozzoli
Because I also had to learn Spanish and had to take some Latin too. They make you take other languages other than your own, the foreign language that you’re specializing in. So anyway. So that’s what I did with my life.

Christopher Blasone
It all correlated at the end.

Gabriel Gozzoli
Oh, yeah, I guess I can have no complaints. I’m happy with my life. And I’m glad that that, you know, even though it was very tough at the beginning. I’m glad that my parents made the move, and came to the United States, and I think of myself as an American, not as an Italian. I mean, I still like Italy, you know, but it’s not my concern anymore. You know, America is my country now. So many years, you can imagine, I’ve been a US citizen since 1961.

Christopher Blasone
Wow.

Gabriel Gozzoli
So that’s a long time. It’s a long time. I’ve been an American citizen more than I’ve been an Italian citizen. At the beginning of my life, I was Italian, but eventually, I became a US citizen. Okay, so anything else I could tell you? Any other questions?

Christopher Blasone
No, that’s all I got for you really. You covered the main points.

Gabriel Gozzoli
I’m also I’m also very happy with my family here in the United States and my grandchildren!

Christopher Blasone
I appreciate it. Thank you, Nonno. You have a good night.

Gabriel Gozzoli
You too. Good night. Bye bye.