Here in Cerchio: Letters to an Italian Immigrant in Bloomington, MN

Literary Nonfiction. Italian American Studies. "Through a fortunate concatenation of events, a collection of letters written by an Italian farmer of the time has recently become available, now archived at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio. Between 1910 and 1913 Antonio Vasquenz, a native of the Abruzzo village of Cerchio, wrote about forty letters totaling 25,000 words to his son Angelo, an immigrant working in the coal mines of western Pennsylvania. Unlike many contadini, Antonio was fully literate. He was also a talented writer and intelligent man. Over a four-year period he described in detail, with vivid and sometimes pungent prose, all the events and trials of his life: family illness and death, agricultural conditions, and always, always the financial burdens..."—from the Introduction