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Living the Revolution: Italian Women's Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945
Italians were the largest group of immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and hundreds of thousands led and participated in some of the period's most volatile labor strikes. Yet until now, Italian women's political activism and cultures of resistance have been largely invisible. In Living the Revolution , Jennifer Guglielmo brings to life the Italian working-class women who helped shape the vibrant, transnational, radical political culture that expanded into the emerging industrial union movement.
Guglielmo imaginatively documents the activism of two generations of New York and New Jersey women who worked in the needle and textile trades. She explores the complex and distinctive ways immigrant women and their American-born daughters drew on Italian traditions of protest to form new urban female networks of everyday resistance and political activism. And she shows how their commitment to revolutionary and transnational social movements diminished as they became white working-class Americans. The rise of fascism, the Red Scare, and the deprivations of the Great Depression led many to embrace nationalism and racism, ironically to try to meet the same desires for economic justice and dignity that had inspired their enthusiasm for anarchism, socialism, and communism.
Living the Revolution was awarded the 2011 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Prize for best book in U.S. immigration history by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book.
Guglielmo imaginatively documents the activism of two generations of New York and New Jersey women who worked in the needle and textile trades. She explores the complex and distinctive ways immigrant women and their American-born daughters drew on Italian traditions of protest to form new urban female networks of everyday resistance and political activism. And she shows how their commitment to revolutionary and transnational social movements diminished as they became white working-class Americans. The rise of fascism, the Red Scare, and the deprivations of the Great Depression led many to embrace nationalism and racism, ironically to try to meet the same desires for economic justice and dignity that had inspired their enthusiasm for anarchism, socialism, and communism.
Living the Revolution was awarded the 2011 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Prize for best book in U.S. immigration history by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 19, 2025
I was so proud to read about the organizing of Italian women like my great grandmother and my grandmother. I'm proud to be an Italian woman.
March 6, 2013
Italian immigrant women's activism, often outside of formal organizations (at least early on), in the United States was shaped by their experience in (southern) Italy. Many were anarchists, socialists, and communists. Despite conception that they weren't involved in the labor movement, they were "absolutely central" to it in many cities (p. 3) - we just have to look, especially in Italian-language publications. Additionally, there appeared to be a gendered division of work in activism which could obscure their position. State repression (particularly around the red scare) was devastating to radical movement. As first generation Italian-American movement became more "Americanized," saw repercussions of repression, embraced nationalism and white supremacy, and made up increasing portions of labor movement, became less radical, more involved in reformist unions. Some first gens even became fascists, though there were plenty of anti-fascists.
December 2, 2021
Guglielmo's work is extremely well-researched and informative. As a scholar on civil resistance, I was intrigued by this monograph. This is a really under-researched topic within the field and Guglielmo comprehensively examines this subject from multiple angles. Perhaps most intriguing is the connection between anti-fascism and anti-racism and how this is still relevant today. Recommended for scholars and people interested in advanced studies of civil resistance.
June 26, 2012
Oh, the ever-changing face of America!
Who among us can even envision a northern New Jersey clutching tight to New York via the tendrils of the garment and other departed industries, pocked with recently arrived anarchists from places like Avellino?
Jennifer Guglielmo's "Living the Revolution," assembles the research and words necessary to conjure that distant and disappeared time.
Some of this reviewer's antecedent's hailed from Avellino and the revelation in Guglielmo's book goes a long way toward explaining his own anarcho-syndicalist tendencies.
And explanation is necessary, because the Italian-American milieu in which he grew up was far from revolutionary. Uncles and aunts in Brooklyn and Queens loathed John Lindsay in favor of a hack named Mario Procaccino. When a black family moved into the neighborhood, a call of alarm went out.
To be Italian-American in mid-century New York was to be conservative, closed-minded and to wont for a liberal, higher education (generally speaking).
"Living the Revolution," goes a long way toward explaining how that happened: Italian-Americans desperately clinging to their classification as "white" by federal authorities; their frantic efforts to establish "American-ness" while the U.S. made war on Mussolini's Italy; the devastating impact of the Palmer Raids on the anarchist culture that took root in the tri-state area among Italian immigrant women.
Later on, according to this book, Italian and Italian-American women became active in the union movement, although their efforts to gain power were often thwarted and their contributions to the Ladies Garment Workers and other syndicates undervalued.
Guglielmo's book recuperates the ladies' names and actions, making great strides in combating the widely-held notion that they were somehow not militant. This appears to be the primary task she set out for herself in penning this text.
"Living the Revolution," sets the record straight. It's a work of historical scholarship and, from time-to-time, bogs down in minutiae, however necessary. Sometimes, the task at hand causes the author to wander far from the focus of her discussion and into the 19th-century uprisings in southern Italy or the writings of Antonio Gramsci.
In the end, it all ties together and Guglielmo's passion for the subject ultimately drives the narrative and should win over those who come to her story with a healthy curiosity.
"Living" is a feminist tract. It pulls from the rich filigree of events, that make up the first half of the 20th century, the prevailing policies, traditions and mores of patriarchy and white supremacy.
It dramatizes how these things weighed upon the activist women and illuminated the creativity they employed in combating them.
"Living the Revolution," not only rescues the names and profiles of some worthwhile people otherwise condemned to anonymity, it helps explain how we got where we are as a nation today, the good and the bad alike.
Who among us can even envision a northern New Jersey clutching tight to New York via the tendrils of the garment and other departed industries, pocked with recently arrived anarchists from places like Avellino?
Jennifer Guglielmo's "Living the Revolution," assembles the research and words necessary to conjure that distant and disappeared time.
Some of this reviewer's antecedent's hailed from Avellino and the revelation in Guglielmo's book goes a long way toward explaining his own anarcho-syndicalist tendencies.
And explanation is necessary, because the Italian-American milieu in which he grew up was far from revolutionary. Uncles and aunts in Brooklyn and Queens loathed John Lindsay in favor of a hack named Mario Procaccino. When a black family moved into the neighborhood, a call of alarm went out.
To be Italian-American in mid-century New York was to be conservative, closed-minded and to wont for a liberal, higher education (generally speaking).
"Living the Revolution," goes a long way toward explaining how that happened: Italian-Americans desperately clinging to their classification as "white" by federal authorities; their frantic efforts to establish "American-ness" while the U.S. made war on Mussolini's Italy; the devastating impact of the Palmer Raids on the anarchist culture that took root in the tri-state area among Italian immigrant women.
Later on, according to this book, Italian and Italian-American women became active in the union movement, although their efforts to gain power were often thwarted and their contributions to the Ladies Garment Workers and other syndicates undervalued.
Guglielmo's book recuperates the ladies' names and actions, making great strides in combating the widely-held notion that they were somehow not militant. This appears to be the primary task she set out for herself in penning this text.
"Living the Revolution," sets the record straight. It's a work of historical scholarship and, from time-to-time, bogs down in minutiae, however necessary. Sometimes, the task at hand causes the author to wander far from the focus of her discussion and into the 19th-century uprisings in southern Italy or the writings of Antonio Gramsci.
In the end, it all ties together and Guglielmo's passion for the subject ultimately drives the narrative and should win over those who come to her story with a healthy curiosity.
"Living" is a feminist tract. It pulls from the rich filigree of events, that make up the first half of the 20th century, the prevailing policies, traditions and mores of patriarchy and white supremacy.
It dramatizes how these things weighed upon the activist women and illuminated the creativity they employed in combating them.
"Living the Revolution," not only rescues the names and profiles of some worthwhile people otherwise condemned to anonymity, it helps explain how we got where we are as a nation today, the good and the bad alike.
October 26, 2011
I've already annotated the hell out of this, so I don't really want to write a review...
I didn't know anything about the history of early feminism, or the early immigrant labor movement. That's changed. It goes from before the Italian immigration wave even started, to around the 1950s.
Focus on the native Italian traditions which were imported over to the U.S and used for labor activism. Ie. the tendency for family groups to build sprawling decentralized support networks, mutual aid, state evasion strategies, etc.
Another key doodle is the conflict between conservative unions affiliated with the AFL, and more radical independent unions + the IWW. Racial and gender issues are packed into that.
Racial and gender issues are kind of their own cans of worms though. Goes over how the Italian americans transitioned from being basically a hairs breadth above "negroes", to being considered "white".
Also goes into the influence of Fascism and Roosevelt's New Deal, this latter marking the death of any respectability for this movement.
Reading this book with an eye for non-statist alternatives for worker agitation, and for the vastly differing experience within the mens and women's labor movements was most fun for me.
I didn't know anything about the history of early feminism, or the early immigrant labor movement. That's changed. It goes from before the Italian immigration wave even started, to around the 1950s.
Focus on the native Italian traditions which were imported over to the U.S and used for labor activism. Ie. the tendency for family groups to build sprawling decentralized support networks, mutual aid, state evasion strategies, etc.
Another key doodle is the conflict between conservative unions affiliated with the AFL, and more radical independent unions + the IWW. Racial and gender issues are packed into that.
Racial and gender issues are kind of their own cans of worms though. Goes over how the Italian americans transitioned from being basically a hairs breadth above "negroes", to being considered "white".
Also goes into the influence of Fascism and Roosevelt's New Deal, this latter marking the death of any respectability for this movement.
Reading this book with an eye for non-statist alternatives for worker agitation, and for the vastly differing experience within the mens and women's labor movements was most fun for me.
March 2, 2013
This book opened my eyes to the italian and italian american women activists and anarchists that lived before me. No book has inspired me this much, in terms of my life and how I live it, in a long time. The research here is so valuable.
November 10, 2019
A brilliant study of working women in the Italian diaspora. Guglielmo's is the best bottom-up history of the decade, and she courts the interstices between gender and class in a way that made this particularly satisfying to read. I assigned it in my graduate seminar, and the students also loved it!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews