Christ in Concrete

by Pietro Di Donato, Fred L. Gardaphé (Introduction), Studs Terkel (Preface)

Giving voice to the hardworking Italian immigrants who worked, lived, and died in New York City shortly before the Great Depression, this American classic ranks with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath a s one of the 20th century’s great works of social protest.
 
Largely autobiographical, Christ in Concrete opens with the dramatic Good Friday collapse of a building under construction, crucifying in concrete an Italian construction worker, whose death leaves his pregnant wife and eight children impoverished. His oldest son, Paul, at just twelve years old, must take over his father’s role—and his job.
 
Paul’s odyssey into manhood begins on the high girders where death is an occupational hazard and a boy’s dreams are the first fatality. Written in sonorous prose that recalls the speaker’s Italian origins, Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete is at once a powerful social document and a deeply moving story about the American immigrant experience.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, American, Labor, Literature, School

236 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Pietro Di Donato was an italo-american writer and bricklayer. Born in West Hoboken in 1911 from italian immigrant parents from Vasto (Abruzzo). He had little scholar education but had a huge success with his autobiographical novel Christ in concrete published in 1939. The novel was inspired by the tragic death at work of his father, Geremia, on Good Friday's morning of 1923 when Pietro was twelve (it is stated that worker Pascal D'Angelo, later become a writer too witnessed and reported the tragic event to the family). Pietro himself became a bricklayer like his father.

Christ in concrete is based on a short story written in 1937 which was later expanded as a novel. The novel was defined "the bible of proletarian literature", and is written with a mixed language of street slang, biblical language, italian dialects and english sentence-costruction. The book, which portrayed the world of New York's Italian-American construction workers during The Great Depression, was hailed by critics in the United States and abroad as a metaphor for the immigrant experience in America, and cast Di Donato as one of the most celebrated Italian American novelists of the mid-20th century. The great success of the novel lead to a film adaptation in 1949 directed by Edward Dmytryk by the title Give Us This Day.

He also worked as a journalist and became a political activist. He published, This Woman (1958) and Three Circles of Light (1960), respectively the sequel and the prequel of his first novel. He also wrote the biographies of Francesca Saverio Gabrini, the first american saint (Immigrant Saint) and Maria Goretti, an italian girl murdered in 1902 and later canonized.

In 1978 his journalistic report about the mysterious kidnapping and murder of italian politician Aldo Moro (titled Christ in Plastic) published in Penthouse magazine won the Overseas Press Club Prize. The article was later adapted into a play entitled Moro.

Di Donato died on January 19, 1992 in Stony Brook, Long Island, with his last novel, American Gospels, still unpublished.

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I mean, wow! First, di Donato's powers as a writer humble me. This book is touted as a social justice novel, but it's not quite the screed that Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was at times; di Donato's book is a cry to the heavens, it plumbs the mysteries and pleads with heart and soul the essential question: "Why?"

There are passages in this book that I've never seen equaled in terms of poignancy about the human condition, about loss and grief, and the belief and hope that our lost ones accompany us and watch over us. Sinclair's book---one of my all-time favorites---begins brilliantly with an Old Country wedding, and that seemingly natural way of life is contrasted with the ostensibly richer hopes of the New World, which becomes an unremitting stinking hellhole of merciless misery and injustice. Jurgis Rudkis works harder, but things only worsen. There's a glimmer of hope, but not much. In Sinclair's book, the immigrants are Lithuanians toiling in the rank hell of the Chicago packinghouses. In di Donato's, the hopefuls hail from Italy, plying their skills in the precarious, dangerous environs of New York City's building construction sites. In di Donato's book, the American city yields its tragedy early on; a tragedy that haunts everyone for the rest of the book. And yet, in the second to the last chapter, we have an inverse of Sinclair: an Old Country wedding, not in the old country, but in the new. Wine stomping and a night of sumptuous eating and partying inside the tenement block. This wedding chapter, "Fiesta," is an astounding tour de force. What's gloomy in Sinclair is more like yearning in di Donato.

Things become grim in this book, and yet the optimism of these people, these Italian immigrants is always to the fore. Somehow they get by, the family and the extended family are strong. So, for all its darkness, this book is constantly one of positivity. It's hard to quite put a finger on how di Donato pulls this off, yet he does. The author writes in a myriad of styles, always dense and passionate, occasionally experimental but never obscure. This is a book of incredible metaphors and imagery. Harrowing descriptions of death, and dreams, of nostalgia. It's sometimes as florid as its opera-loving characters. Its passions are not contained, yet it never feels sappy or sentimental. It feels genuine. It is heartfelt, deeply so. This book will make you cry. It made me.

There's an excellent 1949 film version, also worthy and for a long time banned for butting up against the forces of McCarthyism.

I veer into hyperbole: One of the greatest books ever written. It must be.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story of a 12-y/o Italian immigrant boy, Paul whose father, Geremio was buried alive one Good Friday when the building he was constructing collapsed and the fresh cement (thus the title) fell on him. The father has just signed a contract to pay, on installment basis, a house for his family and was excitedly telling everyone about it.

This seems to be based on Pietro Di Donato (1911-1992) actual experience as a boy whose family migrated from Italy to the US and whose father died in 1923. Donato like Paul in the story, was 12 years old and had to work as a bricklayer making his as the breadwinner in the family. This book was written in 1939 (same year The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck came out) and was hailed as an accurate depiction of Italian immigrants experience trying to survive the harsh environment in the lower side of Manhattan during the Great Depression era.

Due to its rich religious imagery and the characters directly talking to God, reading this book is a good way to spend your Holy Week. It makes you as the question why do people suffer if there is indeed God. Why do God let His children suffer even if they truly believe in Him? For example, even job (yes, your job that gives you your salary) is referred by his people her as Job (first letter is capitalized) and I thought that Di Donato was referring to the prophet who lost his fortune and his whole family and had boils all over his body as God's way to test his faith. So, is this the way Di Donato suggests as the answer to that difficult question of why good people suffer despite having God in our midst? That He is testing us?

The plot could be predictable. The twist in the end is nothing spectacular but Paul's mother, Annunaziata's faith is something that I admire. Hers is a torch that guide her family that despite having lost her husband she was steadfast in her belief that they would survive and losing faith on God would not help. That despite all life's tests everything will turn out "fiesta." Oh, read that part, it's magic. Nicely written and it left that positivism that you experience from the first page of the book until that part. This book has a roller coaster effect on me but in the end, it will leave you hope.

A beautiful book.

[Muftarovam · Rating 4 out of 5]

When i first saw this book at the bookshelves in the store, i imediattelly picked it up. I read "Christ in Concrete" on the cover and saw the buildings and i knew i had to read it. The title was provoking and the author was Italian, i knew i found something worth reading. My expectations were that this book was about the times of The Depression, but my guess was kind of wrong. It is about the times leading to the depression. Di Donato's writing is heavy, passionate and dramatic, as one would expect from an Italian. It follows an (almost) autobiographal story, heartbreaking and heartwarming, heavy on the soul and spirit. Unbelievably tragic and a beautiful book about the life of poor immigrants that know only of love and faith, because that is all they have left, and their way of finding happiness or at least content. Every page is difficult on the heart and emotions, the tears come themselves without asking the reader for permission. Di Donato is a master of the Italian soul and their language, including English. His writing is almost poetic and underappreciated, definitely unforgettable. I recommend this book to everyone, maybe not the weak-hearted such as myself (but do read it!). I wish i could describe this book but i lack words for the beauty of it, the best way to know is to read it and find out for yourselves. I promise you will not be able to put it down, but you will not want to finish it either. The only fault of this book is that it has an end.

[Jonny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why don't more people know about this book? An immigrant and second generation Italian-American tale written in 1939, also very much about class and exploitation--so much so that the movie version of it was banned in the US.

[James Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not read a more devastating first chapter. I'll never look at an old building again without thinking of what the true human cost was of building America's great cities.

[Ramona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christ in Concrete è un libro che si può declinare in diverse maniere tanto è vasta e viscerale la vita che contiene; crudo e violento, ma allo stesso tempo pieno di una tenerezza e amore palpabili, è un romanzo dove l’autobiografia si intreccia con la denuncia sociale e con la ricerca di senso della vita. E Di Donato alle domande che si pone il piccolo Paul dà una risposta proprio scrivendo, regalando una voce al padre, ai proprio colleghi, alla madre e a se stesso.

Le afferrò le mani. ‘Chi ci inchioda alla croce? Madre… perché viviamo?’
La madre aprì gli occhi. Rimase immobile.
Paul abbassò la testa sulla sua spalla e fra le lacrime sussurrò. ‘È ingiusto! Ingiusto…! Le nostre vite sono ingiuste!’

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in the same year as The Grapes Of Wrath, Pietro Di Donato's first novel is in that same neglected vein of American working class literature: explicitly socialistic novels about the lives of the poor, the lives of the downtrodden. In this case, the story is largely autobiographical: the book is about Italian immigrant construction workers in New York. In the opening chapter, proud father of eight Geremio is crushed to death when a building collapses, forcing his eldest son, 12 year old Paul, to go to work himself to provide for the family. This basic setup is taken directly from the author's own life, as is the poverty depicted throughout. The book deals with the exploitation of immigrant labour, the bewildering legal systems that surround them, the joy and vitality of family life, and always, with hunger. Di Donato's writing, though, is rich, alive, elevated: at times it burns with religious fervour; at other times, it's so crowded with voices, and so thrumming with activity, that it reminded me of the clanging, pots-and-pans prose that you get in a book like Saul Bellow's The Adventures Of Augie March. Great book.

[Celina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal, visceral, sensual. This book is thick with atmosphere and heavy with the pressure of Italian-american life just before the depression. Love the linguistic attentions and gritty realness. It is so lush with detail yet careful not to be so hyperbolic that it is not believable.

[Jacques Pierre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I'm getting redundant, but this is another favorite urban narrative with a focus on the struggles of the italian immigrant community in New York in the early 20th century.

[Janis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful story. Beautiful style. It was like reading poetry.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Christ in Concrete" is both paean and prayer to the old immigrant Italian industrial worker.

Like the laborers it depicts, "Concrete" lurches towards moments of joy without ever breaking through the unrelenting misery that is very much author Pietro di Donato's message.

This is working class literature of the 1930s where the great unwashed are brought into finer relief, their desperate situations the fodder for heart-wrenching plot.

In vogue during its Depression heyday, this kind of literature, even done as well as it is here, faced structural barriers to mass acceptance later. The disadvantaged are always the disadvantaged and their most uplifting stories still register as grim.

In "Concrete," the tenement dwellers of New York's lower East Side are not necessarily unhappy. Di Donato portrays them as stout of heart, quick to aid their fellows, and adept at grabbing a rare laugh when presented with the chance.

But they are maimed or ground to dust and the novel's pessimistic conclusion is that the game is rigged against them poor WOPS. And it is. They are "Christ in Concrete," dependent on work that literally kills them.

There is not a lot of workerist rhetoric to this book. It is less Marx, more Biblical justice and Christian plea. Merely an adept portrayal of the construction worker's life in the great Gotham of skyscrapers and cold bitter bluster.

Stories of work itself.

Di Donato, a bricklayer by trade, mined prosaic music from the mundane task:

"He reached the trowel down into the mortar. Slice down toward him, edgewise twist in quick short circle and scoop up away from him. The trowel came up half-covered with mortar - but how heavy! He dropped it back into the tub and worked the trowel back and forth in the mortar just as he had seen the bricklayers do. The feel of flexible steel trowel in pliant warm plush soon-to-be-stone. The wet rub of mortar on tender skin, the fleshy sense of Job."

He explained its soul-deadening effects:

"These men were the hardness that bruise Paul many times. They were the bodies to whom he would joined in bondage to Job. Job would be a brick labyrinth that would suck him in deeper and deeper, and there would be no going back. Life would never be a dear music, a festival, a gift of Nature. Life would be the torque of Wall's battle that distorted straight limbs beneath weight in heat and rain and cold."

This is turn-of-the-20th century immigrant milieu. It is life in the tenement, its Italians, Swedes, Jews, and blacks heaped upon one another with their only commonality a severe lack of resources.

"Christ in Concrete" provides a global view that concentrates as much on the women and children at home as it does the men at the construction site.

In "Living the Revolution," an academic study on radical Italian women of the very same New York "Concrete" mixes, Jennifer Guglielmo notes that southern Italian women responded to patriarchal dominance in society by "crafting their own cultural expression," including magic, sorcery, divination, or dancing the "tarantella."

These pre-feminist strategies are dramatized in storytelling by di Donato through the tarantella-dancing Annunziata, or when she and Paul visit "The Cripple," a tenement-bound medium to the netherworld.

Di Donato wrote the heck out of this story. The translation is a kind of direct transposing of the words as ordered in Italian which successfully marks the book with a distinctive prose style.

Di Donato committed one falsity in wrapping up his heartfelt condemnation of capital exploitation:

"No poet would be there to intone meter of soul's sentence to stone, no artist upon scaffold to paint the vinegary sweat of Christian in correspondence with red brick and gray mortar, no composer attuned to the screaming movement of Job and voiceless cry in overalls."

Not true, for with each additional word he wrote, Di Donato did a little more to erase the verity of that sentence.

[Domenico Francesco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un classico dimenticato. Un romanzo autobiografico di Pietro Di Donato, italo-americano di seconda generazione che dopo la morte prematura di suo padre in un cantiere di New York cominciò a lavorare già da bambino come muratore. Un libro perrealistico e crudissimo (vi sfido a trovare dei passaggi più disturbanti dell'incipit o di certe scene verso la fine) ma senza risulare mai artificioso o esagerato, anzi. Uno dei fattori più interessanti di quest'opera è senza dubbio la lingua: un ciclopico wall of text per pagina che raramente va a capo in un flusso di coscienza fitto fitto in una lingua bizzarra a metà tra l'italiano e l'inglese, infarcito di slang, frasi fatte, imprecazioni e dialettismi, spesso le frasi seppur scritte in inglese rispecchiano la costruzione sintattica italiana risultando alienanti, come un italo-americano che prova a raccontarti una storia con la lingua che ha imparato dell'ipotetico lettore/ascoltatore. Voluto o no è indubbiamente un fattore sperimentale in linea con certe avanguardie moderniste dell'epoca. Appena finito di rileggere (ottobre 2021) in una traduzione italiana anonima degli anni '40 per quanto buona non riusciva comprensibilmente a ricostruire la sua peculiarità lessicale e espressiva risultando comunque ugualmente forte viste le sitazuioni trattate. Inoltre è un libro di una potenza abnorme che è riuscitao a rappresentare una realtà che all'epoca era poco nota raccontata da persone che all'epoca avevano ben poca voce. Da leggere assieme a Son of Italy di Pascal D'Angelo, altro durissimo romanzo-resoconto in prima persona di un altro immigrato a New York che è stato ancora più sfortunato di Di Pietro poiché non ebbe il tempo di affermarsi artisticamente e non guadagnò il successo e la reputazione che toccarono a Di Pietro in vita (e perlopiù lo stesso D'Angelo appare come personaggio nel terribile incipit del romanzo). Da riscoprire assolutamente.

[Germanicusii · Rating 5 out of 5]

The United States a land of immigrants can also be called a land of refugees with the understanding that neither Native Americans nor enslaved Africans were strictly speaking refugees. The first refugees are euphemistically called pilgrims. In fact, they were refugees fleeing English and European religious, economic, and political oppression. Then came the great wave of European and Asian refugees or refuse. They suffered the double indignity of homeland oppression and the nativist cruelties of America's first generation of refugees. Moving along , hordes of refugees from global totalitarian and autocratic rule arrive on foot, boat and air from all points on the compass. In addition to all the previous indignities suffered by their predecessors, these latest suffer oppressive legal, militia and physical barriers.

So when it is said America is a land of immigrants I.e. refugees, it is with the understanding that the welcoming committee is usually pretty hostile. In common for all of us refugees is the idea of the cruelty suffered to get Job. That is, refugee Americans are here and come here because it represents opportunity – Job. Like William Bradford and Myles Standish, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Bessemer, Bruce Willis and Igor Sikorsky, the Job means freedom, wealth and a higher standard of living.

Italians came here like the English, Irish, Germans, Chinese, Mexicans, Hondurans, etc., etc. wanting Job. This fine social justice novel talks about the great American cruelty towards immigrants that continues to this day.

It might be of interest to anyone seeking perspective on the current crisis of the heart. Recommended. Read also Laurie Fabiano, Elizabeth Street.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's astounding how under the radar this book is considering how mind-blowingly good it is. The first chapter includes the best description of a building under construction collapsing and crushing people that I've ever read. And it's really beautifully written.

[Deborah De · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful,magical, almost lyrical at types, story of an Italian-American family in NYC during the Depression. Really funny pasta-eating scene. Lots of suffering, poverty, family struggle, etc. Lots of "cursing," but would be great to have them in Italian!

[Elizabeth La Lettrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another essential for Italian American readers, studies, research, etc. Absolutely fantastic.

[Ralph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A forgotten classic. DiDonato really captures the soul of the Italian immigrant and gives a realistic view of tenement life. A truly worthy read!

[S Daly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult to read and follow at times, but once you get the whole picture the story will have you wondering about life in general.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

(The following review also appears on my blog: https://trumpfiction.wordpress.com/20...)

1939 saw the release of two celebrated works about the experiences of downtrodden American migrants to California during the Depression: John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath and William Saroyan’s drama The Time of Your Life. Both would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes in their respective genres and enter the canon as classic American works of the proletariat in the Depression-era. Both would be mythologized in Hollywood films -- the former starring Henry Fonda and the latter James Cagney. Equally celebrated in that year was a work of fiction that also would be turned into a film ten years later, Give Us This Day, directed by the blacklisted Edward Dmytryk. The novel's author didn’t win any awards or achieve the canonical status of Steinbeck or Saroyan, despite his novel’s passionate prose, timely narrative, and (as almost eighty years of time has confirmed) timeless themes.

          The novel was Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, which focuses on the struggles of urban immigrants back east who risked their lives for starvation wages in the 1920s to help build the sprawling cities that drove an American economic boom that would come crashing down in 1929. Like The Grapes of Wrath and The Time of Your Life, Christ in Concrete is a critique of the mythical American Dream -- an idea that fuels the capitalist exploitation of immigrants, migrants, ethnic minorities, and the working poor for the prosperity and comfort of the the upper classes, thereby excluding from advancement the very American citizens who drive the economic engine. It is a novel in which the stark, bitter reality of the American promise becomes clear to the Italian immigrants who toil as bricklayers: their labor, their bodies, and their blood are used to develop a nation whose laws, justice system, and business practices not only preclude them from the profits of their labor, but dehumanize them at every turn -- or simply refuse even to acknowledge their existence.

          The novel opens with the death of a bright and skilled bricklayer named Geremio, the patriarch of a large family of Italian immigrants who assume that their father’s hardwork and honest living will help them soon to achieve the American Dream: a steady job, their own home, financial stability, upward mobility, security for their children, etc. In truth, Geremio and his Italian-American co-workers are treated as expendable tools, whose safety is the last thing of concern to either the construction corporation or the law.

          Geremio’s horrific death due to the negligence of uncaring bosses at his construction site is a brutal, visceral wake-up call: these immigrant laborers are not free and equal citizens in the American capitalist system. They are, instead, the Christs in concrete who sacrifice their lives for the pagan god “Job.” All that matters is Job. They live and die for Job. Job is their master.

          Commentators often comment on the so-called “personification” of “Job” in the novel. However, it is not so much a personification as a deification. Job is another word for the pagan god of Capitalism (or even more specifically, Corporatism) with the owners functioning as high priests, the foremen as deacons, and the immigrant labor force as the flock, ostensibly “saved” by the holy auspices of Job, but ultimately guided to their demise like lambs to the slaughter. As the sacrificial offerings to the pagan god of the New World, the men are martyrs to a nation whose economic system exploits their sweat, steals their blood, and gives them only the hope of some better life in the future -- the “American Dream” as an eternal promise for their suffering. I would even suggest that the designation “Job” is a textual connection to the Biblical Job. Di Donato’s novel, like the Old Testament book, grapples with the injustice of innocent humans suffering purely on the faith of a silent god. In di Donato’s novel, that silent god is extended to include the pagan god of Capitalism.

          Set against this pagan god of the New World is the joyous, pastoral, communal celebrations of the Italian immigrants, as documented in the section titled “Fiesta.” Their Old World pagan rituals are a stark contrast to both the stifling dominance of Job and the impotent emptiness of the Catholic Church, whose presence in the novel is epitomized by the Irish priest who dismisses a dire request for aid from Paul with a slice of “rich-rich cake.” Unable to nourish the spiritual needs of the immigrants or provide charity relief in their times of deep misfortune, the Church is the Old World equivalent of Job: taking from the people in the distant, empty promise of some mythical “better life” in the future. As a result, the working-class must rely on each other -- as workers and as neighbors -- drawing strength from their ancient, pre-Christian pagan rituals of sharing food and song in a sense of communal bonding.

          Di Donato’s deeply empathetic portrait of the Italian immigrant laborers is both humanizing and glorifying: like Paul, the reader comes to see these men as martyrs, whose gruesome deaths on the scaffolding of the the new cathedrals of the pagan god Capitalism are preserved in concrete like the saints who adorn the stone parapets of medieval cathedrals -- monuments in stone that were created, not coincidentally, by the guilds of Old World working-class stonemasons, carpenters, and metallurgists who were the forefathers (perhaps even literally) of these Italian immigrants.

          It cannot be coincidental that di Donato names his young protagonist Paul. Like St. Paul the Apostle, he witnesses a “crucifixion” and undergoes a spiritual transformation, accepting his role as an apostle of the new labor movement by testifying to the Christs in concrete who have suffered and died so that their families may one day secure a better life in a New World. Paul’s conversion roughly follows the new spiritual awakening described in the Pauline epistles, culminating in Paul's mystic dream-vision  -- not in subjugation to the false gods of Job or Church, but in service to the very human sacrifices of his fellow laborers. Paul's dream details his conversion to a new faith in socialism and the labor movement: "He looks about Job. He is in a huge choir loft with scaffolding about the walls. In niches are Saints. They wear overalls and look like paesanos he dimly recalls. They step down and carry hods and push wheelbarrows. But what Saints are they? The little fellow and the curly-headed and the mortarman look like Thomas and Lazarene, and the Snoutnose who once visited the house."

          Paul’s allegiance is now with his working-class brethren, whose martyrdom he has witnessed on the scaffolding of Job. Paul’s mother, a devout Catholic, soon makes the heart-rending decision that her faith must be born anew, not in the “plaster man and wooden cross,” but in her fellow man: “Follow him,” she tells her children of this newly transformed Paul. His mother's blessing is a testament to his new faith, which is documented in Christ in Concrete much like St. Paul’s own conversion was recounted in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.

Almost eighty years after its publication, di Donato's autobiographical portrait -- testifying to the sacrificial burden of new immigrants in a nation that purports to welcome them, while simultaneously exploiting their labor and dehumanizing their struggle -- remains, unfortunately, all-too-relevant. The American conceit of being a land of hope and plenty for tempest-tossed refugees is belied by every new generation's attempts to deny immigrants the same opportunities granted their ancestors. As we have learned from the fiction of so many great American writers who emigrated to the United States in the twentieth century -- Yezierska, Cahan, Saroyan, Rølvaag, and di Donato, among them -- the success of immigrants is won in the face of overwhelming challenges and hardships. For them, the promise of the American Dream exists at the expense of their struggle, rather than as a safe harbor from it. Their triumph is an overcoming of adversity built into a system that actively denies them its loftiest ideals.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christ in Concrete presents the often harrowing story of an Italian immigrant family in New York City in the 1920s. 12 year old Paul is forced into construction work to support his mother and 7 younger siblings after the death of his father Geremio in the collapse of a shoddily constructed building. The book alternates passages of Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness – the narrative often becomes expressionistically inarticulate in scenes where the characters experience extreme stress - with semi-objective third person point of view passages. The more straightforward descriptive passages are among the best in the book: the sounds of the lower East Side by day and night, a visit to a tenement medium, and the novel’s big set piece, a wedding celebration among Italian-American construction workers and their wives. Di Donato writes dialogue in a kind of Italianized English meant to indicate when the characters are speaking in their native tongue:

For pleasure, do not laugh. … The boy is man-child of master mason and born in the mortar tub. I beg you, this is not moment for comedy: the little one is son of Italian and paesano who left his blood under Job.

That last word, “Job”, almost always capitalized and without a preceding article, is the way in which work and employment is referred to by the characters both in speech and thought throughout the book, unconsciously worshipped and feared as a kind of Moloch, a rival God to their orthodox Catholic pantheon.

The novel presents its criticisms of society – the greedy and bigoted bosses, the indifferent bureaucracy, the ineffective and self-seeking Catholic clergy – by showing, not telling, no direct attacks against these institutions are made, either by the author or characters. The only hints of larger economic and historic movements come from Paul’s conversations with his friend Louis, a Russian Jew his own age, an atheist scholar who reads Thorstein Veblen, and recounts the successive cruelty of the Tsarist and Bolshevist regimes. The last section of the novel takes place in the early years of the Great Depression, but even this society shattering event is overshadowed by the personal relationships of the characters and the crisis of faith Paul undergoes, symbolically presented over several pages in a dream vision which serves as the novel’s climax and which, like most such efforts, I found heavy-handed and unsatisfying.

The first chapter describes Geremio’s last days of life and ends with his death on Good Friday, which, especially given the book’s title, struck me as overly heavy-handed symbolism. I found in the introduction that this chapter was published first, as a separate story titled “Christ in Concrete”, also that the Good Friday death was based on the death of di Donato’s own father. The chapter is not quite integrated into what follows: the metaphor of Geremio as the “Christ in Concrete” doesn’t sustain itself and the Paul described here doesn’t join seamlessly to the character that carries most of the novel’s subsequent narrative – for instance, we hear nothing more of the crystal radio set built by Paul of which his father thinks with great pride.

[Kovalsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pietro Di Donato è nato nel New Jersey da genitori abruzzesi. Suo padre era un muratore che ha perso la vita per un incidente in un cantiere dove le regole del profitto valevano più di quelle sulla sicurezza dei lavoratori. È sempre la solita vecchia triste storia. Di Donato affida a un piccolo alter ego di nome Paolo la narrazione di questo episodio tragico che cambierà di netto la sua vita e quella della sua numerosa famiglia. Costretto ad abbandonare gli studi per prendere il posto di suo padre e sfamare la madre e i tanti fratelli e sorelle, il piccolo Paolo sentirà sulla propria giovane pelle la fatica immane di un lavoro usurante e tremendamente pesante. Se prima lo svolgeva quasi con una certa passione, per non deludere la memoria di suo padre, ben presto capirà la fregatura, l'ingiustizia feroce che attanaglia il ceto medio più basso. Infatti, nella sua vita Di Donato sarà un fervente sostenitore dei diritti dei lavoratori e si batterà in prima persona per far sì che le cose possano cambiare. Non so quanto ci sia riuscito, nei fatti, ma di certo ha saputo scrivere una testimonianza feroce e molto toccante su quello che è successo a suo padre e alla sua famiglia. Un romanzo intriso di verismo e fatica, ma anche carico di dignità.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super sad and super Italian

[Bibi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una storia vera di un tempo che non ha mai smesso di ripetersi. Il lavoro, la fame, la gioia, il terrore, la disillusione in un tempo che suona maledettamente attuale.

[Samara Kae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to read this for an American Lit class and it was really good, but it probably has one of the darkest and most disturbing deaths I have ever read in the very beginning.

[✨ tweety ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a heartbreaking book about Italian immigrants in America during the first thirty years of 1900'.

The story, which reminded me I Malavoglia by Verga, was very tragic and haunting. Even though there is a tragedy after another, there are happy moments as well. This is life: a mix of happiness and pain. I'm Italian and I could feel the sorrow of the Italo-Americans who moved to the "new world" to look for a better life for themselves but were disillusioned by the American Dream. Despite being almost 100 year old, this story is still actual because many people today still wish for a better life and move to another country to pursue it. I admire them, but I am realist and think that I wouldn't be that courageous to do that and leave my country.

The book is divided into five parts: Geremio, Job, Tenement, Fiesta, Annunziata.

In the first part the main focus is Geremio, who is a foreman and works on a construction site that doesn't seem to respect the Law and at some point, the building he and the other Italian workers were building, collapses, leaving Geremio in concrete. He is paralyzed so he can't free himself and save his life. This event is tragic for his big family and their neighbors in the tenement because it happens on Good Friday and because Geremio was a respected man and worker who worked hard to sustain his people.

It isn't a coincidence that Geremio dies on Good Friday. He and his wife Annunziata are fervid Catholics and for them this day means the day Jesus was crucified and died. Geremio was crucified by his own "padrone" because Mister Murdin, his boss, never respected security norms and probably used low-cost materials for the construction. But of course he doesn't care - after all, it's "Eytalians" who died in the collapse, and they weren't even officially American citizens to begin with, so who cares?

Mister Murdin reasons like many sovereign-minded people today. The immigrant, despite moved from another country to live in my country, will never be seen as my equal. The immigrant is included in the group of citizens but he is also outside of the group. He is included just when you need him. In this case, Geremio's boss preyed on his and his "paesanos" hunger and will to live a better life, but he was exploiting them. They were like slaves and they probably knew it, but what could they do?

As Paul, Geremio's oldest son makes us see in the following parts, Job is needed. Job is what a man must do in order to go on, otherwise, he will starve and he will die. When Geremio dies, Paul tasks himself with protecting his family and he becomes his mother and his brother and sister's "father". This happens in the second part, JOB, which is not only named like that because of the job in general as "work", but also because Job in the Bible was a man who had to trust God even though his faith risked to be shaken because of what happened in his life. Paul too, like Job, holds his faith in Catholic church and trusts his mama Annunziata that God will help them, Jesus hasn't sacrificed for nothing. Geremio hasn't died for nothing. But once the boom period for the constructions of buildings in New York city ends after the infamous Black Friday of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, Paul's faith starts to waver.

When his godfather Vincenz Nazone dies on the job in a similar manner to Geremio, Paul has lost his father not once, but twice. Where was God? Why didn't he help Nazone from falling?

Paul, who bears the name of yet another important apostle of Jesus who spread his religious message, feels cheated and betrayed towards the end. We only have one life, and "not even the Death can free us, for we are... Christ in concrete..."

[Brian Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Christ in Concrete” is a remarkable little find. Written nearly eighty years ago, but with nary an out-of-date-reference or any contrivance or corniness, it reads with dynamism and literate flight that would not seem out of place in the present day. All rings with authenticity of direct cultural and lifeblood experience. The story is of socio-economic, class and cultural struggle. It doesn’t take much to guess that this account originates from Donato’s own experiences as worker and family member. The brutality of labour struggle though America’s depression years is portrayed, I believe, without an iota of propagandistic or didactic posturing. I get the definite sense the descriptions are based on actual events as experienced, if not close accounts. And terrible and relentless are the conditions the people must endure indeed! At the outset of the novel the father of a large family and many of his co-workers are buried in the rubble of a sub-standard structure. The well-being of a score of children is immediately threatened as there is no social safety net. All the social institutions, government, business and religion come under fire, but refuse responsibility. Injury and loss continue throughout the book, but it is not merely a rote list of misfortunes.

This novel is actually very and proudly lyrical throughout. There is joy and pride in the face of irreparable tragedy. The wellspring of this is the working-class Italian cultural origins of the author and his family. The minutiae of passion both amongst the men, women and children is as detailed as the descriptions of the technique of the artisanry. I liked and identified with it on so many levels. I even find that that the writing has interesting characteristics, almost avant-garde. Description seems to float upon the page demanding that the reader fill in detail from their imagination with a humanistic commonality (where otherwise, because of cultural distinctiveness, the brain would pause to conjecture). It causes a disjunction where one is reading what must be foreign colloquialism with familiarity. The flow changes abruptly sometimes to poetic and sensory technique, but there is no dawdling in the narrative. Nothing is included that isn’t essential.

The inevitable comparisons would be to socially-conscious writers of the time, such as Lillian Hellman or John Steinbeck, but there is little bending, posturing or allegorical ornamentation to make a point. Donato does not have to reach very far to draw on his inspirational resources and though there is emotional passion it is never affected. Intensely passionate, scathing, yet loving. I wonder how Donato managed to find the time to pull this off. Being a manual labourer for years myself I know how much extreme labour taxes one’s ability to do much else in one’s life. Truly the work of a literary genius, pretty much unheralded anymore. I want to find out more about this guy, but I’ve the feeling that this would be his masterpiece. If it isn’t the only one, even if it is, this guy, in my opinion, is one of the greatest novelists unjustly forgotten.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful work, portraying in agonizingly reality the experience of recent immigrants, in this case Italians in America as they struggle to find their way, scratch out a living, sweat, suffer and die in the merciless construction industry of the 1920s. In his introduction, Studs Terkel compares it with Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath", and aptly so. A boy of twelve, after the death of his father in a construction accident, sees no alternative but to quit school and seek employment as a bricklayer to support his widowed mother and six younger siblings.
The construction site -- the "Job" -- is portrayed in brutally realistic prose of the highest order, reminiscent of the poems of Carl Sandburg. All life, all humanity, all other concerns are swept into the service of the all-consuming and all-powerful demands of the "Job":
"Whistle shrilled Job awake, and the square pit thundered into an inferno of sense-pounding cacophony. Compression engines snort viciously -- sledge heads punch sinking spikes -- steel drills bite shattering jazz in stone-cutting excitedly jarring clinging hands -- dust swirling -- bells clanging insistent aggravated warning -- severe bony iron cranes swivel swing dead heavy rock high -- clattering dump -- vibrating concussion swiftly absorbed -- echo reverberating -- scoops bulling horns in rock pile chug-shish-chug-chug aloft -- hiss roar dynamite's boom-doom loosening petrified bowels -- one hundred hands fighting rock -- fifty spines derricking swiveling -- fifty faces set in mask chopping stone into bread -- fifty hearts interpreting Labour hurling oneself down and in at earth planting pod-footed Job."

[Pascale · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel is the puffed-up version of a story, first published in Esquire magazine, which went on to be named "Best short story of 1938". I have no doubt that the original story was first-rate because the beginning of this novel packs a powerful punch. As long as the author deals with his father's lethal accident on a construction job and his own decision to step in as the bread-winner for his mother and 7 siblings, the writing is strong and vibrant. Afterwards, we get all the predictable scenes of life in the Lower east Side. Geremio's colleagues are brutes but one of them takes the plucky young bricklayer under his wing. A kind uncle does his best to help but loses a leg. The parish priest offers no help at all, apart from an insulting portion of cake. Of his brood, Paul is the only one who grows up while all his brothers and sisters remain "children" for the duration of the book. Festivals and weddings alleviate the drudgery of their hard-scrabble existence. When Paul's self-appointed god-father eventually dies in yet another accident caused by the greed of the bosses, Paul loses his faith and falls out with his mother, who promptly takes to her bed and dies. It really is a shame that di Donato couldn't keep his head of steam and do justice to the working class heroes of his childhood.

[M.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christ in Concrete is the poignant tale of a labor class youth's attempt to sustain himself and his family in the early-mid nineteenth century streets of Downtown Manhattan, New York City. In exchange for life, Paul, the protagonist, sacrificed his ticket out of the cycle of poverty as did his late father--education. As Paul endures the toiling labor in bricklaying and weeps at the hands that denied him the most basic of needs in the most perilous hours, it seems clear that he represents the tragic nature of humanity: man is constantly waging a war against himself. The boss who refuses to help Paul and his family is human, and Paul, who works against the tyranny of the rich, is also human. The difference in class between the two drives them against each other even though they are both human.

This book is a short but dense read that is recommended to those who can process graphic imagery and are interested in the effects that various socioeconomic issues have on the human psyche.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very sobering account of Italian immigrant construction workers in the the Lower East Side of New York City, taking place just before the Depression. At the time of its publication in 1939, it received accolades along with another contemporary novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Di Donato's novel is largely autobiographical, based on his own experiences growing up as the oldest son of an immigrant family, who, at age 12, must make ends meet after the untimely death of his father.

The writing is considered avant garde, written in a stream of consciousness style and filled with Catholic symbolism and references to the faith and belief system that drove Italian immigrants. It is a small, yet powerful book, and though it is about the Italian immigrant culture, it is also about the working class in general, and the trials and tribulations of those who labored in construction during the early part of the twentieth century. It is a classic study of social protest.