Diary of Rachele Romano

August 18, 1879

            Things were tough back in Italy. My husband barely found food to sustain our children. We were very poor. There was a point in which my two kids, Veronica and Bruto had to work too so we could live. Many people were getting sick. We were afraid of what was happening and what would happen in the future with the natural disasters. We got desperate; we could no longer live like this. After a long talk my husband, Aldo, we decided to leave to America, the land of freedom; hoping to follow the “American Dream”.   

September 20, 1879

            We were excited to go to the U.S. unfortunately, things turned out different than what we thought would be an exciting adventure; the voyage was pretty though. The cabins were crowded. It was obvious that many people had a hard time in their home country, some people even tried to desperately sneak in the boat because they had no money to pay the ticket. This caused the crew to violently kick these passengers. However the attitude of the crew would be bad almost every single day during the trip, sometimes I would even see how crew members abused of their authority, mistreating female passengers. This got me worried of my safety, but I knew Aldo would be there to protect me if anything bad happened. In the boat the food quality was horrible and the water had a particular appearance and smell that could turn anyone’s stomach. Since we needed to survive, it comforted me to know that anything was better than Italy. After a while, some people got contagious diseases and died. We had to be really careful because if we got some type of illness reaching the U.S we would be sent back, and this would be really shameful. This would crush our dream for a better future.

October 11, 1879    

            Reaching the United States gave us a sense of hope. At first we had to stop at Ellis Island, New York. There we would be interviewed and checked for illnesses. We were asked questions such as where did we live before, what were our job occupations, how long had we been married, how many children we had, and other stuff related to our life. My husband and I would prepare our children for this at any spare time we had. I got really nervous when they called us, but luckily we passed the test.

October 21, 1879    

          When we got approved to go to the United States I felt a great relief. As if we could start all over again, but from the bottom. At first Aldo worked all that he could. He did things that others didn’t want to do. Some things he did were shoe shinning, rag picking and sewer cleaning. My children and I contributed saving money the most that we could; I would sometimes skip meals for this reason. As time passed by, Aldo got a construction job and we could improve our living conditions. I don’t regret the hard work we had to do to have a better life, it was worth it.