Calabrese’s work is a timely reminder of the gendered dimension of transnational migration. By focusing on rural women in Basilicata, a seemingly isolated, rural world, Calabrese shows us the ways in which male emigration transformed the intimate and public lives of the married women who remained behind. Working from a wide range of government documents, Calabrese centers on the words and experiences of rural women as they navigated the intricacies of a transnational global network. This work highlights the ways rural women invoked the law, government agencies, and social norms to forge new roles for themselves within the family and the state.
— Linda Reeder, University of Missouri
Italian Women in Basilicata creatively pieces together scant and scattered documentation with good results. It delivers vivid illustrations of how women’s confined civil status shaped their responses to male emigration, focusing on their persistent, small efforts to protect themselves as wives, mothers, and daughters.
— Donna Gabaccia, University of Toronto
Victoria Calabrese paints a moving and nuanced portrait of women in Italy during the peak years of emigration from the south of the country. By investigating the legal, social, and religious implications of families separated by international migration, Calabrese explains continuity and change in gender relations, family structures, and community development. This book makes a significant contribution to women’s studies, migration studies, and Italian studies, with specific examples of women’s stories that readers will long remember.
— Mark Choate, Brigham Young University
In Italian Women in Basilicata, Victoria Calabrese has successfully recorded the neglected stories of the other side of Italian emigration, the women who remained at home navigating hardships and forging new roles as active citizens and community members while leading their own families. Through these stories, she also introduces the story of a region that, having overcome its own challenges, has acquired a new image, with tourism on the rise. With emigration still relevant, Calabrese points out that in today’s Basilicata, it is common for women to emigrate first and to send money back home. This book is indeed a must read for all those interested in gender, migration, and family studies, as well as history, culture, and civic engagement. It is a well-written and thoroughly researched study that adds valuable information to the full story of the age of Italian mass emigration. Calabrese has succeeded not only in focusing on Basilicata, to which she is personally connected, but in demonstrating the complexities of emigration and its consequences not only on those who left their lands and families but also on those who remained. Despite their hard-ships, the women left behind “acted, spoke up, and had a voice” (158), and Calabrese made sure that they continue to be heard.
— Italian American Review