“Everybody loved me” The creation of an Italian immigrant legacy

Abstract

This thesis uses oral histories of post-Second World War Italian immigrants of Griffith in NSW, Australia, to examine questions of memory, nostalgia and how the relationship between interviewer and narrator shapes narratives of the past. Griffith boasts the highest population of people with Italian heritage per capita in Australia. Yet historians have largely overlooked this community, being rural and isolated from other Italian strongholds in Australia. Most who immigrated to Griffith traded a rural Italian lifestyle for a rural Australian lifestyle. By turning to oral histories, therefore, this thesis presents fresh insights on an otherwise neglected rural migrant experience. Prejudice, fear of the other, fear of what was not understood, and racial vilification were experienced by Italians in Griffith at the time. Yet the surprising finding of this thesis is that interviewees did not report memories of racism. Explaining this apparent anomaly, this thesis argues that ‘insider’ relationships shared between narrator and oral historian as well as the narrators’ desire to impart life lessons affected the telling of history. This relational dynamic shaped the life-story such that it did more than recount the past. The life story became a vehicle to establish narrators’ legacy (that is, an appreciation of the narrator’s life story and contribution to the community by future generations). The thesis further argues that the crafting of a legacy in oral histories occurred through the construction of redemptive narratives about the past as well as the formulaic narratives and tropes which might limit discussion of uncomfortable memories about the past. This thesis concludes, therefore, that when it comes to oral history, history is constructed relationally.