Pietro di Donato
| Pietro di Donato | |
|---|---|
| Born | Pietro di Donato April 3, 1911 West Hoboken, New Jersey (now Union City) |
| Died | January 19, 1992 (aged 80) Stony Brook, New York |
| Occupation | Novelist, reporter, bricklayer |
| Notable works | Christ in Concrete, Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini |
Pietro Di Donato (April 3, 1911–January 19, 1992) was an American writer and bricklayer best known for his novel, Christ in Concrete, which recounts the life and times of his bricklayer father, Geremia, who was killed in 1923 in a building collapse. 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.
Di Donato was born April 3, 1911 in West Hoboken, New Jersey (now Union City) to Geremio, a bricklayer, and Annunziata Chinquina. He had seven other siblings. His parents had emigrated from the town of Vasto, in the region of Abruzzo in Italy.
On March 30, 1923, Geremio di Donato died when a building collapsed on him, burying him in concrete. Pietro, who was twelve at the time, left school in the seventh grade to become a construction worker in the trade union in order to help support his family. He retained his membership in the union his entire life. His father's death and his life growing up as an immigrant in West Hoboken were the inspiration for his writings. When his mother died a few years later, Pietro assumed full responsibility for providing for his family. Though he had little formal education, during a strike in the building trades he had wandered into a library and discovered French and Russian novels, becoming particularly fond of Émile Zola. He also took night classes at City College in construction and engineering. The family was eventually able to move to Northport, Long Island, where he continued to work as a mason, and was inspired by Zola's work to write about his own experiences in the Italian immigrant community.
Christ in Concrete was published as a short story in the March 1937 issue of Esquire magazine, and was subsequently expanded into a full-length, blue-collar proletarian novel with an introduction by Arnold Gingrich. The book remained on best-seller lists for months, and was eventually chosen for the Book of the Month Club main selection, edging out John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which was published the same year. According to Allen Barra in an interview for Salon.com, the novel became an instant classic, and standard reading for second-generation Italian-Americans. Screenwriter Ben Barzman, who wrote the screenplay into which the novel was adapted, called it "the first of its kind", and The National Italian American Foundation called it "rare." Charles Poore, writing in The New York Times on Sept. 15, 1939, described the book as "eloquent" and "Italian to the core...by turns operatic, lyrical, ferocious and hilarious", and commented, "It was something rare, a proletarian novel written by a proletarian." It was included in Edward O'Brien's Best Short Stories of 1938.
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