My grandmother, Lucia Nobilio Acciavatti, did not choose America. In 1921, she was transported here against her wishes, a young woman from an Italian village in Abruzzo suddenly deposited in a country whose language she did not speak, to marry a man she barely knew beyond the fact that he came from the same village, Loreto Aprutino. Like so many Italian-American women of her generation, her story began not with opportunity, but with obligation.
She arrived carrying little more than her upbringing and a rare skill for a woman of her time and place: she could read and write in her native language. That quiet ability – never listed on any census or employment record – became the foundation of her “not working.” With eight children to raise, clothes to make by hand, meals to prepare, and a household to manage, Lucia also earned money reading letters for local immigrant women and writing responses to loved ones left behind in Italy.
