Angelina Napolitano and Virgilia D’Andrea: Workers’ Internationalism, First-Wave Feminism, and Two Defiant Italian Immigrant Women in North America

Franca Iacovetta, University of Toronto

This talk will consider how two intertwined international movements helped to shape the lives of two defiant but starkly different Italian immigrant women in early twentieth-century North America by examining working-class immigrant Angelina Napolitano who faced the death penalty in 1911 Canada and anarchist, syndicalist and poet Virgilia D’Andrea.  By drawing on a play based on the Napolitano case and D’Andrea’s poetry, Franca’s talk will also offer some comments on cultural writings and writing feminist and gendered histories of working-class and radical immigrant women.