muftarova's review
4.0
When i first saw this book at the bookshelves in the store, i imediattelly picked it up. I read "Christ in Concrete" on the cover and saw the buildings and i knew i had to read it. The title was provoking and the author was Italian, i knew i found something worth reading. My expectations were that this book was about the times of The Depression, but my guess was kind of wrong. It is about the times leading to the depression. Di Donato's writing is heavy, passionate and dramatic, as one would expect from an Italian. It follows an (almost) autobiographal story, heartbreaking and heartwarming, heavy on the soul and spirit. Unbelievably tragic and a beautiful book about the life of poor immigrants that know only of love and faith, because that is all they have left, and their way of finding happiness or at least content. Every page is difficult on the heart and emotions, the tears come themselves without asking the reader for permission. Di Donato is a master of the Italian soul and their language, including English. His writing is almost poetic and underappreciated, definitely unforgettable. I recommend this book to everyone, maybe not the weak-hearted such as myself (but do read it!). I wish i could describe this book but i lack words for the beauty of it, the best way to know is to read it and find out for yourselves. I promise you will not be able to put it down, but you will not want to finish it either. The only fault of this book is that it has an end.
jenmat1197's review
3.0
This book takes place in the 1920s. Although it is written as a fictional story, it is based on events that happened to the author as a boy. The main character is a 12 year old boy whose father dies in a horrific building collapse and is entombed in concrete on Good Friday. The father has a brother, Luigi, who promises to help the family, but he goes to work and is injured to the point that he can no longer work. The 12 year old boy, Paul, has to go to work as a bricklayer to support his mother and his siblings. He has to leave school and work construction - not the life he had envisioned. Because Paul is so young, he gets paid very little as a bricklayer. He soon overworks himself trying to make enough money, and has to leave a job.
Soon he finds a better paying brick-layer job and then later beings working on skyscrapers. He talks about working above "the toy world below". A close friend of his, and mentor falls to his death while working at one of the job sites and Paul decides at this point he no longer believes in God. With the death of his father and then of a close friend, he finds no reason for faith. His mother is upset with his decision, and Paul tries to make it up to her.
This book is labeled a classic, and I tried to like it. I liked the idea of it, and a lot of the story. I had a hard time with the writing. I keep coming back to these books - written in the late 1800s and early 1900s and think I can make it work, but I can't. I struggled with this one, even though it wasn't even 250 pages.
My grandparents were Italian immigrants. They came here and worked in the mines and in the mills of Pennsylvania. There lives were hard, so it did ring true to me how hard immigrants who come to America have it. Some make it - like my grandparents - and some don't. All work was dangerous, low pay, and unforgiving. So I was drawn to this story because of my own background. However - that darn writing style.
Anyway - if you aren't a big baby like I am, and enjoy the writing style of the early 20th century - don't pass up this book.
Soon he finds a better paying brick-layer job and then later beings working on skyscrapers. He talks about working above "the toy world below". A close friend of his, and mentor falls to his death while working at one of the job sites and Paul decides at this point he no longer believes in God. With the death of his father and then of a close friend, he finds no reason for faith. His mother is upset with his decision, and Paul tries to make it up to her.
This book is labeled a classic, and I tried to like it. I liked the idea of it, and a lot of the story. I had a hard time with the writing. I keep coming back to these books - written in the late 1800s and early 1900s and think I can make it work, but I can't. I struggled with this one, even though it wasn't even 250 pages.
My grandparents were Italian immigrants. They came here and worked in the mines and in the mills of Pennsylvania. There lives were hard, so it did ring true to me how hard immigrants who come to America have it. Some make it - like my grandparents - and some don't. All work was dangerous, low pay, and unforgiving. So I was drawn to this story because of my own background. However - that darn writing style.
Anyway - if you aren't a big baby like I am, and enjoy the writing style of the early 20th century - don't pass up this book.
arissashepherd7's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
leslie_d's review
2.0
2 1/2. read for a class and that was the impetus behind the read. I can appreciate it for its context and even the use of the overwrought, but all in all, it was just too much, too exposed.
eiramsor11's review
3.0
This book is very valuable, its writing style is brought in a way to make you understand not only how life was like as an Italian immigrant in NY, but also how it felt. The tone of the book is to some pessimistic, maybe realistic because it ends with the shattering of faith, like a wake up. It is also painful in the deaths of Paul’s father and godfather. It felt all so raw and the writing did it justice to what it felt like to experience it or witness someone die. At the same time, though I felt and understood clearly the blows of their life, the victimhood, grief and the loss or keeping of faith, it is not a story I enjoy or would read again. For its writing style, I would appreciate it for a shorter story. I prefer narrative writing to continue my interest, or to care more about the plot and what happens next. If I stopped reading, I didn’t feel the desire to pick it back up and it didn’t help that to focus on the story involves focusing on the drudgery and danger of work, but not being able to avoid it to live and feed eight kids with a single mom. I’m still glad I read it though.
crissytrap's review
5.0
This book was released at the same time Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was. It even beat Grapes of Wrath out on the book club list before it went into obscurity. It's a fictional account of Di Donato's own life. It's a commentary on industrialization and the sacrifices made by immigrants.
msand3's review
4.0
(The following review also appears on my blog: https://trumpfiction.wordpress.com/2018/01/12/christ-in-concrete-the-sacrifice-of-immigrant-labor-to-the-pagan-god-of-capitalism/)
1939 saw the release of two celebrated works about the experiences of downtrodden American migrants to California during the Depression: John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath and William Saroyan’s drama The Time of Your Life. Both would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes in their respective genres and enter the canon as classic American works of the proletariat in the Depression-era. Both would be mythologized in Hollywood films -- the former starring Henry Fonda and the latter James Cagney. Equally celebrated in that year was a work of fiction that also would be turned into a film ten years later, Give Us This Day, directed by the blacklisted Edward Dmytryk. The novel's author didn’t win any awards or achieve the canonical status of Steinbeck or Saroyan, despite his novel’s passionate prose, timely narrative, and (as almost eighty years of time has confirmed) timeless themes.
The novel was Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, which focuses on the struggles of urban immigrants back east who risked their lives for starvation wages in the 1920s to help build the sprawling cities that drove an American economic boom that would come crashing down in 1929. Like The Grapes of Wrath and The Time of Your Life, Christ in Concrete is a critique of the mythical American Dream -- an idea that fuels the capitalist exploitation of immigrants, migrants, ethnic minorities, and the working poor for the prosperity and comfort of the the upper classes, thereby excluding from advancement the very American citizens who drive the economic engine. It is a novel in which the stark, bitter reality of the American promise becomes clear to the Italian immigrants who toil as bricklayers: their labor, their bodies, and their blood are used to develop a nation whose laws, justice system, and business practices not only preclude them from the profits of their labor, but dehumanize them at every turn -- or simply refuse even to acknowledge their existence.
The novel opens with the death of a bright and skilled bricklayer named Geremio, the patriarch of a large family of Italian immigrants who assume that their father’s hardwork and honest living will help them soon to achieve the American Dream: a steady job, their own home, financial stability, upward mobility, security for their children, etc. In truth, Geremio and his Italian-American co-workers are treated as expendable tools, whose safety is the last thing of concern to either the construction corporation or the law.
Geremio’s horrific death due to the negligence of uncaring bosses at his construction site is a brutal, visceral wake-up call: these immigrant laborers are not free and equal citizens in the American capitalist system. They are, instead, the Christs in concrete who sacrifice their lives for the pagan god “Job.” All that matters is Job. They live and die for Job. Job is their master.
Commentators often comment on the so-called “personification” of “Job” in the novel. However, it is not so much a personification as a deification. Job is another word for the pagan god of Capitalism (or even more specifically, Corporatism) with the owners functioning as high priests, the foremen as deacons, and the immigrant labor force as the flock, ostensibly “saved” by the holy auspices of Job, but ultimately guided to their demise like lambs to the slaughter. As the sacrificial offerings to the pagan god of the New World, the men are martyrs to a nation whose economic system exploits their sweat, steals their blood, and gives them only the hope of some better life in the future -- the “American Dream” as an eternal promise for their suffering. I would even suggest that the designation “Job” is a textual connection to the Biblical Job. Di Donato’s novel, like the Old Testament book, grapples with the injustice of innocent humans suffering purely on the faith of a silent god. In di Donato’s novel, that silent god is extended to include the pagan god of Capitalism.
Set against this pagan god of the New World is the joyous, pastoral, communal celebrations of the Italian immigrants, as documented in the section titled “Fiesta.” Their Old World pagan rituals are a stark contrast to both the stifling dominance of Job and the impotent emptiness of the Catholic Church, whose presence in the novel is epitomized by the Irish priest who dismisses a dire request for aid from Paul with a slice of “rich-rich cake.” Unable to nourish the spiritual needs of the immigrants or provide charity relief in their times of deep misfortune, the Church is the Old World equivalent of Job: taking from the people in the distant, empty promise of some mythical “better life” in the future. As a result, the working-class must rely on each other -- as workers and as neighbors -- drawing strength from their ancient, pre-Christian pagan rituals of sharing food and song in a sense of communal bonding.
Di Donato’s deeply empathetic portrait of the Italian immigrant laborers is both humanizing and glorifying: like Paul, the reader comes to see these men as martyrs, whose gruesome deaths on the scaffolding of the the new cathedrals of the pagan god Capitalism are preserved in concrete like the saints who adorn the stone parapets of medieval cathedrals -- monuments in stone that were created, not coincidentally, by the guilds of Old World working-class stonemasons, carpenters, and metallurgists who were the forefathers (perhaps even literally) of these Italian immigrants.
It cannot be coincidental that di Donato names his young protagonist Paul. Like St. Paul the Apostle, he witnesses a “crucifixion” and undergoes a spiritual transformation, accepting his role as an apostle of the new labor movement by testifying to the Christs in concrete who have suffered and died so that their families may one day secure a better life in a New World. Paul’s conversion roughly follows the new spiritual awakening described in the Pauline epistles, culminating in Paul's mystic dream-vision -- not in subjugation to the false gods of Job or Church, but in service to the very human sacrifices of his fellow laborers. Paul's dream details his conversion to a new faith in socialism and the labor movement: "He looks about Job. He is in a huge choir loft with scaffolding about the walls. In niches are Saints. They wear overalls and look like paesanos he dimly recalls. They step down and carry hods and push wheelbarrows. But what Saints are they? The little fellow and the curly-headed and the mortarman look like Thomas and Lazarene, and the Snoutnose who once visited the house."
Paul’s allegiance is now with his working-class brethren, whose martyrdom he has witnessed on the scaffolding of Job. Paul’s mother, a devout Catholic, soon makes the heart-rending decision that her faith must be born anew, not in the “plaster man and wooden cross,” but in her fellow man: “Follow him,” she tells her children of this newly transformed Paul. His mother's blessing is a testament to his new faith, which is documented in Christ in Concrete much like St. Paul’s own conversion was recounted in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.
Almost eighty years after its publication, di Donato's autobiographical portrait -- testifying to the sacrificial burden of new immigrants in a nation that purports to welcome them, while simultaneously exploiting their labor and dehumanizing their struggle -- remains, unfortunately, all-too-relevant. The American conceit of being a land of hope and plenty for tempest-tossed refugees is belied by every new generation's attempts to deny immigrants the same opportunities granted their ancestors. As we have learned from the fiction of so many great American writers who emigrated to the United States in the twentieth century -- Yezierska, Cahan, Saroyan, Rølvaag, and di Donato, among them -- the success of immigrants is won in the face of overwhelming challenges and hardships. For them, the promise of the American Dream exists at the expense of their struggle, rather than as a safe harbor from it. Their triumph is an overcoming of adversity built into a system that actively denies them its loftiest ideals.
1939 saw the release of two celebrated works about the experiences of downtrodden American migrants to California during the Depression: John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath and William Saroyan’s drama The Time of Your Life. Both would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes in their respective genres and enter the canon as classic American works of the proletariat in the Depression-era. Both would be mythologized in Hollywood films -- the former starring Henry Fonda and the latter James Cagney. Equally celebrated in that year was a work of fiction that also would be turned into a film ten years later, Give Us This Day, directed by the blacklisted Edward Dmytryk. The novel's author didn’t win any awards or achieve the canonical status of Steinbeck or Saroyan, despite his novel’s passionate prose, timely narrative, and (as almost eighty years of time has confirmed) timeless themes.
The novel was Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, which focuses on the struggles of urban immigrants back east who risked their lives for starvation wages in the 1920s to help build the sprawling cities that drove an American economic boom that would come crashing down in 1929. Like The Grapes of Wrath and The Time of Your Life, Christ in Concrete is a critique of the mythical American Dream -- an idea that fuels the capitalist exploitation of immigrants, migrants, ethnic minorities, and the working poor for the prosperity and comfort of the the upper classes, thereby excluding from advancement the very American citizens who drive the economic engine. It is a novel in which the stark, bitter reality of the American promise becomes clear to the Italian immigrants who toil as bricklayers: their labor, their bodies, and their blood are used to develop a nation whose laws, justice system, and business practices not only preclude them from the profits of their labor, but dehumanize them at every turn -- or simply refuse even to acknowledge their existence.
The novel opens with the death of a bright and skilled bricklayer named Geremio, the patriarch of a large family of Italian immigrants who assume that their father’s hardwork and honest living will help them soon to achieve the American Dream: a steady job, their own home, financial stability, upward mobility, security for their children, etc. In truth, Geremio and his Italian-American co-workers are treated as expendable tools, whose safety is the last thing of concern to either the construction corporation or the law.
Geremio’s horrific death due to the negligence of uncaring bosses at his construction site is a brutal, visceral wake-up call: these immigrant laborers are not free and equal citizens in the American capitalist system. They are, instead, the Christs in concrete who sacrifice their lives for the pagan god “Job.” All that matters is Job. They live and die for Job. Job is their master.
Commentators often comment on the so-called “personification” of “Job” in the novel. However, it is not so much a personification as a deification. Job is another word for the pagan god of Capitalism (or even more specifically, Corporatism) with the owners functioning as high priests, the foremen as deacons, and the immigrant labor force as the flock, ostensibly “saved” by the holy auspices of Job, but ultimately guided to their demise like lambs to the slaughter. As the sacrificial offerings to the pagan god of the New World, the men are martyrs to a nation whose economic system exploits their sweat, steals their blood, and gives them only the hope of some better life in the future -- the “American Dream” as an eternal promise for their suffering. I would even suggest that the designation “Job” is a textual connection to the Biblical Job. Di Donato’s novel, like the Old Testament book, grapples with the injustice of innocent humans suffering purely on the faith of a silent god. In di Donato’s novel, that silent god is extended to include the pagan god of Capitalism.
Set against this pagan god of the New World is the joyous, pastoral, communal celebrations of the Italian immigrants, as documented in the section titled “Fiesta.” Their Old World pagan rituals are a stark contrast to both the stifling dominance of Job and the impotent emptiness of the Catholic Church, whose presence in the novel is epitomized by the Irish priest who dismisses a dire request for aid from Paul with a slice of “rich-rich cake.” Unable to nourish the spiritual needs of the immigrants or provide charity relief in their times of deep misfortune, the Church is the Old World equivalent of Job: taking from the people in the distant, empty promise of some mythical “better life” in the future. As a result, the working-class must rely on each other -- as workers and as neighbors -- drawing strength from their ancient, pre-Christian pagan rituals of sharing food and song in a sense of communal bonding.
Di Donato’s deeply empathetic portrait of the Italian immigrant laborers is both humanizing and glorifying: like Paul, the reader comes to see these men as martyrs, whose gruesome deaths on the scaffolding of the the new cathedrals of the pagan god Capitalism are preserved in concrete like the saints who adorn the stone parapets of medieval cathedrals -- monuments in stone that were created, not coincidentally, by the guilds of Old World working-class stonemasons, carpenters, and metallurgists who were the forefathers (perhaps even literally) of these Italian immigrants.
It cannot be coincidental that di Donato names his young protagonist Paul. Like St. Paul the Apostle, he witnesses a “crucifixion” and undergoes a spiritual transformation, accepting his role as an apostle of the new labor movement by testifying to the Christs in concrete who have suffered and died so that their families may one day secure a better life in a New World. Paul’s conversion roughly follows the new spiritual awakening described in the Pauline epistles, culminating in Paul's mystic dream-vision -- not in subjugation to the false gods of Job or Church, but in service to the very human sacrifices of his fellow laborers. Paul's dream details his conversion to a new faith in socialism and the labor movement: "He looks about Job. He is in a huge choir loft with scaffolding about the walls. In niches are Saints. They wear overalls and look like paesanos he dimly recalls. They step down and carry hods and push wheelbarrows. But what Saints are they? The little fellow and the curly-headed and the mortarman look like Thomas and Lazarene, and the Snoutnose who once visited the house."
Paul’s allegiance is now with his working-class brethren, whose martyrdom he has witnessed on the scaffolding of Job. Paul’s mother, a devout Catholic, soon makes the heart-rending decision that her faith must be born anew, not in the “plaster man and wooden cross,” but in her fellow man: “Follow him,” she tells her children of this newly transformed Paul. His mother's blessing is a testament to his new faith, which is documented in Christ in Concrete much like St. Paul’s own conversion was recounted in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.
Almost eighty years after its publication, di Donato's autobiographical portrait -- testifying to the sacrificial burden of new immigrants in a nation that purports to welcome them, while simultaneously exploiting their labor and dehumanizing their struggle -- remains, unfortunately, all-too-relevant. The American conceit of being a land of hope and plenty for tempest-tossed refugees is belied by every new generation's attempts to deny immigrants the same opportunities granted their ancestors. As we have learned from the fiction of so many great American writers who emigrated to the United States in the twentieth century -- Yezierska, Cahan, Saroyan, Rølvaag, and di Donato, among them -- the success of immigrants is won in the face of overwhelming challenges and hardships. For them, the promise of the American Dream exists at the expense of their struggle, rather than as a safe harbor from it. Their triumph is an overcoming of adversity built into a system that actively denies them its loftiest ideals.
onerodeahorse's review against another edition
4.0
Published in the same year as The Grapes Of Wrath, Pietro Di Donato's first novel is in that same neglected vein of American working class literature: explicitly socialistic novels about the lives of the poor, the lives of the downtrodden. In this case, the story is largely autobiographical: the book is about Italian immigrant construction workers in New York. In the opening chapter, proud father of eight Geremio is crushed to death when a building collapses, forcing his eldest son, 12 year old Paul, to go to work himself to provide for the family. This basic setup is taken directly from the author's own life, as is the poverty depicted throughout. The book deals with the exploitation of immigrant labour, the bewildering legal systems that surround them, the joy and vitality of family life, and always, with hunger. Di Donato's writing, though, is rich, alive, elevated: at times it burns with religious fervour; at other times, it's so crowded with voices, and so thrumming with activity, that it reminded me of the clanging, pots-and-pans prose that you get in a book like Saul Bellow's The Adventures Of Augie March. Great book.
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