Thus began the slow process of the Americanization (hand-in-hand with the de-Catholicization) of the little girl.įrom the beginning Bella loved school she had a quick mind and soon was proficient enough in her new language that she became a class leader. It was her sister Caterina, Americanized to “Katie,” who dubbed the child “Bella” because she disliked her first names. Little Maria Assunta was almost six years old when she met her father and sister and brothers for the first time she spoke no English and missed her foster parents terribly. Teresa had planned to return for her daughter within a year, but, because economic depression in America made it difficult to raise money for the journey, that time stretched into more than five years. Teresa returned to New York soon after, leaving the baby in the care of foster parents, Taddeo and “Mamarella,” simple country folk who loved her as their own. Under these unusual circumstances, little Maria Assunta Isabella entered the world.
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Problems with the caretakers of her farm took her back to Italy it was only on the voyage there that Teresa realized that she was soon to be a mother for the tenth time.īecause her business in Potenza took longer than expected, her new little daughter was born on Italian soil. This she did, and Teresa and Rocco were married in the church of Saint Lucy in East Harlem in 1904. Eventually she agreed to allow Rocco to take her older children with him to New York, establish a home, and she would follow soon with the younger ones.
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Rocco wanted to marry and move to America, but Teresa loved her farm and was reluctant to leave the land. She was a young widow and mother of nine children when she met Rocco, from Lugano, who fell in love with her. Maria Assunta’s mother, Teresa, lived in Potenza on a farm that had been in her family for generations. How was it that a little Catholic girl – born in Italy – became one of the most powerful figures of the American Communist Party at the height of its power during the late 1930’s and 1940’s? The story of Maria Assunta Isabella Visono’s journey from a poor southern Italian village to the intrigues of Soviet Communist penetration of America is fascinating and frightening.