La Vedova Bianca

One day, a friend of mine and I were having a conversation and it randomly went toward our shared Italian heritage. We began to discuss our grandparents and how we wished we could have known them and we wondered what it might have been like in Italy during the times of immigration, her family came from Gubbio in the North, mine from Guardia dei Lombardi in the South.
As we were talking, she told me the story about a family mystery that shook her to the core.
She was always told that she was named for her grandmother, Emilia. Both Emilia and her husband died before my friend was born. As she dug deeper and deeper into her heritage, she wanted to learn more about her grandparents. She started by visiting Emilia's grave... or so she thought.
When my friend arrived at the cemetery, she saw her grandfather's name on the grave but, buried next to him was not a woman named Emilia but, rather, Rosa. My friend was confused, but she kept digging and discovered that Emilia was a "Vedova Bianca" or a "White Widow," meaning that her grandfather abandoned Emilia and their children in Italy to come to the United States. While he may have intended to send for them, he never did for whatever reason. He met Rosa and ended up with her, though they never formally married.
Emilia's story was not uncommon in Italy during the years of immigration, which saw many Italian men coming to the United States for work and creating new lives and even taking new wives, forgetting the one who was left behind. For a "vedova bianca," she was a social pariah-- people would talk and it was sometimes discovered that the husband, who seemingly disappeared, was actually alive. She wasn't entitled to the black that a widow wore because she was not widowed, but she was alone.
While researching the white widows, I found the following poem by Maria Zaffina, who is from Lamezia Terme, Catanzaro, Calabria. I translated it into English below the original Italian.

Le vedove bianche

Americhe: paradisi sognati

da chi ha poco o nulla

"Vado io a tentare la fortuna, tu resta con i  bambini!"

Varcato l'oceano

Dopo le prime lettere, 

addio famiglia!

E le vedove bianche non si contano.

Che fare?

Ci sono anche i vecchi da mantenere,

loro non hanno la pensione.

Si va alla giornata sotto padrone

o a lavare il bucato 

ai ricchi speculativi

e mai contenti.

Di lui intanto,

più nessuna notizia,

ma il panno rosso rimane,

solo per incutere rispetto.

The White Widows

America: The imagined paradise

Of the person who has little or nothing

"I am going to find my fortune, you stay with the children!"

Having crossed the ocean,

After the first letters,

Farewell family!

And the white widows don't count in this world.

What to do?

There are the also the elderly to take care of,

Who have no pension.

The widows work daily under a boss

or washing the clothes

of the rich people who are never contented.

Of him instead,

no more news,

only the red cloth remains,

to command respect.