Refusing the Sentimental Italian Immigration Story in Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven

This article examines how Denise Giardina’s award-winning novel Storming Heaven offers a counterpoint to views of early twentieth-century Italian immigration to the US that rely on assimilationist conclusions. The story of Sicilian immigrant Rosa Angelelli is embedded within the fictional retelling of West Virginia labor history known as the Mine Wars. Giardina creates a female immigrant protagonist who makes plain the abuse and trauma Italian immigrant women and girls face. This point-of-view is normally obfuscated in favor of a male immigrant’s perspective, but Rosa’s story is neither ignored nor erased. As one of four protagonists in the novel, Rosa’s fractured remembrances are told through a halting discourse, revealing her isolation and the danger that awaits her no matter the choices she makes. Taking from Loretta Baldassar and Donna Gabaccia’s ideas on personal intimacy, Rosa’s struggles are not an exception, but an object lesson in how immigrant women and girls are often left with no means to develop community or intimacy, endangering their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.