The call letters are written by people often unfamiliar with the pen. Their Italian suffers from dialect influences. Language reveals the most diverse feelings: nostalgia, fatigue, enthusiasm, disappointment… The messages are sometimes accompanied by drawings, photographs, leaflets, postcards of the New World, which serve to confirm the idol of “Merica”. The letters (from the Historical Archives of the Municipality of Genoa and the Ligurian Archives of Popular Writing) show these codified modes of relationship and, in addition to describing the place to which it is writed, give information and advice: they are the “rules” to which the emigrant must adhere in his journey. When, finally, you decide to adhere to the “call”, the journey begins with the search for documents, passport, visa, travel tickets. Only after you can pack your suitcase and – often on a wagon – reach the nearest railway that will take you to Genoa, where our steamer awaits us.
Read and hear from a true emigrant letters in the various regional dialects.