Ines Cassettari (died 1943) was an Italian emigrant to America whose autobiography became famous.
She was born in 1866 or 1867 in Lombardy, Italy, and abandoned at birth, and lived in an orphanage and then a foster home.
She was
forced to marry an abusive man.
They immigrated to the United States, where she refused to run a
brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
for him and eventually left him.
She remarried and worked as a cleaning woman in the
Chicago Commons
Chicago Commons, known since 1954 as the Chicago Commons Association, is a social service organization and former settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Originally located on the near Northwest Side and now headquartered in ...
until she died.
Her name was changed to Rosa Cavalleri in ''Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant'', which was her autobiography as transcribed by
Marie Hall Ets
Marie Hall Ets (December 16, 1895 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – January 17, 1984 in Inverness, Florida) was an American people, American writer and illustrator who is best known for Children's literature, children's picture books. She attended ...
; it was published in 1970 and republished in 1999.
She had met Ets in the Chicago Commons.
''Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative'' by Fred L. Gardaphe calls her book "
e of the strongest Italian American immigrant narratives".
Further reading
"The Life of Rosa Cavalleri: An Application of Abramson's Model of Rootedness/ Rootlessness", by Vaneeta-Marie D' Andrea, is Chapter 10 of ''The Italian Americans Through the Generations: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the American Italian Historical Association, Held at
St. John's University St John's University may refer to:
*St. John's University (New York City)
**St. John's University School of Law
**St. John's University (Italy) - Overseas Campus
*College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, St. Joseph, Minnesota and Col ...
, New York, October 29–30, 1982, Volume 15'', by the American Italian Historical Association, Incorporated, 1986.
References
{{morecat, date=May 2021
1943 deaths
Italian emigrants to the United States