Olga R. Waters

Migrant Journey Olga R. Waters

THE "FRANCOAMERITALIAN" WAY... Discover Olga's story as a double migrant from her own eyes as a little girl. It portrays the uprooting and anchoring of one family's journey that is both unique and universal.




At the age of two, Olga's family leaves her native village in Southern Italy in the late 1950s. Their villages, similar to other impoverished places around the world, has become a reservoir of unskilled labor that fill the demands of countries thriving from the twentieth century global industrialization. In France, work is plentiful to extract coal, the country's main source of energy at the time. There, Olga's father takes on the hard and dangerous work in the pit of the earth alongside many other Italian, Polish and Moroccan migrants. Living in a coal mining community at the foot of her "black mountain," the little girl finds happiness and joy.




In 1966, life brings forth another uprooting to the USA. Now ten years old, leaving the warm familiarity of her "black mountain" community is very painful. After a difficult period of adjustment for the entire family, the young girl struggles to find her path in a life that is better - yet harder and complicated by major social and cultural transformations of the sixties. At the root of her emotional distress is...how to build her future without thwarting their family cohesion so preciously amassed...how to frame a path forward that embraces the changing times while integrating her own "francoameritalian" culture into another mix of cultures.




Decades later, Olga remains viscerally attached to her memories at the foot of her "black mountain" of hope because "we never forget the child we have been." The rich descriptions of her childhood journey reveal realities that will resonate with migrants to this day.