The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Comforts of Home: Willow Glen resident Edith Mattos Walter, whose parents came from Portugal, says she doubts the average person today would be able to survive the early immigrant experience.

New book about Portuguese women helps to bridge the generation gaps

Glenite recalls how immigrants made their way in local circles

By Shelley P. Ash

No television, inside toilets or electric razors. No disposable diapers, dishwashers or microwave ovens. No linoleum floors, paved roads or car for every adult in the household.

Take a moment to ponder this existence. Then add to the picture raising a family and maintaining a household while living thousands of miles from your family, knowing only a few words of English, working on a farm from sunrise to sunset, and having to walk (no matter the weather) several miles to and from town.

Unless you're a first-generation immigrant to America at the turn of the century (or the son or daughter thereof), it's difficult to imagine this existence. But a new book, Stories Grandma Never Told: Portuguese Women in California (Heydey Books, $17.50) by Sue Fagalde Lick, a contributor to The Resident, hopes to bridge this information gap.

Written in a conversational tone much like that of a newspaper feature article, the book is a compilation of stories from about 50 women, with anecdotes sprinkled in from at least a dozen more. With honesty, compassion and humor, we hear from the first generation--women born in Portugal--through the fourth generation, the great-granddaughters of immigrants. Lick shares her personal perspectives and Portuguese ancestry as well as research from her first book, The Iberian Americans (Chelsea House, 1990).

Covering topics such as the Portuguese work ethic, male dominance, the Catholic faith, cultural traditions and Portuguese pride, Stories Grandma Never Told educates the younger generations and provides a forum for elders to share their histories. While there are other books that depict early Portuguese life in America, this volume is written by a Portuguese woman about Portuguese women's experiences--with a focus on California. According to several of the book's interviewees, it's a resource whose time has finally come.

"The book was nicely done and very readable," says Willow Glen resident Edith Mattos Walter, 73, whose father came to America from Pico in 1905 (her mother had Azorean roots). "The book will help my grandchildren understand the hardships and struggles women went through at that time. Children today cannot conceive what life was like back then. I believe there should be a copy of this book in every school and history lessons presented from it.

"Immigrants, many of them stowaways, were fed very little on the boat coming over, left all of their family behind, had no knowledge of the English language and faced a life of hard work on the farm," explains Walter, a docent at the San Jose Historical Society's Portuguese museum in Kelley Park. "I don't think people today could survive given the same circumstances," she says, referring to our present-day reliance on gas-powered equipment, cell phones and personal computers.

Walter believes the book has fulfilled a need to explain Portuguese women's stories: how they came, how they survived and what they endured. They not only ran the household, raised children and worked on the farm, Walter explains, but many of them forged new identities for themselves by becoming leaders in the church or running small businesses. Doing so also helped them learn English better and faster, she says.

Life for Portuguese immigrants was extremely difficult, as it was for all immigrants--the Germans, the Chinese, the Italians, the Jews. Hard work was a staple of survival. But according to Jane Rose, a second-generation daughter whose father came from Lisbon (her mother's parents emigrated from Faial), the Portuguese are a humble people, so they blended in. This is perhaps why they don't have an overt identity in the community today. There is only one Portuguese restaurant in the Santa Clara Valley, and the Little Portugal neighborhood in San Jose is not well known among non-Portuguese.

"This was a profound era of living," recalls Rose, 60, who lives on the Willow Glen/Cambrian border. "These Portuguese women brought the Old World to a new country. And these stories need to be told."

The book, which is being shared and read among the many generations, has sparked an interest in some grandchildren to research their genealogy. Lick hopes that her new book will serve as a stepping stone.

"Stories Grandma Never Told" is available at Willow Glen Books, the Portuguese museum at Kelley Park and the Padaria Popular bakery in San Jose. The book can also be ordered through Borders Books, Barnes & Noble and the publisher, Heydey Books in Berkeley, 510/549-3564.

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