front cover of Another City upon a Hill
Another City upon a Hill
A New England Memoir
Joseph A. Conforti
Tagus Press, 2013
This gripping memoir is both a personal story and a portrait of a distinctive New England place—Fall River, Massachusetts, once the cotton cloth capital of America. Growing up, Joseph Conforti's world was defined by rolling hills, granite mills, and forests of triple-deckers. Conforti, whose mother was Portuguese and whose father was Italian, recounts how he negotiated those identities in a city where ethnic heritage mattered. Paralleling his own account, Conforti shares the story of his family, three generations of Portuguese and Italians who made their way in this once-mighty textile city.
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front cover of In Pursuit of Their Dreams
In Pursuit of Their Dreams
A History of Azorean Immigration to the United States
Jerry R. Williams
Tagus Press, 2007
Jerry Williams' history of Azorean immigration to the United States offers us valuable insight into the experience and culture of Portuguese immigrants and their descendents. This account fills a major gap in American immigration history and gives us a comprehensive overview of how Portuguese-Americans—now numbering close to a million people—have come to constitute a vibrant and highly visible presence within southeastern New England, the areas around San Francisco and San Diego, Hawaii, and the New Jersey/New York metropolitan area. Even though Azorean immigrants all came from similar cultural and social backgrounds, Williams shows how regionally specific opportunity structures and social hierarchies have contributed to significant differences within the Portuguese-American experience.

Starting with the whaling routes that first connected the mid-Atlantic archipelago with the ports of call in New England and California in the early 1800s, Williams lays out the complex relationship between the Azores and the US that has continued into the present. We learn how particular patterns of poverty, overpopulation and social inequality in the Azores pushed large numbers of the islands' inhabitants to leave their homes in search of better opportunities for themselves and their children. He tells the story of how the early whalers who jumped ship in New Bedford, San Francisco, or Hawaii were followed by kin and fellow villagers who had heard of plentiful jobs in New England's textile mills, gold and land in California, or agricultural work on Hawaiian plantations. Williams' account allows us to understand the importance of family and community connections throughout the immigrants' arduous transition from peasant life to industrial society.
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front cover of News on the American Dream
News on the American Dream
A History of the Portuguese Press in the United States
Alberto Pena Rodríguez, Translated by Serena J. Rivera
Tagus Press, 2020
News on the American Dream traces the development of the Portuguese­-American press from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present, taking readers from the East Coast to Hawaii, with strategic stops in places with large Portuguese communities, including New Bedford, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; and Newark, New Jersey. Alberto Pena Rodríguez's nuanced analysis of the political, economic, social, and cultural roles played by these publications proves how important they were for the Portuguese­American community and the history of the ethnic press in the United States. Fascinating narratives about the founders, editors, and owners of these publications—and their challenges, squabbles, and successes—round out this engaging study.
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front cover of The Poems of Renata Ferreira
The Poems of Renata Ferreira
Frank X. Gaspar
Tagus Press, 2020
Renata Ferreira's poems were composed in the final years of Portugal's fascist regime, exposing and subverting the government's draconian edicts against women's rights, sexual freedoms, political dissent, and progressive thought. While she worked in the resistance as a clandestine writer, passing hand-typed bulletins and banned literature throughout Lisbon, her poetry is unmistakably ardent, tender, fraught, erotic, and Sapphic. Presenting the poems of this Portuguese-­American writer and detailing their surprising rediscovery in 2015, Frank X. Gaspar fuses genres, flouts borders, and brings to life a voice that had been silenced by history and happenstance. As his inventive narrative unfolds, Ferreira emerges, whole and mysterious, offering up her history, her passions, and her art.
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