Post # 5 Archives interview

For this post, I am choosing the interview of Antony Avena with David Osborn.

This one seems to be easy to work on for me because of the length of the answers given by the interviewee to the questions. They are short, and that make the paper look "lite " or easy to read to me. I figured at the end though, that it wasn't an easy interview to figure out.

This is an interview of a Queens long time resident and businessman that took place on August 28th 1996. It looks like to me that the interviewer Mr David Osborn is trying to figure out how did Antony Avena and his family start their family business in Flushing, what was their life like as an immigrant working class during a specific time. At the end of the interview Anthony's answer to one the questions makes you think that it is about how he started to get in trouble in Flushing with the neighborhood boys.

His personality is very hard to determine because he doesn't give a direct answer to some of the questions . It looks like he still cherishes these memories from his youth and take great pride in what is today the result of his father's initiative; first to come to America and next the to buy this store in Flushing. He looks happy, and proud to share his story.

The historical context is around the early 1900, more specifically1910-1934. This period corresponds to the years of the Great depression, World War I, and the period preceding World War II I'll say.

From what I understood, Antony comes from a family that immigrated from Italy, and made it trough in America during a very difficult economic situation; his father became a "capitalist" in America as he said it(the famous "American dream"). They went from being poor to a working class family. His Dad experience unemployment once, yet he had to work very hard (7 days a week) at a another time to make it through. He had some serious concerns about the environment in which his children were growing into; his son(Anthony) , was already starting to get in trouble in their neighborhood; that's why he made his family move to Flushing.

I am not sure why at the end, Anthony got involved in a fight with a group of boys that asked him he was a "coward" if that's can be related to discrimination or not; maybe the boys figured from the way he was dressed that he was an immigrant ?