West Warwick
By Stephen Smith, August 2021
Both of my parents grew up in West Warwick, Rhode Island. A New England mill town. There are so many New England mill towns. In this particular one, there were ample, even majority, populations of immigrants. Groups that, even a generation in, tended to keep to themselves. There were Irish parishes, French-Canadian parishes, Portuguese parishes. And I mean “parish” in a literal, religious way. These were all Catholics, each group with its own churches, separated by nationality and language, even in a town of only a few thousand.
My mom was one of the Irish. My dad, French-Canadian. And don’t picture this as terribly assimilated, in the ’40s and ’50s. The French-Canadians at the time still hadn’t really melted in the nation’s pot. My dad was born in Rhode Island, but French was maybe spoken more than English at home, and about evenly with English at school – Catholic school, of course, taught part of the day in each language.
This is not the picture of America you see in the movies set in the ’40s and ’50s. This is not “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It’s an America of self-segregated groups, of parts of town (my dad was from Arctic, pronounced “aht-ic”) occupied separately by separate groups. Race wasn’t an issue – these were all white people, of various shades – but keeping to your people was largely the norm. Of course, it wasn’t rigorous. After all, my parents found each other – though it happened in the big city, Providence, rather than in West Warwick. These were first, second, and third-generation immigrants coming to terms with their new home, and slowly becoming part of a larger group with the other people around them. But it did seem to happen slowly. I remember people of my paternal grandparents’ generation seeming more comfortable in French and speaking it with each other. But they spoke perfectly good (or close) English, too. I understood them growing up in the ’70s.
Way before Stephen’s time.
I’ve asked my dad about the language situation because I see parallels to my current neighborhood in San Francisco. First, second, and third generations of Latinx immigrants. Like the multiple generations living in the house next to me, with the grandparents speaking almost exclusively Spanish, the subsequent generations speaking Spanish with them, but English on the street with their friends. He said that sounded about right and bemoaned that he doesn’t have the facility with French he used to have when it was the language of the house.
It makes me wonder what West Warwick is like today – I haven’t been back in years. My grandparents’ generation is gone, so maybe there’s no reason for anyone to speak French anymore. I doubt the same will happen here in San Francisco since immigration is ongoing. Back in Rhode Island, it was something that happened during one brief period. There was a progression from the language of the old country to the language of the new. Here, there are always new arrivals, needing resources, needing assistance, voiced in the language they’ve arrived with. I suspect the Spanish of the Mission will be more permanent than the faded French of West Warwick.
Stephen Smith leads the San Francisco band, The Morning Line, and teaches at Santa Clara University.
I want to hear from you. Submit post ideas to me via email. Stories about your family’s journey to becoming American are needed now more than ever. How do you feel about your roots? How does your family paw through its myths? My hope for this blog series is that many verses, many voices, and many insights and personal experiences will be explored here. Let’s talk about food, music, culture, invasive species, and even family trees if you can make that interesting in 500 -1000 words.
