Since she was little, high schooler Giuliana Forte has attended Nonantum’s annual Festa Italiana, often sitting beside her father in the car he drove to carry the bell rung in the festival’s processions; she eventually assumed the responsibility of pulling the bell’s rope. Yet the personal importance of Festa lies in “spending the day down the Lake with my family and just enjoying everything the day has to offer,” Forte said.
That familial significance underpinning Festa’s meaning also influenced Forte’s decision to join the St. Mary of Carmen Women’s Society, which was re-established in 2023 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. (See Fig City News article.)
As soon as Forte learned about the revived Women’s Society, she said she was incredibly eager to join, especially because her great-grandmother, Incoronata Bibbo Forte, had been a member of the original society in 1937.
Forte’s other family members — her great-uncle and father — have been members of the Men’s Society, creating a tradition she said she wanted to continue as the fourth generation. Yet, her great-grandmother’s membership in the previous Women’s Society motivated her the most.
“Although I never got to meet her, I feel like I’m making her proud, living her legacy,” said Forte.
Forte joined the Women’s Society as a junior member, a membership reserved for female Italians residing in or around Newton between the ages of 11 and 17. Junior members help host various events, organize fundraisers, and hold the banner used in the procession during Festa. The biggest takeaway from being a junior member is the “privilege of learning from the regular and older members,” she said.
Forte said intergenerational communication lies at the heart of the Women’s Society. It enables Forte and other fourth-generation Italian Americans to embrace their Italian heritage, keeping the traditions and memories of their ancestors alive.
She said her great-grandparents, who immigrated to Nonantum, “went through these challenges, but they formed a community and a society where they could lean on each other and go to each other for help.”
St. Mary of Carmen Women’s Society, Forte said, is an opportunity to commemorate her great-grandparents’ legacies, alongside the community they helped nurture. It is a chance to preserve the Italian-American community’s familial feel, even if Nonantum or Newton residents do not share the same Italian background as the Society’s members.
“It’s a family. It’s my second family,” said Forte.
Grace Yang is a Fig City News intern and a rising sophomore at Newton South High School.
