SOURCE: Esposito, Michael D. “The Travail of Pietro di Donato.” MELUS 7, no. 2 (summer 1980): 47-60.

In the following essay, Esposito discusses the success of Christ in Concrete and how di Donato merits recognition as a pioneer among Italian American writers whose works stirred the American public to fully recognize the condition of the country's Italian immigrants.

As a twenty-six-year-old bricklayer living on relief in Northport, Long Island, in 1936, Pietro di Donato wrote a short story based on his father's death in a construction accident twelve years earlier. Entitled “Christ in Concrete,” the story appeared in Esquire in March 1937, and was such a success that the editors of the magazine issued it in the form of a small book for twenty-five cents, bound and printed in a distinguished format, in typeset from the original manuscript.

Publishers immediately besieged di Donato to turn his story into a book, so he authorized...