* Please click on the ‘Supporting Material’ link on left column to access images*

Rituals of Charity and Abundance: Sicilian St. Joseph’s Tables and Feeding
the Poor in Los Angeles1

Luisa Del Giudice
In memory of Virginia Buscemi Carlson
(Villafranca Sicula, July 9, 1935 – Downey, Calif., Jan. 28, 2007)

1. Introduction

This essay explores the mid-Lenten Tavola di San Giuseppe (St. Joseph’s Table) in Los Angeles,
situates this tradition within its historical and geographic cultural contexts, and seeks to interpret
its various meanings. The custom of preparing food altars or tables in honor of St. Joseph is an
expression of Southern Italian (conspicuously Sicilian) folk religion with various elements at its
core. On the one hand, it represents a propitiatory sharing of abundance and the cultural
exorcism of hunger. On the other — within its Italian Christian matrix — it is an affirmation of
the patriarchal family, as well as an intertwining practice of hospitality and caritas. Finally, in its

1 These conjoined phenomena have been researched and reported in various formats and settings: “St. Joseph’s
Tables and Feeding the Poor in Los Angeles” (American Folklore Society annual meeting in Lafayette, Louisiana,
Oct. 1995; Culinary Historians of Southern California, Los Angeles Public Library, Mar. 13, 2004; All Saints
Church, Pasadena, Women’s Council, Mar. 5, 2005; Academy of Sciences, Lubljana, Slovenia, April, 2004);
“Joseph Among the Angels: St. Joseph’s Tables and “Feeding the Poor in Los Angeles” (Dept. of Cultural Affairs,
Living Roots ‘97 Conference, Los Angeles, April 12, 1997); “Italian Folklife in California: Continuity of Tradition”
(Conference on Italian Migration in the United States, Los Angeles, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Feb. 7, 1998);
“Food and Ritual Performance: St. Joseph’s Day Tables and Feeding the Poor in Los Angeles” (annual meeting of
the American Italian Historical Association, San Francisco, Nov. 11-13, 1999); “The Invisible Made Visible: St.
Joseph’s Day Tables and Applied Oral History in Los Angeles” (International Oral History Association meeting,
Istanbul, June, 2000); “Food and Ritual Performance in the Sicilian American St. Joseph's Feast” (Symposium on
Women and Food, Women's Studies, The Huntington Library, Nov. 23, 2002); “The Invisible Made Visible: Food
and Ritual Performance in the Sicilian St. Joseph's Day Feast” (Series on Art and Ritual, UCLA Dept. of Art, Mar.
3, 2005). This paper will soon be published in a collection of my own food and wine writings entitled: In Search of
Abundance: Mountains of Cheese, Rivers of Wine and other Italian Gastronomic Utopias, "Sicilian St. Joseph's
Tables and Feeding the Poor: Ritual Food Practices and Social Advocacy" (Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, Feb. 23, 2010).

      I wish to thank for their assistance in documenting tables over the years: Virginia Buscemi Carlson, Kenneth
Carlson, Doug De Luca, Jennifer Pendergrass, Kenneth Scambray, Raymond Skelton, Steve Weimeyer, Erica
Turley; to all those who have participated by being interviewed for this study (too many to mention), opening their
parishes, their homes, and their hearts. I especially thank those who helped make the UCLA Armand Hammer
Museum, “St. Joseph’s Table and Feeding the Poor” exhibition possible, to my co-curator and friend (to whom this
study is dedicated and who is no more), Virginia Buscemi Carlson, as well as to: Carmen Alongi, Matteo Alongi,
Robert Barbera, Maria Battaglia, Charlie Campo, and Kenneth Carlson, Vita Circo, Gaetano D’Aquino, Celestino
Drago, the Federico Bakery, Stefano Finazzo, Maribel Gonzalez, Lucy Guastella, Concetta and Antonio Pellegrino,
Sam Perricone, Carlo Piumetti, Mimmi Pizzati, Joseph També, Edward F. Tuttle, Elena Tuttle. The table was
blessed by the Rev’d Father Vincenzo Buccheri while the chants were offered by members of the St. Joseph Society
of Mary Star of the Sea Church, San Pedro.

      I also thank colleagues and friends who have read and commented on earlier versions of this essay: Elizabeth
Bisbee Goldfarb, Edward F. Tuttle, Dorothy Noyes, Joseph També, Charlene Villaseñor Black and the journal’s
reviewers.

                                                                                                                    1