Submitted by Erasmo Russo
Since the 1970s “Italian-Americans” [1] have begun to seriously assess firstly, whether there is a pan-Italian-American identity or in the least, a few large categories of Italian American identities. Interestingly, the question of such an identity, or identifiable manifestations of such identity through literature and the arts, was largely a niche area of scholarship in Italy at first and was largely ignored by Americans and Italians residing in the United States. After 1970 this trend has largely reversed, with interest arguably waning in Italy and growing in the United States. Much of this history has to do with local politics and geopolitics. For many years after the Piedmont-led unification of Italy, various Italian regimes largely ignored Italians abroad and initially viewed emigration as either a safety valve to eliminate undesirable segments of society or as a problem of rising internal labor costs due to depopulation of the active workforce. These postures were later suspended when governments such as the Fascists began to look to Italians abroad as a source of revenue and new knowledge and skills and indeed encouraged Italians to learn foreign languages, move abroad, and send money home. After the Second World War, this became an open secret—whereby various politicians lauded the economic boom of the new Italy while downplaying the direct repatriation and reinvestment of money earned abroad by millions of emigrants.
The elusiveness of an “Italian” identity in the United States is clearly due to the large regional differences and social class differences among Italians and US-born Italians, who largely clustered among their own kin, compatriots, and social classes, often the most educated and wealthy interacting and living among other European expats and similarly situated Americans. In places like New York, it is interesting to note that even after the establishment of ethnic parishes and Catholic schools and indeed the Scuola d’Italia in later times, many Italians preferred to have their children attend other prestigious American schools so as to learn English and foreign culture, the assumption being that they would learn Italian and their native culture at home and during return trips to Italy. The diversity and complexity of Italians living in the United States, as pointed out by Dana Gioia, has often led to difficulty in identifying a cannon of Italian American literature or poetry, despite some common tropes or themes such as the trauma of emigration and otherness, poverty, and the triumphs and sorrows of family life. [2]
In the large urban areas of the United States, many Italians and US-born Italians easily identified the various types of “Italians” residing in their newly adopted country. In New York there were “downtown Italians” clustered in lower Manhattan, mostly laboring or working-class immigrants, “Fifth Avenue Italians” who lived uptown and who were educated professionals working in banking or fashion sectors, “Toscanini and Caruso Italians” active in the arts and who perhaps had the most visibility and interaction with Anglo-Americans. There quickly developed “Belmont” or “Bronx Italians,” “Long Island Italians” and “Westchester Italians,” these designations alluding to middle-class and upwardly mobile Italians. There are clearly identifiable expats, those who could easily have lived well in Italy but who chose to live abroad for work or pleasure. There are the “fallen” (decaduti), the Italians who once were socially and economically prominent but who now occupy a lower social class in the United States because they must work outside their profession or calling, or because they no longer have their ancestral possessions. One of the paradoxes of America’s love-hate relationship with Italians and Italian culture (broadly defined) is that historically the lower classes in the US viewed Italians with racist suspicion and scorn, possibly where they competed for work and housing, while the educated and wealthy, who had direct knowledge and interaction with Italian culture and indeed the country of Italy itself, exhibited a greater aperture or embracing of Italians and Italian culture. This paradoxical relationship is perhaps not so paradoxical: the most humble and marginalized Italians were derided and excluded, while the most prominent and successful were tentatively welcomed. At the very same time that the rural Italian laborer was being marginalized, Americans were attending Italian opera, studying Dante, and purchasing Italian fashion and jewelry. Sadly, this paradox continues in the popular imagination beyond the year 2000. This odd chasm ebbed and flowed with increased action by the Italian government through the Italian Trade Commission and cultural institutes to help market Italian products abroad together with greater private investment and more sophisticated global campaigns.
Interwoven with region, city, or town of origin, and new residence in the United States, are the modes of life of the Italians. Some individuals and families decided to adopt the assimilationist model and actively seek a place in the broader “Anglosphere,” while others maintained their language and cultural ways rigorously even after two or three generations. Some of these differences have to do not only with personal choice but were dictated by the politics and culture of the time and place of their immigration. The great migration of 1880 to 1930 occurred at the height of discrimination and marginalization of foreigners and led to a clearly identifiable assimilated identity for families who arrived during those years. Italians who arrived after 1960 were largely able to enjoy a bilingual/bicultural way of life as many places in the United States no longer enforced assimilation policies through social pressure, the public schools, and active social workers who sought to make immigrants “American.” Italy became chic again and shed its enemy status after WWII. At this late date, many Italian communities still refer to themselves by their ancestral region of origin, then their current residence and some refer to the assimilated or third or fourth generation as “Americans.” Since the 1990s and early 2000s, a new energetic wave of Italian emigrants has joined the mix. Largely young, unmarried, well-educated, and entrepreneurial, and present in almost every major American city, it will be interesting to observe the mode of life that this group adopts. It is already visibly maintaining strong solidarity and ties to Italy. This group is highly bilingual and does not live in ethnic clusters but lives often among other immigrants and US-born people, with whom it interacts. [3] The less assimilationist posture of the United States is also an important factor to consider and allows for greater reinforcement of native culture.
Returning to the notion of “Italian American” literature and poetry, one may see the layers of this diverse community and the generational differences. Beyond the early Italian poetry and journalism, written by emigrants, [4] and the second-generation literature written largely in English by the children of emigrants, there came a postwar generation of Italian expats. Intellectuals and scholars, who moved for personal as well as political and cultural reasons, continue to create Italian language literature in the United States of the same scope and quality as is produced in Italy itself. For better or for worse, this interesting expat literature does not seem to attract much interest in the Italian American community and marginally does in Italy.
So then, how to identify or express an identity in the United States? The natural, organic course of the emigrant writers, or the formalized/school of thought literature of the expats?
The overlay of specific regional identity, social class (in Italy prior to moving to the United States) and education/enculturation must be analyzed. In this century the notion of reuniting or “bridging the gap” between Italian Americans and Italians is beginning to be explored in more nuanced ways. From an Italian perspective, the Italian Americans generally lack enculturation into Italian ways and also lack a knowledge of the Italian canon. The Italian canon includes not just a working knowledge of proper Italian history, Dante, Manzoni, Virgil, Caesar, etc., but also the European canon which is taught in Italian schools as well, and which includes all the European greats, particularly French and German thinkers. This is logical because Italian Americans in the main are educated in the Anglo-American canon in American schools. This situation leads to a broad spectrum of education and enculturation depending upon any given family’s ability and willingness to enculturate its young into the language and traditional canon, which must perforce take place at home or private school. Language is essential. No ethnic enclave in a country like the United States with its historically ruthless assimilation policies can survive without the maintenance of its language first and foremost. Otherwise, access to the native ancestral canon is cut off and often filtered by the Anglosphere scholarship’s views on it. On a popular culture level, the simple things of daily life form another important shared canon. If one is not raised in Italy or does not spend time living in Italy, one does not know the popular culture references that come via commercials, television and radio programs, the news media, or even the realities of material conditions. Most Americans (and Italian Americans) of the last 50 years will not know what a schedina, gettone, bomboletta di gas, or fornacella are. They don’t know what bread and pizza smell like while baking. They don’t know what Italian soap smells like. They have never lived in a house that is beyond 300 years old or had a Cinquecento as a first car or had to take an oral exam at school. They certainly can not name the Billboard top ten singers or the top ten best-selling authors either. In many cases, the Italian Americans are in a time warp, more knowledgeable about the popular culture of the decades their parents or grandparents emigrated. This lack of knowledge is often cited by Italians, along with perhaps the one thing that infuriates Italians the most—the perceived “lecturing” by outsiders. This is particularly acute in the case of Italian Americans who tell Italians that would do well to adopt American ways of doing things, particularly in business or organization.
Whilst Italians often know more about the United States and its popular culture because of American global hegemony, they often fall into the trap of stereotypes from the media and the arts. This often leads to a misapprehension or misunderstanding of Italian American realities. Italians also are not actively taught about the history and situations of the emigrant diaspora in a formal way, and socially many prefer not to discuss it or ponder it too deeply, as it is often a symbol of shame and failure to modern Italians to admit that family members had to leave to survive (or that they accepted rimesse from them). Conversely, the Italian American narrative largely centers around an American-style narrative of celebrating the rebellious, bold visionary emigrant who achieved “success” and prominence in the new host country, essentially the emigrant is a hero and source of pride. Sometimes these notions are expressed in comedic ways, with Italian Americans focusing on abundant displays of hospitality through food and gift-giving. Italians often focus on “less is more” but rather focus on fashionability and long-term quality, and often adopt global middle-class and local aristocratic styles of cuisine, which their own direct ancestors most certainly did not practice, including the multicourse meals and the avoidance of garlic as a condiment. The ironies of history are that Italian Americans who serve polpette on the same plate as pasta is actually continuing regional ways of eating which many contemporary Italians have abandoned post World War II due to efforts to show wealth and sophistication, and then in turn deride the diaspora communities for not being “authentic.” This gatekeeping notion of bastardization and of being watered down creates significant tension. Italians also generally lack a deep understanding of American history and society. For example, the association of language and ethnicity with social class and social role. For many years emigrant groups were associated with cheap labor and a lack of education or respectability. The Italian language went from being a prestige language of poetry and opera in the 18th and 19th centuries to one associated with people of lower status, while French and German remained prestige languages of learning and knowledge in the United States. Now Italian after a long journey has regained its status as a prestige language in many quarters [5] and is not associated with poverty and desperation. Similarly, today in the United States Spanish is not associated with the greatness of the Spanish Empire or Cervantes, but instead with lower-status poor immigrants and even criminality. This sloppy association of stereotypes has greatly impacted diaspora communities in the United States and is the chief cause of socially advancing individuals to adopt English and Anglosphere culture as a prestige language and demarcation, as well as a practical means toward economic and social success.
Italians are latecomers to the diaspora and are still navigating it. Like many European peoples, they were blessed with relatively long periods of settlement in their lands with the natural attendant bonds to their lands that come with those stable conditions. Despite political changes and warfare, the majority of the population has never been forcibly displaced, to the point that many families not only remained in their towns and cities but in the very same family houses of their ancestors. This has become both a blessing and a curse over the last 150 years as emigration has split families and disrupted continuity. When culture and civilization are displaced from their geographic location and the material culture of their origin, they must adapt and maintain themselves through ritual, ceremony, foodways, folkways, and language. The examples of many Greeks, Armenians, Chinese, and Jews who have been in long and vast diasporas offer examples of how to codify core practices and maintain identity. The ability to enshrine identity in the family and community while surrounded by a host nation with its own language and culture is fundamental and succeeds best when a canon of literature, song, theater, and religious calendar and liturgy are strong, with as much as possible taking place in one’s own house. Moderns often think that the so-called “progressive” ways of today allow for identity to thrive, yet ironically the decentralized states and empires of the past allowed for a greater space of expression because no totalitarian, ideological, or assimilationist states and global monoculture demanded excessive conformity. For example, the Greek, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Orthodox Christian, and Waldensian Christians were able to maintain their languages and faiths for centuries in the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, not merely because of a lack of television and internet, but because political loyalty did not demand identity change. By contrast, within two to three generations in countries like the United States, individuals are subjected to an immense loss of language and culture.
At this late date in history, a “third way” has emerged to tackle gatekeeping practices. The notion of a third thing, not American and not Italian, but “Italian American” may indeed exist and be allowed to exist and evolve. But this returns us to the challenging issues discussed at the beginning—how to discuss and define this vast amorphous third thing? How to identify its canon or create one? Would that even be desirable? More is possible in the age of global professionals and digital nomads. Over the last hundred years, the dichotomy for most was either be American or be Italian. Those were the two prestige poles one could move towards. The Italian American identity and canon are difficult precisely because two languages and two canons are to be fused into a third, often in an organic seemingly random fashion, as typified by codeswitching between languages in one sentence. This functions on an informal level but on a vaster formal level may be trickier. To parrot Galileo, eppur esiste… The diaspora Italians in the digital age want to find their place and no longer be “orphans.” Not being the product of a colonial project or a proper empire that was capable of transmitting the metropole’s culture, they have been cut off from the Patria in many ways, forcibly assimilated, and often welcomed back and spurned on and off over the decades. The often appalling lack of support for the diaspora communities by the Italian government has led to this orphanization. [6] Another significant fault line runs between the Italian American intellectuals who are greatly divided into ideological camps and who are at work creating diverse “canons” of what they think Italian Americans are, while even further afield are the expat Italian intellectuals who very cautiously engage the Italian American intellectuals, if at all. One wonders if our beloved popolino even knows who these latter two groups are, as they go about their busy lives abroad. In an age of labels and identities, perhaps it is best to just allow all three to simply be and allow each individual on the spectrum to find his or her tribe under the greater Italic umbrella. A great sign of hope is the fact that millions of children of the diaspora are reacquiring their Italian citizenship and moving to Italy, not just in a nostalgia-infused old-age retirement, but while young and working and building businesses. May God bless these young people and allow them to offer a natural solution to Italy’s declining repopulation rate.
Notes:
[1] For purposes of this discussion, I will refer to Italians and to US-born Italians to refer to members of the ethnos who identify as “Italian” or “Neapolitan” or “Sicilian” etc, i.e. not merely descendants of people from the ethnos, but rather those who live and practice their culture and voluntarily self-identify as such. To this end, I make no reference to any sociological or anthropological frameworks or scholarship.
[2] Dana Gioia, What Is Italian American Poetry?, published in Beyond the Godfather: Italian American Writers on the Real Italian American Experience (University Press of New England 1997)
[3] New research will no doubt look into the role that Italian businesses, institutions, and social media play in creating hubs where Italians and Italian Americans meet and interact so that they no longer must physically live in a self-contained enclave. Bilingualism and greater wealth also probably enable this and this trend is seen in other ethnic communities.
[4] Amply documented and studied by Francesco Durante and his successors.
[5] Italian enjoys popularity in South America and many European countries. In Germany, Italian has become a prestige language to study by the élite because of its status in culture and because English and French are now considered common, as they are taught in every public school, and even lower-status individuals in Europe can have free access to them.
[6] In addition to famously poor consular services, this year’s 28 March emergency decree, not yet adopted or codified, and subject to proposed modifications by Parliament, in any event, indicates a worldview and policy decision to limit and circumscribe jus sanguinis citizenship to only two generations back and to encourage active participation in Italy through residency, voting, and paying taxes in Italy, or risk revocation of dual citizenship for those holding a second citizenship. Whilst this seems reasonable, the public debate on the need to limit citizenship has cited instances of corruption, false documentation, a drain on the court system, and public resources by non-residents seeking social and healthcare benefits. Conspicuously absent were discussions about encouraging repatriation of people and funds and reinvestment by diaspora Italians and the benefit to Italy they would offer. Fortunately, many diaspora Italians do return despite various obstacles.