America in Italy examines the influence of the American political experience on the imagination of Italian political thinkers between the late eighteenth century and the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Axel Körner shows how Italian political thought was shaped by debates about the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, but he focuses on the important distinction that while European interest in developments across the Atlantic was keen, this attention was not blind admiration. Rather, America became a sounding board for the critical assessment of societal changes at home. Many Italians did not think the United States had lessons to teach them and often concluded that life across the Atlantic was not just different but in many respects also objectionable. In America, utopia and dystopia seemed to live side by side, and Italian references to the United States were frequently in support of progressive or reactionary causes. Political thinkers including Cesare Balbo, Carlo Cattaneo, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Antonio Rosmini used the United States to shed light on the course of their nation's political resurgence. Concepts from Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Vico served to evaluate what Italians discovered about America. Ideas about American "domestic manners" were reflected and conveyed through works of ballet, literature, opera, and satire. Transcending boundaries between intellectual and cultural history, America in Italy is the first book-length examination of the influence of America's political formation on modern Italian political thought.
This collection takes a cross-disciplinary, transnational approach and gathers together essays from a range of subjects including linguistics, film studies, folk music, oral and written narrative, and history, which provide new comparative perspectives on the questions surrounding the mutual influence between Italian and U.S. cultures. The volume also showcases new research - quantitative, interpretative, and archival - which contributes to the study of cultural contact. It therefore offers new evidence to answer a question which has long been pivotal in various disciplines and research fields (from historical linguistics to cultural anthropology) - namely, how and to what extent cultural contact can affect long-term historical change?
This richly researched, beautifully illustrated volume illuminates an important, overlooked part of American history. From extensive archival materials and interviews with well-known Italian Americans, Maria Laurino strips away stereotypes and nostalgia to tell the complicated, centuries-long story of the true Italian-American experience. Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and stereotypes fostered by The Godfather and The Sopranos, Laurino reveals surprising, fascinating lives: Italian-Americans working on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana to those who were lynched in New Orleans; the banker who helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake; families interned as “enemy aliens” in World War II. From anarchist radicals to “Rosie the Riveter” to Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, and Bill de Blasio; from traditional artisans to rebel songsters like Frank Sinatra, Dion, Madonna, and Lady Gaga, this book is both exploration and celebration of the rich legacy of Italian-American life. Readers can discover the history chronologically, chapter by chapter, or serendipitously by exploring the trove of supplemental materials. These include interviews, newspaper clippings, period documents, and photographs that bring the history to life.
From one of America's most beloved chefs and authors, a road trip into the heart of Italian American cooking today—from Chicago deep-dish pizza to the Bronx's eggplant parm—celebrating the communities that redefined what we know as Italian food. As she explores this utterly delectable and distinctive cuisine, Lidia shows us that every kitchen is different, every Italian community distinct, and little clues are buried in each dish: the Sicilian-style semolina bread and briny olives in New Orleans Muffuletta Sandwiches, the Neapolitan crust of New York pizza, and mushrooms (abundant in the United States, but scarce in Italy) stuffed with breadcrumbs, just as peppers or tomatoes are. Lidia shows us how this cuisine is an original American creation and gives recognition where it is long overdue to the many industrious Italians across the country who have honored the traditions of their homeland in a delicious new style. And of course, there are Lidia’s irresistible recipes, including · Baltimore Crab Cakes · Pittsburgh’s Primanti’s Sandwiches · Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza · Eggplant Parmigiana from the Bronx · Gloucester Baked Halibut · Chicken Trombino from Philadelphia · authentic Italian American Meatloaf, and Spaghetti and Meatballs · Prickly Pear Granita from California · and, of course, a handful of cheesecakes and cookies that you’d recognize in any classic Italian bakery This is a loving exploration of a fascinating cuisine—as only Lidia could give us.
The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.
In the United States, African American and Italian cultures have been intertwined for more than a hundred years. From as early as nineteenth-century African American opera star Thomas Bowers—“The Colored Mario”—all the way to hip-hop entrepreneur Puff Daddy dubbing himself “the Black Sinatra,” the affinity between black and Italian cultures runs deep and wide. Once you start looking, you’ll find these connections everywhere. Sinatra croons bel canto over the limousine swing of the Count Basie band. Snoop Dogg deftly tosses off the line “I’m Lucky Luciano ’bout to sing soprano.” Like the Brooklyn pizzeria and candy store in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, or the basketball sidelines where Italian American coaches Rick Pitino and John Calipari mix it up with their African American players, black/Italian connections are a thing to behold—and to investigate. In Flavor and Soul, John Gennari spotlights this affinity, calling it “the edge”—now smooth, sometimes serrated—between Italian American and African American culture. He argues that the edge is a space of mutual emulation and suspicion, a joyous cultural meeting sometimes darkened by violent collision. Through studies of music and sound, film and media, sports and foodways, Gennari shows how an Afro-Italian sensibility has nourished and vitalized American culture writ large, even as Italian Americans and African Americans have fought each other for urban space, recognition of overlapping histories of suffering and exclusion, and political and personal rispetto. Thus, Flavor and Soul is a cultural contact zone—a piazza where people express deep feelings of joy and pleasure, wariness and distrust, amity and enmity. And it is only at such cultural edges, Gennari argues, that America can come to truly understand its racial and ethnic dynamics.
In this volume attesting to the Italian American influence on the United States, nine professors of Italian American studies and a curator of an ethnic museum provide original essays on the Italian American experience, using the theme bridges to Italy and bonds to America. Drawing from a wide variety of primary sources, such as census tracts, local directories, diaries, voting records, newspaper accounts, personal interviews and scholarly and polemical books and articles, the authors show how Italian Americans adapted, through work, prejudice, strife, and advancement, to the social and political life in America while still retaining an element of Italianita. A bibliography of the colonial period reveals how Italians and Italian Americans impacted the creation, exploration, and settlement of America. While many studies are concentrated in the eastern United States, Italian Americans settled early in the west, including Arizona. Their history in Arizona parallels the labor strife, religion, music, and entrepreneurship that engaged their countrymen in the East. Italian Americans responded in a massive way to help their families that were devastated by the earthquake that leveled Messina, Sicily and Reggio, Calabria. A study of a sculptor who settled in Pittsburgh, shows how he produced works depicting, American and Italian themes often on a grand scale suitable for outdoor placement, and mingled with native-born community leaders and clubs and fraternal organizations. Tracing the life of a controversial Brooklyn politician, Francis B. Spinola, the authors show how he was elected to local and state political office and fought in the U. S. Civil War. Italian Americans were key components in the early years of jazz history in the 1920s and 1930s. This study adds some balance to the development of jazz by tracing the bonds that Italian Americans formed with Black musicians and their pioneering use of the guitar and violin. An obvious example of the theme of this book is a study of Italian prisoners of World War II, who were transported to the United States and settled in a camp in Texas. The author shows how they helped farmers by their work and how artists among them helped decorate a local church with paintings and murals. A comparison of the Italian and Mexican immigration to the United States shows the similarity and differences of these two groups over time. An examination of the proposition that Mexicans are like Italians is examined in detail. A bibliographical study of the “southern question” in Italian history shows the explosive forces that erupted during and after Italian unification. Italians and Italian Americans are still debating whether this incorporation of the Italian south into the kingdom of Italy was detrimental to the people who lived there and contributed to the massive emigration that followed. This study is an outgrowth of a desire by scholars to honor the passing of Professor Salvatore Mondello, coauthor of the national bestseller The Italian Americans. One of a few historians of Italian American immigration who appeared on the scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s he approached the subject with enthusiasm, passion, and a relentless search for relevant material marked by digging into primary sources, rooting out individuals who had lived through the immigrant experience and pouring over the contemporary accounts found in newspapers and magazines. Sal was one of the first to see the important link between railroads and Italian American settlements. He saw that the rail lines accelerated the Italians’ movement beyond the large cities in the coastal areas. They used the railroads as the means to establish new lives in many urban and rural communities across the country. In many ways the articles presented in this book reflect the Mondello approach. The authors continue as pioneers by dealing with important topics that have been overlooked, ignored, and/or newly arisen. They add a dimension to Italian immigration which focuses on the interaction of American and immigrant cultures and shows them as much American as Italian, if not more so. Having the advantage of living and teaching in smaller towns, the authors write with conviction and verve. Whether treating subjects old or new, the authors’ writing is clean, fresh, often imaginative and well documented producing a fine example of good scholarship, solid research, clear expository writing, and expert analysis. They move Italian American history beyond the corpus of work which usually includes radicalism, labor strife, crime, religion and the current blossoming of literature and poetry framing Italian American themes. This book will serve to inspire the group of scholars appearing on the scene today to carry on in opening new paths in the Italian American experience. This book will be of interest to scholars and lay people alike. Scholars will find particularly useful the information in the bibliographical articles and the book’s usefulness as a reader in an immigration history or sociology course. The younger scholar is sure to be challenged and possibly richly rewarded. The book’s human interest will appeal to a diverse audience, young and old. Exposed to nine subjects, the general reader is sure to be drawn to one or more of them.
Often separated from other immigrants because of their language, Italian immigrants to New York City in the 1880s formed communities apart from their new neighbors. They tended to think of themselves collectively as a small Italian colony, La Colonia, that made up part of the demographics of the city. In each of the five boroughs, Italians set up many colonie. Several of them dotted Manhattan in East Harlem, the West Village, what is now SoHo, and the downtown area of the Lower East Side, straddling Canal Street, which still identifies Manhattan's Little Italy, the best-known Italian neighborhood in America. Little Italy is made up of stunning photographs culled from numerous private and public collections. It begins with the first phase of immigrants to Lower Manhattan in the early 1800s, including political and religious refugees such as Lorenzo Da Ponte and Giuseppe Garibaldi. In the 1870s, more and more Italian immigrants settled in Little Italy. As the neighborhood grew up around the former Anthony and Orange Streets, New York's first "Little Italy" emerged. The tumultuous history of the Five Points area, the "Bloody Ole Sixth Ward," and many faces and memories from the Italian newspapers L'Eco d'Italia and Il Progresso Italo-Americano are also included in this long-awaited pictorial history.
For most of New York's early history, Ellis Island had been an obscure little island that barely held itself above high tide. Today the small island stands alongside Plymouth Rock in our nation's founding mythology as the place where many of our ancestors first touched American soil. Ellis Island's heyday—from 1892 to 1924—coincided with one of the greatest mass movements of individuals the world has ever seen, with some twelve million immigrants inspected at its gates. In American Passage, Vincent J. Cannato masterfully illuminates the story of Ellis Island from the days when it hosted pirate hangings witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers in the nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century when massive migrations sparked fierce debate and hopeful new immigrants often encountered corruption, harsh conditions, and political scheming. American Passage captures a time and a place unparalleled in American immigration and history, and articulates the dramatic and bittersweet accounts of the immigrants, officials, interpreters, and social reformers who all play an important role in Ellis Island's chronicle. Cannato traces the politics, prejudices, and ideologies that surrounded the great immigration debate, to the shift from immigration to detention of aliens during World War II and the Cold War, all the way to the rebirth of the island as a national monument. Long after Ellis Island ceased to be the nation's preeminent immigrant inspection station, the debates that once swirled around it are still relevant to Americans a century later. In this sweeping, often heart-wrenching epic, Cannato reveals that the history of Ellis Island is ultimately the story of what it means to be an American.
