Sicilian Culture: News: Italian Soul On Ice

Required Reading for Italian-Americans...

Sicilian Culture

The People, The History, The Culture

The News & Views

Italian Soul On Ice
By Michael Wright

When two Italian-Americans become acquainted for the first time, the content of the conversation is fairly predictable. Exchanging information about our origins in Italy and talking about food are usually both high on the agenda. Typical conversations contain such questions as "Where in Italy were your grandparents born?" and "Can you buy fresh mozzarella where you live?"
Food, it seems, is the most common vehicle for expressing ethnic pride among Americans of Italian ancestry. We don't cook fried chicken to express Italianness. We prepare lasagne, ravioli, and mannicotti. That's obvious. By now the reader must be asking, "What's the point?"
The point is this: we have great recipes, but what literature, music, art, and films do we have which describe the Italian immigrant experience to the general American public? There have been plenty of Italian crime films, but only a tiny fraction of the Italian-American population has been involved in organized crime. The overwhelming majority are not racketeers and never were.
There have been numerous famous Italian-Americans in the entertainment world. Dean Martin, Connie Francis, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Dion DiMicci, Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett come to mind. But did any of them gain their fame before the general American audience by expressing Italian ethnicity in the course of their work as entertainers?
Connie Francis was famous for her top 40 hit "Where the Boys Are," but I would have never known she was Sicilian had an uncle not sent two of her Italian albums to my mother. Francis' Italian recordings did not receive wide distribution or promotion outside of the ethnic market.
Dean Martin also recorded some Italian songs, but this was not what made him famous. His fame resulted from a partnership with Jerry Lewis, and in that period his Italian ethnicity was mostly in the background. If Frank Sinatra, Dion, Annette, or Frankie Avalon ever recorded an Italian song, I am unaware of it. Hopefully the food analogy now makes sense. Although all these artists have their merits, their contributions to the entertainment world are comparable to fried chicken, not lasagne.
Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino both enjoyed enhancement of their fame because of their prominence in The Godfather, but this movie had very little to offer in the way of providing insight into the experience of most Italian immigrants. DeNiro also portrayed the gangster Al Capone.
Three important essays which relate to these questions have been included in a collection entitled Multi-America: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, edited by Ishmael Reed (NY: Viking, 1997).
"The Case of the Missing Italian-American Writers," by Helen Barolini is included. She asks the question, "Why is there no recognition of an Italian-American novel beyond The Godfather?" There is no Italian-American equivalent to James Baldwin.
The same issue is approached by Daniela Gioseffi, author of the essay entitled "Is There a Renaissance in Italian-American Literature?" She points out that before writing The Godfather, Mario Puzo had authored The Fortunate Pilgrim, which portrayed "hard-working Italian immigrants in their ghetto lives rather than sexy thugs in dark suits driving limos." The problem was, Pilgrim did not become a big seller. Puzo wrote The Godfather because he expected that the buying public would reward him for nourishing the popular stereotype of Italian criminality. He was right.
The third essay by Lawrence Di Stasi bears the title "How World War II Iced Italian-American Culture." The author begins by pointing out that there were 5 million Italian immigrants in the USA in 1940. Italian-Americans were beginning to establish a presence in literature. Among those earning recognition were Pietro Di Donato, John Fante, and Jerry Mangione. There was, he writes, "a growing feeling among Italian-Americans that their time as a potent presence in the American institutions heretofore closed to them was at hand."
Then Mussolini participated in the Axis invasion of France. The following year saw the Pearl Harbor attack. Immediately following Pearl Harbor, hundreds of Italian- American leaders in New York and California were arrested and detained. The 600,000 Italian immigrants who had not completed the process of gaining citizenship were labeled "enemy aliens" and forced to re-register, carry ID cards, and submit to travel restrictions and prohibitions against ownership of short-wave radios, cameras, and other devices which were considered to be potential implements of sabotage. Those suspected of possessing such materials were subject to search, seizure, and summary detention.
In California, Italian aliens were required to observe curfews, and those living close to the waterfront were evacuated. At least 10,000 were relocated.
Di Stasi maintains that the Italian-American community never recovered from this experience, that it drained the spirits of the immigrants, undermined pride in their ethnic identity, and hastened assimilation into the culturally homogenized American melting pot.
Of course, many Italian-Americans do express knowledge and pride in the richness of their heritage. The question is: for the general American public, what comes to mind in association with Italian ethnicity? We are left with spaghetti sauce, pizza, and The Godfather.
Italian Soul On Ice
members.aol.com/Sorrento95/index2.html

Buy posters of Manhattan, The World Trade Center & New York at...

HOME