During a period of six months in 1990, I was a participant-observer of some first-and second-generation Italian-American women in New York City. The experience proved to be both rich and rewarding. The thematic content of the life stories of these women, who had lived all of their childhood and adulthood in Little Italy, New York, emerged and unfolded spontaneously during our meetings. Our discussions centered on what these women remembered, thought, and felt about their relationships with their families of origin as well as their remembered work, courtship, sexual, and marital experiences. The selection of topics arose from the group’s...

It was 1943, wartime, when the Italo-American Women’s Club of Williamsburg staged a homegrown play set in 1938 depicting the then gloomy situation of the first-generation female Italian immigrant.

Their play was entitledWhy, It’s Mother. In the first scene, leading lady Mrs. Passarella ruefully hears her grown daughters inform her they’re going out again—this time to a conference.

“What’s that you mean, conference?” Mrs. Passarella asks.

“Oh, dear, it would be so difficult to make you understand,” daughter Amelia replies. “Besides, you wouldn’t be interested.”

Yet in the course of the play, Mrs. Passarella is transformed. Her English...

In 1905 Mary Maglio opened a grocery store on Detroit Street in Milwaukee’s largely Italian Third Ward. She was an immigrant from Sicily and the first Italian-born female grocer in the city. Maglio was followed by many more immigrant women who became proprietors of home-based businesses as a pattern of female Italian entrepreneurial activity became increasingly evident into the 1920s and 1930s.

This article examines the business lives of Italian immigrant women in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the late nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries. These women provided important services to first-generation Italians who settled within an ethnic enclave....

In 1912, an autobiographical work written by a Russian Jew pointed out the influence of American schools on young immigrants.¹ In a highly apologetic tone, Mary Antin maintained that the “public school has done its best for us foreigners, and for the country, when it has made us into good Americans. I am glad that it is mine to tell how the miracle was wrought in one case. You should be glad to hear of it—you born Americans.”² Antin had arrived in America in 1892, at the age of twelve. Thanks largely to the positive effects that the American...

Traditional Italian society long followed gender-based societal patterns. Male and female roles were clearly delineated and integral to the entire family matrix. Southern Italian folk culture—important because approximately 80 percent of all Italian immigrants to the United States came from southern Italy—was, at least on the surface, patriarchal with men,capa della famiglia, head of the family. Johnson (1985, 108) notes that “at least nominally (the husband) was considered to be the supreme authority over the wife, children, unmarried sisters, and younger brothers. He was respected, feared, and revered.” Wives were to give their husbands due respect. When...

This paper presents a demographic analysis of the Italian-American population. Utilizing data drawn from the 1990 and 2000 censuses, a number of key variables will be analyzed. Among the variables will be age distribution, regional distribution, migration, marital status, educational and occupational variables, and an analysis of income distribution. Several specific family variables also will be examined. The analysis will be twofold: first, changes within the Italian-American population between the census years; and second, comparisons will be drawn between the Italian-American population and the total United States population. Based upon the analysis of these data, discussion of future trends will...

All cultures create rules regarding mate selection. Endogamy, the norm or rule that states one should marry within some social category, is one of the strongest norms in all societies. As Merton (1941) notes, “in no society is the selection of a marriage partner unregulated and indiscriminate” (361). Barron (1972) also asserts the universal power of the norm of endogamy. He writes that “all records show that in every society, historical or contemporary, primitive or modern, cultural restrictions are designed to limit the possible marriage partners available to any person” (39).

In the United States, intermarriage may occur between members...

In a 1958 book, Edward C. Banfield put forth the theory of the southern Italian social system as an egregious example of “amoral familism.”¹ The theory is still widely used by social scientists and other writers in influential intellectual circles. Banfield’s view that people in southern Italy had no community or social moralities, only loyalty to their nuclear families’ short-term interests, is often cited or quoted. For example, in the June 1993 issue ofCommentary,James Q. Wilson cites the family system of southern Italy as an example of systems that are socially and politically dysfunctional because they are “amoral.”²...

Scholars have finally begun to take eating and cooking seriously. Many now accept as a starting point the observation of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who in 1825 intoned, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” The linkages among food, culture, and identity have long occupied small numbers of folklorists and anthropologists. But until recently most writing about food was done by popular writers—who offered guides to tourists and other adventurous consumers—and by gourmets reflecting on the haute cuisines of the lands they knew best. In the past ten years, however, historians, literary scholars,...

In his introduction to the 1970 reprint of Pellegrino Artusi’sLa scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, Piero Camporesi argued eloquently for greater recognition of cookbooks as historical artifacts. According to Camporesi, cookbooks have the unique capacity to unify populations on conscious and unconscious, public and private levels. As historical artifacts, cookbooks tell us about the construction of collective identities, the invention of culinary traditions, and the process of recording in writing what has been an oral tradition in many cultures. Such was the case with Pellegrino Artusi’s cookbook; originally published in 1891, it has long been considered...

What makes a cookbook Italian-American? Not simply its place of origin or language of publication. Numerous books about Italian cooking are published in English in the United States and Canada, but few would agree that this makes them Italian-American; after all, they may be books about cooking in Italy. Perhaps it is the content of the recipes that makes a cookbook Italian-American. But a cookbook need not limit itself to the culinary realms of the immigrant kitchen to be considered Italian-American. Could the origins of the cookbook author, or her parents or grandparents, define a cookbook as Italian-American? If so,...

In Part II of this sequence, authors of commercial, community, and self-published cookbooks reflect on their decisions to write about immigrant kitchens and cooking. Catherine Tripalin Murray (author ofA Taste of Memories from the Old “Bush”) reviews the family roots of her decision to collect recipes. In her case, a desire to know the way of life and the community of her Sicilian-American father motivated her to talk to his old neighbors. (Their neighborhood, like many older ethnic settlements, had disappeared during urban renewal projects of the 1960s.) In getting to know the women and the lives of Madison,...

Each concrete level leading up to the screen door of Ben DiSalvo’s Market in Madison, Wisconsin, was a challenge. Big steps, little legs, tiny feet. There was no way of knowing back then that each step taken was not only an achievement of sorts for a small child but also a giant step in the right direction. For beyond the door, standing on worn wood flooring and a ceiling fan slowly spinning overhead, I discovered a fragment of my heritage.

I received a nod of approval from the handsome, white-haired, smiling proprietor from Bagheria as he stooped to my level...

If Saddam Hussein had not invaded Kuwait, I may never have gone in search of my ancestry. I was too busy and happy unraveling life in Egypt’s Western Desert. The day my book on the desert and its oases was published, the Kuwait war began. My small publishing venture did not last long after that. Tourism hit bottom in Egypt. After seventeen years, I was forced to return to the United States.

During the frantic period between my publication date and my departure date, I kept asking myself, “What am I going to do in the United States?” Finally, I...

The volume upon which the present discussion is focused comes to us as part of the Wayne State University Folklore Archive Study Series. Elizabeth Mathias and Richard Raspa, authors ofItalian Folktales in America: The Verbal Art of an Immigrant Woman,¹ have centered their study on folk artist Clementina Todesco and have effectively redeemed from oblivion the tales and talent of this heretofore unknown emigrant from the village of Faller in the Veneto.

Who was Clementina Todesco, and how did this unusual book come to be written about her? The volume had an interesting genesis. In 1941, a young coed...

From two published books we are able to learn more about Mari Tomasi’s writings. The first of these books isVermont Literature: A Sampler,an anthology of regional writing edited by Arthur W. Biddle and Paul A. Eschholz, which includes Miss Tomasi’s short story “Stone.”¹ The second book is Rose Basile Green’s comprehensive study,The Italian-American Novel: A Document of the Interaction of Two Cultures,which includes a four-page critical analysis almost exclusively concerned with Miss Tomasi’s second and last novel,Like Lesser Gods.² It is fitting as well that each of these books emphasizes one of the two major...

When Tina De Rosa wrote her novelPaper Fish,the room where she worked was haunted.

Not by ghosts and goblins, but by childhood memories. To write the book, she had to let the emotions that came with those memories rush through her. Once again, she had to feel grief, loneliness, and bewilderment. The result is an extraordinary novel.

Paper Fishis about an Italian-American family, certainly, but a lot more. It is about unspeakable suffering, discovery and healing, and the process of creating a new reality.

It is a book about Carmolina BellaCasa. Her family is in pieces. Its...

By the end ofThe Godfather, only one of the three principal women embraces the modern world and therefore truly transcends the mores of the old country: Lucy Mancini. Mamma Corleone, a model of the Sicilian wife, remains untouched by American life. Connie Corleone may have gone to college, but her education does not prevent her from submissively accepting her husband’s beatings; and although she marries a second time, she does so as a conventional Italian wife. Kay Adams, the quintessential independent New England Protestant, ends the novel on her knees in a Catholic church subscribing to the values of...

Food is not only fundamental to our survival but also integrally connected with social function and identity. What, how, and where we eat often tells us who we are or who we are not. Food and eating, as Sarah Sceats notes, are “essential to self-identity and are instrumental in the definition of family, class, and ethnicity” (Sceats 2000, 1). Encoded in food and eating practices are varied meanings, which categorize, delineate, and explicate diverse behaviors, attitudes, and ideas of selfhood. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s 1825 observation “tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are” certainly underscores...

Approximately 80 percent of Italian Americans in the United States today can trace their roots to a southern Italian immigrant escaping the poverty and lack of opportunity in his or her own country. Most of the four-and-a-half million Italians arrived in America between 1880 and 1924, with a smaller wave emigrating after World War II. While the economic implications of migration have interested social scientists and politicians for some time, the long-term psychological consequences have only recently been explored.

Migration necessitates a psychological dislocation as well as a physical uprooting, with ramifications for the children and grandchildren of immigrants who...

Mary Caponegro’s “Materia Prima” (1987 ) opens in the land that celebrates Thanksgiving on a Thursday in November. Relatives are visiting for a weekly family dinner, and the narrator remarks casually, proverbially, “when in Rome they did as we did.” In 1991 Brooklyn-born Mary Caponegro went to Rome. A prestigious literary prize that cannot be applied for, but only conferred, was awarded to her by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York. She had been to Rome before, but not with the financial and other support she received during her year at a palatial complex...

In her poetry, the Italian-Canadian Mary di Michele explores various issues of marginality, asking questions about the language and forms she must use as a doubly marginal writer, and questions about her audience. As I have argued elsewhere,¹ these concerns figure prominently in her confessional poems, where she defines center and margin in terms of her own personal experience. But if confession is one answer di Michele provides to the question, “How must a marginal writer speak?” elegy is another. Together, these two forms dominated her earlier poems, especially those personal poems that dealt with her legacy as an Italian-Canadian....

Sandra M.Gilbert is, with Susan Gubar, the co-author ofThe Madwoman in the Attic(Yale University Press, 1979), a study of the woman writer and the literary imagination of the nineteenth century, andNo Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, in 3 volumes, all from Yale University Press: Volume 1,The War of the Words(1988 ); Volume 2,Sex-changes(1989 ); and Volume 3,Letters from the Front(1994 ). The two also editedShakespeare’s Sisters(Indiana University Press, 1979) andThe Norton Anthology of Literature by Women(Norton, 1985). Sandra M. Gilbert...

Crime stories are easy money for professionals, says Ed McBain, chronicler of the 87^thprecinct:

I always started a P.I. story with a blonde wearing a tight shiny dress. When she crossed her legs, you saw rib-topped silk stockings and garters taut against milky white flesh, boy. Usually, she wanted to find her missing husband or somebody. Usually, the P.I. fell in love with her by the end of the story, but he had to be careful because you couldn’t trust girls who crossed their legs to show their garters. A Private Eye was Superman wearing a fedora.¹

The typical...

In the 1990s, the memoir became a prominent and controversial genre on the North American literary scene and, in spite of the attacks of its many detractors, established itself asthegenre of the turn of the century. Whether due to its concern with the functions and scopes of memory in constructing a story of the self, its postmodern questioning of the validity of traditional historical narratives, or its connection with the emergence of writers from previously silenced groups—including women—for which it has served as a powerful vehicle of expression, the genre that Tristine Rainer calls “the new...

Concetta Scaravaglione (1900–1975), whose career spanned over five decades, was a critically acclaimed American sculptor. She established herself as a major player in the art world early in her career and counted among her admirers and supporters some of the most influential fellow artists, art critics, museum directors, and curators of her time. Among the awards and grants she received were major commissions from the Federal Art Project in the 1930s, a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Prix de Rome award from the American Academy, the first such award to be given to...

Baltimore and the Green Spring Valley are a study in contrasts. The city, a port cradling the Patapsco estuary near Chesapeake Bay, is a teeming metropolis housing a third of the state’s population. The surrounding area, by contrast, is a sparsely settled stretch of hills abounding in scenes reminiscent of the Hudson Valley School of painting. Atop one of these hills, in a Mediterranean villa, lives one of the state’s most distinguished residents. The early morning hours to which others in these hills awaken will pass this woman by. Her personal clock, the biological one within her, was never regulated...

Within the context of American cinema, both mainstream Hollywood and independent productions, familiar faces such as Martin Scorsese and new talents like John Turturro and Quentin Tarantino have brought issues of Italian-American ethnicity to the screen. Their films, however, concentrate primarily on male characters and how they come to terms with their ethnic roots. Women in films by these Italian-American male directors, as well as by others, have for the most part conformed to Daniel Golden’s widely quoted and accepted stereotypes: the sensuous bombshell á la Sophia Loren or the overbearing Italian mamma.¹ This Madonna/whore dichotomy, so pervasive in cinematic...

As is true of immigration studies generally,¹ surveys of Italian-American life— from scholarly reviews² to more popular accounts³—have often failed to incorporate women’s experiences extensively. This reflects something other than the paucity of research on Italian immigrant women and their descendants. The 1970s produced a first flowering of research on Italian-American women; research continued, and even expanded, in the 1980s.⁴ At the 1992 meetings of the American Italian Historical Association (AIHA), about a third of the papers on the program focused directly on Italian-American women or considered gender as a dimension of Italian-American life.

Rather than provide an explanation...

Arno Press has published an impressive and valuable array of materials on Italian Americans in the United States with its thirty-nine-volume series,The Italian American Experience. The series is as diverse as the community it depicts. It includes the autobiography of Pascal D’Angelo,Son of Italy(1924); the poems of the romantic labor-radical Arturo Giovannitti (with an introduction by Norman Thomas); nine novels varying in literary quality from mediocre to superb (but all valuable as statements of information on Italian-American life); and documents ranging from the reports of Protestant mission societies at the turn of the century to the proceedings...

In the period of greatest immigration, from 1830 to 1920, women accounted for approximately one-third of all the Europeans arriving in the United States.¹ Because fewer women repatriated, their contribution to permanent immigration is even greater. Yet they are, for the most part, absent from histories of immigrant experiences and from scholarship measuring changes that ethnic groups fostered in their adopted country. As the fields of women’s studies and immigration history grow, this neglect will no doubt find correction, and the records of the largest groups at least will be examined.²

Materials on the immigration experiences of Italian women emerge...