Italy and the U.S.A.
Between the years 1880 and 1915 4 milion of Italians choose to cross the Atlantic Ocean and land in the United States of America. About the seventy percent of the Italians emigrants were from the south of Italy; the causes that pushed all this Italians to emigrate were various: the south of Italy had just faced a strong earthquake and a civil war, that led to an agrarian and economic crisis, so the only way to find a new job was to escape.
Almost all the Italians immigrants were “contadini” or in America “farmers”, this was because it was the only job available in southern Italy; so the farmers were easy people that were looking for a steady source of work, any work. Instead the Northern Italians were artisans and shopkeepers seeking a new market in which to play their trades.
On the other side the U.S. was ready to welcome all the immigrants for its period of prosperous economy; this wave of immigrants served to provide the labor for the American industry and create communities in previously undeveloped areas, as East Harlem and Little Italy in New York City.
The Southern Italians were really attached to the homeland so they kept their customs and traditions: they built churches and celebrated patron saints in the form of a feast, created small businesses such as cafés, bakeries, pasticcerias, restaurants, pizzerias, and salumerias.
But as time went on Italians started to blend in the new country, so a lot of Italians moved from their own neighborhood and to settle in other parts of the city, mirroring american people and building a new life. After a lot of years of this process the only connection to Italian culture for the people was perhaps distant relatives living in Italy or simply their last name.
This italian wave of migration hadn’t been the last one, in fact from the 2000 in Italy started the phenomenon called “brain drain”, that consists in the migration of italian college graduates to the U.S.A. because, due to the economic crisis, they can’t find a job in their own country.
According to Martin Scorsese, Little Italy’s most famous native (born and raised on Elizabeth Street between Houston and Prince), the real Little Italy existed for 50 or 60 years, but is now over. What he finds amazing is that now that neighborhood is a chic place.
Bill Tonelli in his article says: “Once, Little Italy was like an insular Neapolitan village re-created on these shores, with its own language, customs, and financial and cultural institutions. Today, Little Italy is a veneer — 50 or so restaurants and cafés catering to tourists, covering a dense neighborhood of tenements shared by recent Chinese immigrants, young Americans who can’t afford Soho, and a few remaining real live Italians. At the turn of the twentieth century, more than 90 percent of the Fourteenth Ward’s inhabitants were Italian by birth or blood. In 2000, the three U.S. Census tracts that constitute Little Italy were home to 1,211 residents claiming Italian ancestry — 8.25 percent of the total, roughly the same as the proportion of Italians in the entire city. (By contrast, 81 percent of Chinatown below Grand Street is Chinese.)”
Now all the italians things are considered fancy and stylish, just look at the San Pellegrino water, the one which is served in expensive and elegant restaurants, or the most famous clothing brands, as Prada, Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana and others. These are actually real Italian products that still come from Italy; the italian food in the United States isn’t one of them. This shouldn’t be taken as an accusation, it’s just the evolution of a culture in another state: it would be really hard to make the same pizza in these two states, just because the ingredients taste different, or again the aroma of a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce wouldn’t be the same. There would be other hundreds of food exemples, this is because a great part of the italian culture is based on homemade food and for an italian the food is almost holy.
Precisely because the italian culture succeed in the US, one of the consequence is that there are tons of stereotypes and prejudice about the italians and the italian’s culture.
When I came to the US and started to talk with some americans I had to answer a lot of questions, some were reasonable but other confirmed my worries about the american’s italian idea. I’ve been asked if italians eat pasta every day, that’s for a lot of italians true; or if the american pizza tasted like the original one, the answer was absolutely not; the most funniest questions were if everyone in Italy had moustaches, a Lamborghini or a Ferrari and if all the men were called Mario, Luigi or Gino; the answers were no, no and again no. Italy is developed country so not everyone has mustaches as the ’10 immigrants and not everyone is rich enough to afford a really expensive car, even if they are produced in the their own country.
I think now I’m facing the same changing process that the first italians had to deal with, so I’m trying to adapt my culture with the american routine and customs; for example at home I shop in different stores with a lot of italian brands here instead, despite it hasn’t been hard, I had to find new brands of clothes to buy. I’m getting used to listening to american music on the radio and not the italian rap, I don’t eat anymore of my grandma’s homemade pasta and tomato sauce instead I just buy them, I’m getting used to seeing trucks everywhere and not small city cars.
The great thing is that I can still buy Nutella in the American stores and that makes this process a lot easier, but sometimes when I start thinking and realizing that this experience is changing me, I ask myself, “when I return home, will I still be 100% italian or will the US have had changed me to an American-italian?”
