AS A TEENAGER HE LIVES

HIS STATE OF ITALIAN-AMERICAN?

BY ROSANNA MAZZITELLI

Tboth of those children born in America and therefore, of right American citizens, born of families that for one or more generations live in this country, and of boys born in Italy and transferred to America, or born in America but from families recently on American soil.

In the first case, the development of the sense of belonging and integration have already begun its path in previous generations, and this has allowed us to internalize aspects of American culture.

So let’s talk about those adolescents who have lived through Italy both through the stories of their families and the Italian regional culinary traditions that still echo off the walls of American kitchens, as well as through the bizarre American spoken by grandparents or with some rare trip to the Bel Paese. They are those guys who have always lived in America, whose language is American and who know few Italian words, who look to Italy as something that has constantly been in their lives but fundamentally unknown.

To understand how this is possible, we need to take a step backwards and remember that Italian emigration to the United States took on considerable proportions between the end of the 1800s and the Great War. From 1876 to 1900, 800,000 Italians landed in the United States, and in the next 15 years, they rose to over 3,500,000, dropping considerably from the 1920s due to immigration laws that limited the annual entries from Italy to little more than 3,000 people. The migratory flow to the United States decreased significantly since the Great War, and the Italian communities became more stable and both the number of entrances for family reunification and that of children born in America increased.

Based on the data collected, in 1920 the latter exceeded their immigrant parents in the number and in 1940, they reached the age of youth. A very interesting aspect that allows us to understand the process of Americanization of the Italian-American children during those years, is the fact that for a long time, they had to face discrimination and major problems of social and scholastic integration. This has led over time to a series of family and social movements that have led to the removal of young people from their Italian origins. In fact, while families were pushing for the preservation of Italian traditions and culture of origin, young people tried in every way to integrate into the American reality, taking instances from everything that could make them feel different in their new homeland.

The vice console in Montreal, Erasmo Ehrenfreund, writes: “The streets of New York are full of these Americanized boys who, even if punched, confess to knowing Italian” ... we talk about the early 1900s. If we reflect on these social and family movements, we can imagine how it was necessary for the adolescents of those years to find their place in society that did not see them only as Italian foreigners, but in effect, allowed them to feel part of the United States. The need for an individualistic system that allows for emancipation and consequently, the triggering of infighting with the families of origin to obtain an all-round rights and the right to be American has progressively been envisaged. Therefore, more and more young people spoke American rather than Italian, increasingly abandoning Italian cultural values. This over time has led to a new conception of Italians in America, people with ancient traditions well rooted in the family system but with a strong push towards a modern cultural identity, the American one.

BY GIANLUCA CICINELLI