I TRAPIANTATI 

FOREWORD

In this volume I collected some of my writings about the Italians who migrated to North America. I decided to compile them here for I believe they contain observations that differ from other, more conventional themes and approaches. Most of those who have come to know and have written about these migrants and their descendants have been impressed by their economic success. I certainly do not deny the end result, and I am happy for it. However, I have been struck mostly by the price they had to pay to achieve it. A large portion of them has triumphed over the trials of migration, but at the cost of becoming mutilated in the language and, therefore, the spirit. At the same time, their vanity has been enlarged by the newly acquired economic status that, in their eyes, is higher than what they would have ever achieved in yesterday’s Italy, a country that doesn’t exist anymore and in whose recent development they have not taken part.

I also believe that the term Italo-americani does not reflect their true nature in that they are not the children of a mixing of races and cultures. Rather, they are the product of adaptation. In this process they have simultaneously lost touch with the people they originated from without melting with the people who took them in. The result, therefore, is not the fusion of Italian and American qualities; it is instead the confusion of different habits and the smoothening of sharp edges by two cultures that are complete strangers to each other. In other words, they are not the sum of two wholes, but, rather, the remainder of two subtractions. The migrants have not preserved Italy inside nor have they added America. They are like a seed that, planted in the soil, decomposes in order to give birth to a new plant. I have no doubt that something new and important will be born of them, as several examples already suggest, but in this moment the Italian seed is only in the process of decaying.

When I am asked for a definition of the term Italian American, I don’t indulge in the lawyerly and superficial criterion of citizenship, according to which Italian Americans are people who were born in Italy; or children of Italian-born parents who were in turn born in this country. To me, Italian Americans are those who cannot speak well any of the two languages, either Italian or English, and are satisfied with a vernacular of a few hundred words dealing with the daily material existence, with no nuances or emotions, often pronounced with a brutish accent, unappealing both to Italian and to American ears.

The majority of Italian Americans, after leaving an ungrateful nation and finding an even harsher one, could no longer keep up with the events and the transformations of the country of origin, and often not even with those of their new home. Nothing had prepared them for the new land. They shared no common ideals with it; no moral, religious or political perspectives and not even similar customs in sports, food or religion. Their economic status improved mostly because America was growing and becoming richer, carrying along on its drive for wealth and power those who could survive; the very same ones who had contributed as raw material to fuel its rise.

Freedom, the most precious legacy left by the Founding Fathers and of which America is enormously proud, was an alien concept to their minds. It was a kind of freedom that had nothing positive to offer to the newly arrived. It was a vacuum. In this vacuum they had to keep going, under the strain of hunger and poverty. The fact that only a few of them, often the most courageous ones, ended up choosing crime is truly admirable. As I wrote in several occasions, any Italian who migrated to the United States and did not become insane or turned out a criminal; or did not get killed as a young man, is truly worthy of admiration.

Those who did survive, even if they were good people, still carry the scars of the trials they had to face. First of all, let me say that all the transplanted (my definition) are—to a certain degree—a little strange, touchy, almost paranoid and always defensive in front of every criticism. They are also very insecure, as is typical of those who speak a poorly-learned language; or use unfamiliar instruments; or walk along an unknown path they had never seen before. Mine is more a feeling than clinical, demonstrable observations, but I happened to notice these aspects many times in the course of my contacts with them. Only someone who has lived in an Italian American environment without becoming one of them and without their language and behavior can be aware of it.

Another aspect that was noticed as far back as last century is a sort of arrogant nationalism displayed especially by the children of migrants. Edmondo De Amicis[1] observed this phenomenon in the Italians that had migrated to Argentina but the same holds true also for those who came to North America. This is probably the response to the fear of being considered foreigners, a perfectly reasonable fear in that, despite the protestations of equality by the American ruling class, the immigrants; their descendants and whoever else belongs to a race other than the Anglo-Saxon; has a foreign accent and does not belong to one of the Protestant denominations; has always been considered a second-class citizen.

The premise of my writings is that I consider emigration to be a tragedy. (Probably it is also the first time that anyone has stated this fact unequivocally.) There are many reasons, both intrinsic and historical, that make the condition of being a migrant a tragic one. Certainly this doesn’t reflect the impression of the non-migrant Italians who visited America between 1880 and 1930. In this volume I discuss some examples of how Italian travelers and journalists have described the experience of migrants, in a mixture of comments, reporting and, sometimes, caricatures. is is hi

I also denounce Italy’s official policies which, in my opinion, are at odds with Italy’s interests in her relation with the United States. These policies have been limited to securing the easy loyalty of the transplanted who, as I already said, are insecure representatives both of Italy and the United States. I have said and reported all this without a hidden agenda; with no desire to attack anyone; without rancor and with a bit of sadness. I would have been happier to report only success stories (and some instances of success indeed appear in these pages). But that is a subject that has already been covered by many others.

Notice to the Reader: Many of my observations on Italian Americans also apply to other ethnic groups in the United States, the so-called hyphenated.[2] There are two partial exceptions to this generalization: Jews and Irish. European Jews came to America in conditions that were completely different from those of rural populations from other countries. Most of them were modest merchants with a greater respect for intellectual life and with an understanding of what how important education was for survival. The Irish came to American with the ability to speak English and with centuries-long experience in politics, an experience gained in the struggle against England.

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I have often been asked by Italians: “Who are these Italian Americans? Why don’t they speak Italian like us? Why don’t they read the same books we read? Why don’t they behave like us? Why do they serve a lunch of spaghetti with meat balls as if it were an Italian dish instead of the sorry marriage of a Swedish recipe with an Italian one?” As I said earlier, Italian Americans bear the wrong name. They are not a mixture of Italy and America: they are Italians lost in America. With the exceptoin of very rare instances, there is no trace of Anglo-Saxon blood in them, just a veneer of learned behaviors applied over an Italian way of life. Millions of Italian migrants, although tossed in and mixed in the American salad, are actually a barrier or a geological fault between the two countries. For a long time they have prevented Americans from learning what Italy really is. Between 1880 and 1922, Italy sent to the United States and into the world, millions of people who did not represent Italy as a cultivated country; rich in monuments and noble traditions; endowed with an intellectual élite that was on a par with the French; with industries, railroads, universities and social mores equal to those of the rest of Europe. The migrants were called Italian but they weren’t Italian. They weren’t the product of a national educational system that later transformed rural populations, saddled with a parochial or provincial perspective, into citizens of a country with a unique place in the world and with the legacy of a great civilization. The poor farmhands that left southern Italy (and often also from central and northern Italy) were completely ignorant of this civilization. They only knew their little villages and their only aspiration was to escape hunger. Each one of them only felt a connection with the paesani. The only form of social life that elevated them above those almost sheep-like forms of group identity was the Catholic religion, although its ministers were not particularly well educated and often did not live up to the ideals of a Christian life. And let’s not talk, please, about the Italian diplomatic and consular authorities who, with few exceptions, from the height of their sophistication regarded this mass of migrants as an annoyance to be kept as distant as possible.

These things need to be said, albeit without hostility toward the migrants who were often good and courageous people. Italy sent these people to the United States almost like an afterthought, without thinking that in fifty years they would become the equivalent of commercial samples, used by the American ruling class to form a judgment on today’s Italy! It is not these immigrants’ fault if today they speak a broken Italian and their children don’t speak it at all. I have long maintained that if an Italian immigrant didn’t end up in an insane asylum or didn’t become a gangster it was a miracle; and these miracles are millions. Their overriding goal was to escape the poverty of their forbearers and achieve positions that fulfilled the ambition to be relevant in their communities. The first generation is still present today and has shaped the Italian model in the collective mind of Americans who don’t travel much abroad. Hence the widespread representation in America of the Italian as an insignificant man with earth-tone complexion, short, poorly dressed, with huge handlebar mustache, with an organ grinder on his back in the company of a small monkey, begging for money while playing querulous Neapolitan songs. Out of the need for survival and because of lack of education, in the largest cities the first generation of Italian immigrants had to resign to jobs that Americans regarded as humiliating, such as rag picker, waiter, barber or shoeshine. Relegated to the same jobs were also people of color such as blacks and Chinese. Only those Italians who—by luck or wisdom—settled down in the countryside were able to achieve human respectability in addition to a dignified economical position. The second generation, which in general no longer speaks the parents’ dialects, was educated in American schools. In its midst some leaders emerged who established connections with the Republican or, more frequently, the Democratic party and became de-facto representatives of electoral clienteles identified as the Italian vote. In the last few decades the interests of Italian Americans have been represented in general by discredited individuals who stand in low esteem in the community. Their power in the Italian communities was not the result of respect or affection. Rather, it comes from the privileges and honors the Italian government bestows on them. In fact, the Italian government has embraced these individuals with honors and rewards, giving them the kind of legitimacy and relevance that they could not achieve by their own merit. All Italian governments and political regimes, from the pre-Fascist liberal to the Fascist and finally the Christian Democrat[3] have persevered in the same error.

In all major American metropolises that have been invaded by foreign peoples, with their differences in culture, language, religion and political customs, even those where the Italian vote is irrelevant, there are numerous ties between politicians and organized crime. Often these secret connections are denounced by the media and have thus become a sort of legend, in all likelihood darker than reality. The word Mafia today has taken the place of what was once called racket. These were loose associations of criminals who extorted illicit gains by offering protection to all sort of activities—some illegal themselves. The protection, in turn, was obtained by bribing the police, politicians and political groups and associations that benefited from those profits. This form of criminal system was not brought to America by Italians. They found it here. They simply trained at this school and perfected it.

Thus, when people ask me: “What kind of people are these Italian Americans,” my answer is: “They are what you made them: America enlarged them and the Italian government legitimized them as representatives of America.”

New Yorh, 19 dicembre 1958

Lament on the Destiny of the Exiled

This beautiful poem by Antonio Barolini, an Italian writer who now resides in the United States, opens my book. It is, in a way, the summary of my ideas and feelings. I thank the author for his kind permission to print it here.

It is hard

to remove one’s roots and rip them up from the ground

where our deaths lie.

Ah, scrawny tree.

May you not be

like the wild flower in a meadow

or the cherry tree that at ripening blushes with red pearls;

always there,

to die and be reborn.

It goes

from land to land

from sea to sea

and after each rip

it leaves a piece of its roots

and carries away

the naked weight of what remains

until it dies, shriveled up,

and is reborn again.

In all places abandoned:

it’s the destiny of the exiled

on the sand of the shore.

ANTONIO BAROLINI

(da Poesie alla Madre, Venezia, Neri Pozza Ed., pp. 60, 1960).