I TRAPIANTATI

INTRODUCTION

 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)