Italian-American Culture and Italian Culture
Friday, February 10th, 2006 -- J. DoeIn a simple phrase: They are completely different.
I have a temporary job now. I work with many people who are Americans of Italian origin. They are of the third or fourth generation, and their grandparents (or great grandparents) originated from a different part of Italy that I lived in.
Take that, plus the difference in time from when they had a link with Italy. 2006 (for me) versus the late 1800s, early 1900s (for them), and you will find that they are indeed very different. Almost like night and day.
At first they were excited that I came to them from ‘Bell’Italia’.
Now maybe not so much.
My coworkers often say “I bet you eat a lot of ___!” and I reply “What’s that?” ” I never heard of such dishes.”
They ask me how I cook dinner. “Do you take hours to cook each meal?”, they ask. I tell them “No.” I like to cook quickly so I can eat quickly.”
“I bet your tomato sauce is nice and thick!” they say. I then tell them that I hope not, because if so I would add more cooking water. I like a nice watery sauce that can cover the pasta lightly so that you can taste both items instead of just one. I think they are disappointed with my responses, but really, who in this day and age of work can come home to spend 5 hours in front of a stove!
Then they ask me if I eat pasta with every meal. (I don’t) They don’t either, but it seems by my admission I shattered a lot of illusions. I obviously don’t give them the answers they expect. I don’t ‘act Italian’ to them.
They have said words in their Italian which I cannot understand.
One example being Malushay or something which I could not even imagine what they were talking about. (It ended up being Melanzane, which is Italian for eggplants).
They explain some of their habits and customs to me which I do not do. One example being a Sunday dinner at 2:30. We eat much later, and don’t have a special early dinner on Sunday.
Italian -American culture is not modern Italian 2006. It is it’s own culture.
J. Doe,
Thank you for your observations concerning modern day Italian Americans and recent immigrants. This results in very interesting comparisons. Your views on the American workplace, foods, driving experiences and daily life are also a valuable reminder of how our countries have diverged from historical patterns.
I believe your comments not only help those of us that are interested in the differences in life styles, but also to us that are trying to understand the Italian “physc”. Why is it that our two countries have so many differences of a politiical nature? Can you help us understand Italians by telling us of your feelings and experiences as a new American?
Please describe your feelings when you observe American customs that may surprise you. When you observe our fourth of July, please relate it to how Italians celebrate their own country’s birth. Please tell us of how Italy feels about protecting both itself and it’s friends from world dangers.
You are in a unique position, both as a journalist and a “Marco Polo” to provide both countries with a needed insight into each other.
Many thanks for your reporting.
Ray,
Thanks for your compliments.
I will`ask Buzzurro about his experiences as a new American. I am however an old American who has been out of the country for nearly 4 years who has a slightly different perspective than before I left the country. It is the classic reverse culture shock. Some things are ‘new’ to me, only because I am not used to them anymore, others are really new to me. What makes my reverse culture shock worse is that now I am living in a state which I left almost 18 years ago.
Ciao
Yes. When Buzzurro has time, I hope he does a lengthy post from his perspective. I for one, would be very interested to hear of his obsevations, dashed expectations, or just how he’s adjusting.
Thanks so much, you guys.
Ciao.
I hope you two are okay out east. Just saw the news. Looks like a wicked storm.
Once on a train in Italy we met an American couple of the Bronx who’s mother had come from the south of Italy. They were so happy when they discovered that my husband was Italian and begain speaking to them in what they thought was Italian. He couldn’t understand a word and they were confused. It turns out that the Italian they learned was a mix of English and southern dialect! Too funny!
Cyn
After living in Italy for a year I can say I feel like I know Italy. Being from Guam and Seattle, I knew nothing of Italian culture before I mt my husband. Everyday old ideas are being replaced by new experiences.
I do however cook sauces that take quite a while, make my own bread crumbs, pesto etc… and spend a lot of time in the kitchen. And spend quite a bit of time ironing. Other that those things I think I’m still very non-Italian at heart. Who knows after 5 years that may change. At least my husband is happpy I have learned what type of pasta goes with what sauce.
I think it’s funny how cultures can be so different so far away. I see that every day here also.
Buzzurro,
I apologize. I can’t stand someone telling me what to write, so I think that you may be offended by others suggesting what to write about. Say what you want!
I have enjoyed your blog and just like reading both you and J Doe.
I don’t know about Italian-Americans, but my parents are both Greek (I’m first generation in the US) and it is different from being Italian, but at least we get more stupid questions from Americans because there aren’t as many of us as Italians. In the US, EVERYONE seems to either be Italian or Irish and not have an inkling about either of those two countries. Anyway, a visiting cousin of mine in Philadelphia once got asked if he still believed in Zeus and Aphrodite. I dount an American would ever ask an Italian if he or she has ever been to a Gladiator Game.
i think the 2:30 dinner thing was actually lunch. from my experience it seems pretty accurate. i live in naples currently and i feel lucky if we start our sunday meal by 2:30…i’m dying of hunger by 11:00!
hello everybody!!! i’m an original italian if someone WANT KNOW ITALIAN COOK …THIS IS A GOOD WEBSITE www.lacucina.it good luck !!!! ciao
hi off the subject here — but i cant seem to find what i need to, what i need to find out fast is — what are the things i do not want to do - i meet a very nice man from italy a few weeks ago and i dont want to do any cultural taboos or say an insult that i didnt mean too. this gental man has been in the states for 25 years but he still thinks in his first langugae. i just dont want to screw up with this man - i like him alot.
i dont know if he is from northern or southern italy. you can write to me at red underscore nan at yahoo dot com if theres is anything you’d like to share with me and thank you very much
Nancy
this article was grand. i used pieces of it for a project at skool, and gave all the credit to you.
Thanks ms.elizabato.
Thanks, and good luck for your skool
Several years ago, while on a trip to Italy, our tour guide made a comment to me that Italian Americans come to Italy expecting to find the Italy that their parents and grandparents spoke about. “This Italy,” she said, “no longer exists”. I responded that my head was telling me that same thing but my heart was still looking for it. Whether it still exists or not it doesn’t matter. I am grateful to have “known” it through the memories and recollections of my family members who emigrated to this country and allowed me to feel connected to a place and people I had only heard about. They let me know I was a part of something bigger than what I was able to see and know through first hand experience.
More than one Italian American I know also experienced what I felt when I visited; feeling “at home” and “part of” the old country. The inability to speak the language did little to dampen thatreality. It was a sense of being among ones heritage. This land and these people had an influence in the way I was raised and what I was taught to value. It sometimes clashed with the American mindset. But, the older I get the more grateful I am for having been given it.
After I posted this comment in February of this year I did leave out something that I think is relevant to my comment. While on a business trip to Italy in September ‘06 I was tanding at the counter of the place I was staying filling out some papers. In the meantime, my family name which ends with a vowel was spotted on my nametag by a native born son. He smile from ear to ear and proceeded to speak with all the gusto and gestures he had. In the few words that I do speak, I let him know that I did not speak Italian and that I was an Italian American. The smiled dropped, he lamented wha a shame it was that I didn’t speak the language (in Italian which I understood) and proceeded to remind me that I was not an Italian American but rather I was an American Italian.
I was surprised that a native born son would not acknowledge the common ancestry we shared. Rather, he would write me off as a cheap knock off of the true Italian. He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the business meeting. Only once did he again lament my lack of language with a look of pity. How sad, I thought that he would never come to see the pride and joy I take in my Italian heritage. The lack of understanding of the teo cultures exists on both sides. Yes, they are different. But there is a common bond that unites us.
I don’t know if this is a page that is no longer visited but I would be interested to read comments by other Italian Amer……I mean American Italians who share a similar story. In the meantime, Buzzurro, any comments?
I wrote this several years ago for a contest that Il Progresso ran. What are your thoughts?
GLI ITALIANI NEGLI STATI UNITI
LA MIA ESPERIENZA PERSONALE
“Italian? But where did you get your red hair?”
“Funny, but you don’t look Italian.”
“You look like an Irishman.”
“You must be from Northern Italy.”
Can you imagine living forty-two years of your life with the absolute certainty that not one week would pass without you hearing at least one of these phrases? How does one respond? Do I say that the Romans had brought back people from their voyages to Northern Europe? Or that when the Vikings and the Normans were in Southern Italy, they might have planted some seed of red? Or do I just stand there smiling, know that these people really don’t realize that not all Italians are short, with dark wavy hair and little black moustaches?
What I decided to do was to become as much an American as I could, and as much of an Italian as I could—playing both ends to the limit. So, I took up football, basketball and baseball. I went to college, joined a fraternity, drank Bud, grew a nice red beard, and wore preppy-looking clothes. On the other hand, I learned to speak Italian-not dialect, studied my roots in Italy, and traveled extensively there – while visiting my parents’ hometown. I wore a cornetto around my neck, ate as much Italian food as pastable, and in the afternoons, I drank espresso—not cappuccino. I celebrated when Italy won the World Cup, and of course, read Il Progresso and Attenzione.
What fun! Can you imagine the faces of people in the subway when they see this six-foot tall, red bearded man wearing a Harris Tweed jacket and oxford shoes, reading Il Progresso on his way to work in Manhattan? Even better is walking into a salumeria in Bensonhurst, ordering in Italian and having every head turn and look at me. Invariably, some woman will say, “You said that just like an Italian!” well, that’s because I am Italian- more precisely and Italian-American, with the emphasis on both.
Perhaps it would have been more desirable if my parents had never left Italy, and I would have been an Italian-Italian. But no—for what was the shame of my childhood (being an Italian with red hair), has became the divertimento of my adulthood; a topic of conversation, an anomaly, a man with two cultures. Quest’e la mia esperienza personale. Viva gli Italiani. Viva gli Italiani-Americani. Pero sopratutto, viva gli Italiani-Americani con capelli rossi.
I wrote this several years ago for a contest that Il Progresso ran. What are your thoughts?
GLI ITALIANI NEGLI STATI UNITI
LA MIA ESPERIENZA PERSONALE
“Italian? But where did you get your red hair?”
“Funny, but you don’t look Italian.”
“You look like an Irishman.”
“You must be from Northern Italy.”
Can you imagine living forty-two years of your life with the absolute certainty that not one week would pass without you hearing at least one of these phrases? How does one respond? Do I say that the Romans had brought back people from their voyages to Northern Europe? Or that when the Vikings and the Normans were in Southern Italy, they might have planted some seed of red? Or do I just stand there smiling, know that these people really don’t realize that not all Italians are short, with dark wavy hair and little black moustaches?
What I decided to do was to become as much an American as I could, and as much of an Italian as I could—playing both ends to the limit. So, I took up football, basketball and baseball. I went to college, joined a fraternity, drank Bud, grew a nice red beard, and wore preppy-looking clothes. On the other hand, I learned to speak Italian-not dialect, studied my roots in Italy, and traveled extensively there – while visiting my parents’ hometown. I wore a cornetto around my neck, ate as much Italian food as pastable, and in the afternoons, I drank espresso—not cappuccino. I celebrated when Italy won the World Cup, and of course, read Il Progresso and Attenzione.
What fun! Can you imagine the faces of people in the subway when they see this six-foot tall, red bearded man wearing a Harris Tweed jacket and oxford shoes, reading Il Progresso on his way to work in Manhattan? Even better is walking into a salumeria in Bensonhurst, ordering in Italian and having every head turn and look at me. Invariably, some woman will say, “You said that just like an Italian!” well, that’s because I am Italian- more precisely and Italian-American, with the emphasis on both.
Perhaps it would have been more desirable if my parents had never left Italy, and I would have been an Italian-Italian. But no—for what was the shame of my childhood (being an Italian with red hair), has became the divertimento of my adulthood; a topic of conversation, an anomaly, a man with two cultures. Quest’e la mia esperienza personale. Viva gli Italiani. Viva gli Italiani-Americani. Pero sopratutto, viva gli Italiani-Americani con capelli rossi.
That is interesting. It’s strange though because in Italy I saw mostly redheads,blondes and brunettes instead of short men with wavy dark hair and moustaches
As a woman who grew up with a tall red headed freckled Mother she often heard the “You don’t Look Italian.
:D you even must know A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present. I think very less people are knowing this.
I even can say Not only with American culture but also with Canada’s culture Italian reflect. History of Italian immigration in Canada focusing on Ontario. Italian-Canadian literature including such writers as Nino Ricci and Mary Di Michele. Cultural and economic relations between Italy and Canada. Its culture and traditions, from fine arts to culinary arts and oenology which make ever aspect to look in different ways…..
Not sure I agree with Joe. It is not so black and white. There is an Italy that reflects his description. However, there are many small villages in the south, where not only do they have an elaborate meal, or pranzo, at 230 on Sunday, but they do so on all other days of the week at 130 followed by a nap, or riposino. Many of the Italian-Americans with which he is basing his opinion have not returned to their village of origin, and if they have, have not spent the time to understand it, whereby learning Italian is essential. I am a third generation Italian-American, my father’s side of the family all born in the same small southern village for centuries. After immigration, my family never went back for 85 years. If Joe had spoken to me before I visited, I would have added evidence to his thesis. However, I went back, and back again, leaned the language, made friends, found family, and visited over 20 times. It is a home away from home. I will always be American. However, I know this town almost better than the average person living in the town, because after years of dedicated research and reflection, I have insight that spans 100 years. With this insight, I can better explain the true connection between Italy and America. There is one. It is strong. However, through the cloud of three or four generations, as Joe describes, it cannot be seen readily. In my travels, I find that most urban modern Italians do not know well the rural Italy of today. Joe, have you been to Molise? Have you read Christ Stopped at Eboli? Salute, michael
I just love old Italian women they are just something else. Lately I have been trying to learn Italian and so far it is coming on great. Only a few basic phrases though like ‘Che una machina’ and ‘Che un altostrada’ which I’m sure you know what they mean. I just can’t wait to get completely fluent in speaking Italian though!
Its like a mix of the characters from godfather and scarface.