"Little Italy, New York" by Emelise Aleandri __. Images of America Series.
Portsmouth, NH: Arcadia Publishing, 2002. 128 pp. Illustrations.  $19.99
(cloth), ISBN 0-7385-1062-9.

Reviewed for H-Italy by Francis T. Ventre, Professor Emeritus,
Architecture and Urban Planning, Virginia Tech
Published by H-Italy@h-net.msu.edu (May 2003)

Ever wonder where Il Progresso Italo-Americano came from, or Ferrara's
torrone, or the Amato Opera Theater, or the Academy Award-winning actor
Vincent Gardenia?  Straddling Manhattan's Canal Street, east and west, and
all along Mulberry Street, is New York's Little Italy--the best-known
Italian neighborhood in America.  The author, Emelise Aleandri, takes us
from the 1880s to the present by way of 230 black-and-white photographs in
a pictorial history of La Piccola Italia.

Only 3 percent of New York City residents were born in Italy in 1855.  In
1900, the Italians grew by 225,000, far exceeding the growth of Rome.  In
1904, 575,000 Italians came to New York City.  What happened?  Sicily and
Southern Italy's grinding poverty met America's emerging need for
unskilled and semi-skilled laborers and artisans.  Enter Little Italy.

Most of the emigrants were from "south of Rome": Abruzzi, Molise, Puglia,
Campania, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicilia; and the emigrants did not
speak the same language. Italy as a unified country was twenty years old
by the 1880s, which was barely enough time to put an "Italian identity" on
the map.  There was no language that reigned supreme, rather there were
dialects.  The people of the Little Italies wherever they were situated
--Boston's West End, San Francisco's North Beach, St. Louis's The Hill,
Philadelphia's Bella Vista neighborhood---were forced into an "Italian
American identity," because there was no single language that
predominated.  This is where _Little Italy_ is misleading: regional
dialect precedes national language, especially in a post Risorgimento
Italy.  As Maddalena Tirabassi points out: "One need only mention the fact
that dialects were, to all extents, the native language of most of
migrants, given the lack of a national language, and this in turn made any
form of communication, and cohesion, more difficult."[1] emphasis added.

This reviewer's paternal grandparents were from Felitto, near Salerno, and
maternal grandparents were from Borgetto, near Palermo, in Sicily.  They
could not have understood one another. Of the 230 photographs contained in
Little Italy, only 30 have the regions where the Italians came from.  This
is an important omission, particularly when many of the immigrants whose
photographs were identified--your reviewer counted nine--came from "north
of Rome," while most of the immigrants came from the "south of Rome."

_Little Italy_ contains these chapters: "Early Days,"  "Community" (here
is where you will find Il Progresso Italo-Americano), "Religion,"
"Banking," "Food," "Entertainment-Gardenia and the Amato Opera,"
"Business-Ferrara's toronne,"and "Exodus."  It is in the final chapter
that we get an idea of the spread of the Little Italies.  The other four
boroughs of New York City have their Little Italies too and that is where
the Italians migrated from Manhattan's Little Italy.  Some even moved back
to Italy where the italoamericano could even speak their dialect.  But,
what about New Jersey, upstate New York, California, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, and Washington?...

"The immigration quota laws that went it to effect in 1924 restricted the
annual importation of new Italians into the United States to two percent
of the number that entered in 1890....  Little Italy was eventually
greatly affected," writes Ms. Aleandri.  "Today Little Italy, La Piccola
Italia, is more piccola than ever."  If you saw Martin Scorsese's "Gangs
of New York," you will know that Five Points, near Little Italy, is the
place for immigrants to congregate: English, German, Irish, Italians,
Chinese and Asians.  There is a photograph on page 123 that shows 198
Grand Street, between Mott and Mulberry, near Five Points. Six Italian
places of business from 1894 until now are shown in the caption; Grand
Sausages Inc, a Chinese entrepreneur now owns 198 Grand Street, where he
and the Asian community are the majority.

It is the immigrant's third, fourth and fifth generations that will buy
_Little Italy_.  Ms. Aleandi should be proud of what she has done.  But
those of us who need a more profound treatment of the subject will have to
wait until some scholar has pieced together what Tirabassi has shown:
that, for the Italians, dialect precedes national language.  The result
was to make it doubly difficult to communicate in their new nation.  For
that, the Italian immigrants needed their children-- the Italian
Americans--to lead the way.

Note

[1]. Maddalena Tirabassi, "Italian Cultural Identity and Migration" in
_The Essence of Italian Culture and the Challenge of a Global Age_, ed. by
Paolo Janni and George F. McLean, The Council for Research in Values and
Philosophy (Washington, DC: Catholic University, 2002), pp. 69-92.