Sunday, July 16, 2006

Italians Coming to US Post WWII are Snobbish to Italian Americans

The ANNOTICO Report

Daniela Iacono Deane Arlington is a journalist for the Washington Post, and an Italian  who came to the US with her parents when she was three years old, and is grateful for the American opportunity, and proud to be a Italian American.

Daniela very candidly admits that her father was an Italian Snob, while he was otherwise a very fine man.   

To her dad "Gigi'", Italian Americans were one of his favorite dislikes. He complained: "They can't pronounce their own names; they don't know anything about Italy; they don't know anything about real Italian food. Then there was that whole unpleasant Mafia thing associated with them. The list was long.

To Daniela I'd like to say, practically every Italian that I have ever met, that arrived from Italy Post WWII, has exhibited that Snobbery, that I'd like to sub title as "Disappointment". I'm a third generation Italian American, and I AGREE WITH YOUR DAD, and all those Others. They are Right!!!

It's important for people/ethnicities/countries to know their strengths and weaknesses, and look at them accurately!

Americans in general,as compared to Europeans are Cultural "hicks/cowboys/rednecks".  And Italian Americans with an  Italian heritage that spans THREE great Epochs (Magna Grecia, Rome, Renaissance), that have enormous reason to be proud, only have a "superficial" pride, because they are NOT educated as to WHY they should be Proud. They know SO little, it's embarrassing!!!!

I used to be one of "those" (I'm trying my best to climb out of that hole. LOL :)      I came from an American  "Beer and Bowling" Cultural mentality, and My grand parents, nor my parents knew ANYTHING about their Italian Culture. 

We MUST recognize this "vacuum" and provide Cultural Centers, or Italian Studies in ALL Levels of the Educational system!!!!!   It is Not Wise for us to Deny the Undeniable, but to Recognize it and DO something Constructive about it!!!    

It is Not for people like your Dad to be more Accepting of us Retards, but for us to be more DESERVING of having such a Rich Italian Heritage!!!!!!!!

 

BEING ITALIAN, LA DOLCE VITA

Washington Post                            

Daniela Deane Arlington                                                            

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Ever since Italy's last-minute World Cup win, it's been great being Italian.

Friends call and e-mail, acquaintances stop to chat, colleagues drop by my desk for a high-five, everyone congratulating me as if the victory were my own.

And somehow it is, because being Italian is one of the richest parts of my life.

But as with all good things, it comes with baggage.

After the Iaconos immigrated to Washington from Italy in 1957, when I was 3 years old, my father, Gigi (short for Luigi), decided that one of his jobs in life would be to make sure that I, the youngest Iacono by far, would never forget that I was an Italian girl from Naples. He knew I'd become an American. It was the Italian part that needed protection.

And so he insisted that we speak only Italian at home. He sent me, my brother and my mother back to Italy to stay with relatives in the summer while he stayed in Washington and worked, only dreaming about sitting under the southern Italian sun.

At home in Washington, we ate only Italian food. My father was 43 and my mother 37 when they arrived here, speaking no English. They continued the only life they knew.

Gigi loved many things about 1950s America, especially what he saw as its classless society so full of opportunities, so different from the tradition-heavy, it's-all-who-you-know Italy he had left behind. But he had trouble assimilating.

And the sharp edge of that was his feelings about Italian Americans. He was a fine man, my father. And I loved him very much. But he was an Italian snob. And that's what he wanted me to be, too.

Italian Americans were one of his favorite dislikes. And Gigi loved a good rant. They can't pronounce their own names; they don't know anything about Italy; they wouldn't know real Italian food if they tripped over a plate of pappardelle by mistake. Then there was that whole unpleasant Mafia thing associated with them. The list was long.

That's not us, Gigi would say. We're the real gelato . And we're going home -- any old year now.

Our first rented apartment in Washington was in Mount Pleasant, right behind the then-Italian Embassy. The closer we were, the purer we would stay, I guess. And then there was the free (and real) Italian food we'd get after embassy parties, because my grandfather back in Naples knew someone who knew the ambassador or some other such Italian-style connection.

Most of the Italians my parents befriended in those early years in 1960s Washington were through the embassy. There was never much of an Italian community here. And of course they could only be friends with the real ones. So we were an island in a nation where more than 25 million Americans claim the same ancestry as us.

After I grew up, I moved back to Italy twice, my father's words propelling me there. But then I came back here about 10 years ago, deciding Washington was a good place to finish raising my boys. My parents were still here, funnily enough, living in Falls Church.

As I've basked in being Italian the past several days, giving thanks to my parents for this enormous life gift, I've also thought about how I'm American and how that, too, has enriched my life so much.

I know Italy well enough to know that I would've been a lucky Naples girl indeed to end up with the long, varied career as a journalist that I've had.

So perhaps now, almost a decade after Gigi's death, and in honor of Italy's great win, it's time for me to admit that yes, I'm Italian, but I'm Italian American, too. And Gigi, it's really not that bad.

-- Daniela Deane Arlington  is an editor for The Post's Continuous News department.

deaned@washpost.com

 

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