11/12/17
The first time my 90-year-old grandfather met my then boyfriend, he stuck his hand out and said, “We’re Sicilian. Do you know what that means?” My boyfriend shook his head, unsure if this was some sort of a joke. “Have you ever seen the movie ‘The GodFather?’ That’s what that means. Don’t hurt her.” And then he just walked away, laughing. To be clear, my grandfather is not apart of any sort of Italian mafia, and chose the higher road a very long time ago. That doesn’t stop him from reminding my boyfriend of this everytime he sees him.
Being Italian and Sicilian (yes, they are two different things) has always brought me great pride. I grew up on Staten Island, where a large portion of its residents are Italian. It was cool to be Italian: the big family, the food, the holidays, the music. The culture that enveloped my world growing up was a kind of Italian American culture that has been around for decades. When I think about my family, I think about listening to Frank Sinatra in the car with my grandfather and watching “Goodfellas” with my parents for the first time. These things that I think of are from the world my grandparents grew up in- the Golden Age of Italian American culture- the mid century period. So many of the iconic songs, traditions, and films come from or are set in this time or have a sense of longing for it. As far as I am aware, there are no “new” Italian American traditions, and our culture is certainly very far from the Italians living in Italy now. Even the films that take place past this period, like Moonstruck and My Cousin Vinny, display a similar kind of Italian: loud, aggressive, uneducated, and all about the family. The only thing that changes is that during the mid-century period it was glamorous and sleek, and beyond that, many people view it as tacky and outdated.
This is not to say I in any way dislike Frank Sinatra or Goodfellas. Quite the contrary actually- I love them. They make me feel warm and homey. But I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think about why we are always so focused on the past, pining for a time when being Italian meant you had parents were from off the boat or you were yourself.
11/17/17 8pm
I took a seat facing the window at my small table-for-two that had a small “reserved” sign on the table at Benito One on Mulberry St. in Little Italy. The wall to my left was covered in copies of old family photographs belonging to the restaurant’s two owners, Nick and James: men and women with stoic faces in black and white and yellowed marriage licences. All the tables featured a maroon tablecloth with the words “The Original Benito One” written in gold beneath a glass tabletop. The design is not particularly in-style or up to date, but perhaps this was the point. The restaurant’s website boasts of it having been on Mulberry Street since 1968 with a chef that has been there for over 29 years. While much has changed in this neighborhood, they are proud to say they have remained generally the same.
I was seated only several minutes before a basket of warm Italian bread was brought to the table. I sat ripping apart my bread and dipping it in olive oil as my eyes continued to wander about the packed restaurant.
Petite-laced curtains hung over every tiny window and old pictures and passports of Italian immigrants peppered the walls. Several people tried to walk into the restaurant and were turned down without a reservation. I felt grateful I had thought ahead.
My then boyfriend arrived when I had gotten about halfway through the sliced loaf of bread on the table. Together we sat enjoying the atmosphere that I fear probably won’t be around for my children to see.
11/17/17 10pm
I went to Caffe Palermo after dinner to eat “The World’s Best Cannoli.” It definitely was not the world’s best. I at least appreciated the fact that it was chocolate covered. Sometimes you go to places that don’t have the chocolate covered! You can always tell that they will at least be good if they have the chocolate covered ones because then you know they must be Sicilian. Outside of the bakey there is a giant vertical cannoli (no chocolate coating), and around the corner is Ferrara Bakery, which competes for best cannoli. Personally, my favorite cannoli is from a place called Royal Crown on Staten Island. Caffe Palermo’s cannoli was more ricotta-y, making it have a dryer, pastier taste to it, whereas Royal Crown cannoli filling is more creamy. It’s well known in the Italian community that the passageway of most Italian Americans in New York has been thus: Manhattan to Brooklyn to Staten Island to Jersey. At the moment there are still a lot of Italians on Staten Island, more so than in Little Italy for sure (per capita of course since Little Italy is obviously tinier than Staten Island). So, Staten Island is flourishing with fantastic Italian food.
11/19/17
I entered the Italian American Museum in Little Italy with my parents and felt a twang of disappointment as I walked in and saw how small it was. I guess I had expected to see something more grandiose like Italians themselves. My parents and I were sat down in front of a television screen by a woman named Daniella. Immediately the three of us pointed out a large dark green chest that sat in front of the television. My grandparents had had one just like it when they came to America. In fact, almost that exact same chest still sits in the office in my parents’ home. She clicked the remote as a cat jumped up onto the desk for a back rub. This was definitely not a commercial museum. The video we were watching told us the history of Little Italy as well as the specific building we were in, which was once Banca Stabile, a bank that Italian immigrants often used to send money back home to their family in Italy. It also gave us a brief history of some of the pieces in the museum so we could have a better understanding of what we were looking at.
After the video, we slowly wandered around the teeny museum. They definitely made a good use of space. You could stand in one spot for ten minutes and still not get a full look of everything in front of you. Old Italian puppets, typewriters, vintage weddings gowns, letters, passports, books, photographs. The museum even had a preserved section of the bank that once stood where the museum is now.
12/9/17 11:00 am
I am scared. I am scared that our President’s mantra is “Make America Great Again,” and that people really believe that it’s possible. I am scared that people want to go back to an era where feminism was radical, being gay was a literal death wish, and people of color could literally not drink from the same water fountain as me. I am scared that even I feel nostalgic for a time where Italian culture was at its peak, where Frank Sinatra frequented the Copacabana alongside Dean Martin, where gangsters in sleek pinstriped suits ruled the streets, where Little Italy was seen as a slum. Am I a part of this problem? Do I then contribute to this motif by longing for a time that I was never even a part of when white men were the only ones with a real say? Will my grandchildren long for a time where the skeleton of Little Italy even existed?
12/9/17 8:30 pm
I think to myself: “What is wrong with making film, music, art about current Italian American culture?” And then I begin to think about how tacky in can be. Is no one making work about current Italian Americans because they know this? When it’s used in a modern context, it’s usually used as the butt of a joke. Jersey Shore as a great example of this. Italian immigrants were seen as dirty. It’s almost always true that great work and rich culture comes from suffering. Italians (though their suffering can never be compared to any African Americans or Americans of Latin descent) have blended into white America. Most of us aren’t seen as “Italians” any more. We’re just white. Maybe there’s nothing exciting to write about. My family (and I) wonder why it is that Italian American culture becomes more and more diluted as each generation goes on. We’ve got no real reason to hold on anymore. We’re doing okay without the culture. Because now we have status and money and the power of whiteness. I’m really not okay with this answer though. It’s a general idea. I grew up in an Italian household that was different from my parents, which was different from their parents. Why should I settle for what I think people will expect art about Italians to be?
When I go to Little Italy though, it makes me less hopeful somehow. When you walk down the streets at lunch or dinner time, men bark at you and try to persuade you to come into their restaurant. Gift shops on Mulberry Street are akin to those in Times Square plus Italian flags. It feels like it is trying so hard to hold on to something that is inevitably slipping out of its fingers. I wonder what might happen if it just let go.
12/10/17
Hiraeth is a Welsh word for the longing for a home you can never return home to or one that was never yours to return to. This is how I feel when I am walking down Mulberry St. I so intensely wish I could see these streets when the only people that dared to walk down them were Italians themselves. I long to see the food carts my grandmother remembers from her childhood here. I long to see the men in sleek suits that my uncle remembers.
12/11/17
I sat on the couch in my Uncle Louie’s home with a warm cup of tea in my hands with my ears wide open, ready to hear about the world my uncle once knew. Italians are most famously known for their mafia- “la cosa nostra,” but my uncle’s family was more than that. He describes it using a quintessential Italian American movie: A Bronx Tale (now a hit broadway musical) which tells the story of Calogero, son of a bus driver, who is taken under the wing of Sonny, an Italian mobster, during the 1960s in the Bronx. My uncle says that while the rest of the world sees Sonny, his family was Calogero’s father.
My uncle’s family came to America like many other Italian immigrants, with nothing except the hope for a better life for their children. Joining the mafia was easy: they were sleek, alluring, well respected, had money, and provided community and protection. Instead my uncle’s father took a major risk as an immigrant and started his own business, Petrocelli Electric (still a major private electric company). He made sure my uncle and the rest of his family was taken care of and protected. He also made sure that my uncle and his siblings went to school and stayed in school. “My father told me you wanna be a bum? Ok, but you’re gonna be a smart bum,” he told me.
He remembers living in Little Italy on Bayard Street like it was yesterday. The railroad apartment: you walked in, there was the kitchen, then the tiny living room, the bedroom, and then his favorite place in the summertime, the fire escape. He remembers sitting out there in the warm weather up on the 4th floor and shouting down at the people that lived and worked below him. He remembers one woman in particular, “an old ginny named Luig.” He would go out on the fire escape, and he tells me he would yell out “Luig! Luig!” She would come out onto the fire escape and my 4-year-old uncle would send down a broom with a piece of rope at the end of it, and she would send up a small piece of fruit with it. See, that’s just it. So many people think of Italians at this time in Little Italy as glamorous, because they’re thinking of the mobsters. This was actually what life was life for Italian immigrant families living in Little Italy: it was simple. My uncle remembers not having much at all as a child. If they weren’t eating Italian food, they ate cheap at the Chinese places on Mott street at Joy Luck and 66 Mott.
He talks to me about the importance of never being too comfortable in one place. “You can come back to the well for emotional nourishment but not to stay- just to recharge,” he advises me (he is always so excited that I am living in Manhattan, removed from Staten Island). It is sort of bittersweet that he doesn’t have this well to return to because there is nothing worth returning for. He knows it is inevitable. There are new immigrants moving in. But that doesn’t make it any less painful.
He tells me that by being removed from it, he has been able to see it more clearly. He tells me he enjoys it just as much if not more looking back on it than when he was in it. He just has to hold on a little tighter to those memories because there aren’t many witnesses left.
12/12/17
My uncle knew the son of one of the founders of Cushman and Wakefield (the famous real estate company). Their last name was Peters. He told me that Peters was not actually their last name, that Peters was actually a truncated version of an Italian last name. They thought they would be more successful with the last name Peters.
There are times I have thought about changing my last name to something more simple than L’Insalata. Not permanently, but just for business. People always mess up my name. But that’s just it- I wouldn’t be changing it out of fear of people not taking me seriously. It would just be because having to pronounce my name for people is an inconvenience.
I guess that shows the status change of Italians over the years.
Madison L'Insalata 