My mother always said I should marry someone Italian. Not that she thought Italians were superior or anything (okay, maybe a little), but she just felt things would be “easier” if I was with someone with a shared background, culture and values.
Of course, I thought that was ridiculous. But the thought came back to me as I was working with our holiday card list, and noticed the high number of households (23% on our list, whereas only 5.4% of the U.S. population is Italian-American) where at least one member was of Italian descent, not counting my relatives on the list. Are we indeed somehow drawn to people with a shared heritage? Was it somehow operating under the surface in ways that I couldn’t see? Was my mother right?
So I decided to do some detective work, asking relatives, friends, and colleagues how they feel their Italian background has affected them and had an impact on who they are today. Interestingly, even those who are only a quarter Italian said it was the “strongest” part of their heritage, and what they most identified as. The first thing nearly everyone mentioned was the importance of family — lots of it — with aunts, cousins, nonnas living very close nearby, or even upstairs, and all present at every possible occasion. They mentioned emotion, passion, grit, and hard work. Most mentioned food as central, either the big holiday feasts or the emphasis on topnotch ingredients or the passing down of family recipes that had to be made just so. One friend recalled, “Family events at my grandparents: the aroma of stracciatella, risotto, lasagna, the baking of hard-knot cookies. My grandfather’s red wine came out of the cellar poured for any of us over the age of three in small glasses — it was bitter and so dry.”
One cousin’s response brought to mind the appreciation of “la bella figura,” the Italian emphasis on “the beautiful figure,” meant metaphorically, not literally. Our aunts – 10 sisters in my mother’s family – were always elegantly and impeccably turned out. My cousin wrote of their “great taste and great sense for fashion.”
Perhaps the darker flip side was expressed by a friend: “I care about my appearance, the quality of my work, what my house looks like, etc. I guess the world is judging and it would reflect badly on how I was raised?” I share that anxiety, too, not that it actually changes my behavior much.
One cousin wrote that her father, although an esteemed university professor and poet, told her to “make sure I told people I was American, not Italian. He thought my heritage would block me from doors opening, but quite the contrary, I feel my heritage makes me special and unique and I say, fling the doors wide, I am coming through, flags waving.” A friend writes about her grandparents, “I have a lot of pride in knowing their struggles and the successes of their lives – not that they were highly educated or prominent citizens but that they like so many other Italian immigrants of their time, left their homes and families, came to a new land and grew their lives, had three children and multiple grandchildren, owned a home, and passed along their lifelong story of overcoming adversity to me and my siblings and cousins — we all hold their stories as family legend.”
So is there a special, underlying bond that Italians feel, a unique sense of simpatico that draws me to these people and causes them to dominate my holiday card list? I have to confess — the households where at least one person was Jewish, like my husband Ben, blew the Italians out of the water: 32% of our list, with 2.4% of the national population being Jewish.
So was my mother right? Looking down my holiday card list, there are almost none where members of a household share the same ethnic background. So maybe we feel pride in who we are and are somehow drawn to our own kind, while simultaneously embracing the diversity of our relationships and our communities. Maybe now that most of us have been here two generations or more, those ties feel less urgent and powerful. But I still feel a jolt when I recognize a name that is part of my clan.
Gigi's Italia 