Speaker 1: Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: It beats listening to nothing.
Speaker 3: Oh my godness, being Frank Frank, where the only way
Speaker 3: to be is Frank. Hello everyone, and welcome to being Frank.
Speaker 3: We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: Frank Lebono, and I'd like to thank you for joining
Speaker 3: us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation podcast,
Speaker 3: where no conversation is out of bounds in all points
Speaker 3: of view are welcome. We are going live to tape
Speaker 3: on the tenth of October. So I guess I should
Speaker 3: say chow because it's Italian American Heritage Month. The first
Speaker 3: Italian to be registered as residing in the area corresponding
Speaker 3: to the current US was Pietro Chesire Alberti, commonly regarded
Speaker 3: as the first Italian American, a Venetian seaman who in
Speaker 3: sixteen thirty five settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam,
Speaker 3: which would have become New York City. In the nearly
Speaker 3: four hundred years since then, more Italians have migrated to
Speaker 3: the United States than any other Europeans. Italians have a
Speaker 3: long history of migrating to foreign countries as a way
Speaker 3: of coping with poverty and dislocation. During the nineteenth century,
Speaker 3: more Italians actually migrated to South America than to North America.
Speaker 3: The earliest Italian immigrants to the United States were Northern Italians,
Speaker 3: who became prominent as fruit merchants in New York and
Speaker 3: wine growers in California. Later, more and more migrants came
Speaker 3: from the South, and the communities and institutions they formed
Speaker 3: reflected the region's fragmentation. Italian immigrants established hundreds of mutual
Speaker 3: aid societies based on kinship and place of birth. Their
Speaker 3: presence has become part of the American ethos. Still, I
Speaker 3: bet there's a lot more about Italian Americans than pizza
Speaker 3: and the mafia. Joining us here again on being frank
Speaker 3: as stea even soerui. He is a member of the
Speaker 3: pretigious John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and a PhD
Speaker 3: candidate in Modern history at Fordya University, as well as
Speaker 3: an instructor at Hustos Community College in the South Bronx.
Speaker 3: He has also traveled extensively to locate and document Italian
Speaker 3: American communities around the country. Steve, welcome once again, as
Speaker 3: I said, say, since it's Italian American heritage. Mu's the
Speaker 3: catch all phrase for Italian greetings.
Speaker 1: Chow hey, Frank, thanks for having me again, looking forward
Speaker 1: to chatting.
Speaker 3: Well, let's start. You're a member of and I want
Speaker 3: to talk about the Calandra Italian American Institute in a
Speaker 3: broader sense. But first I find the history how it
Speaker 3: was founded, why it was founded very interesting and very
Speaker 3: relative to our conversation. So would you tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about its founding? And then what you guys
Speaker 3: are you actually doing at the institute.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'll answer both of this questions. You picked
Speaker 1: the perfect day to ask me this. I just explained
Speaker 1: it to some people yesterday, so it's fresh on my mind.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, the Senator John D. Clandra, who
Speaker 1: was a Republican Senator from the Yonkers Bronx Order, led
Speaker 1: this push to investigate the relationship Italian Americans have with
Speaker 1: the City University of New York. And they come out
Speaker 1: with this eighty page document and what they were able
Speaker 1: to find out or what they discovered, right, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk more academic. What they discovered was that the City
Speaker 1: University of New York has a history of discrimination against
Speaker 1: Italian Americans in terms of hiring practices, passing over promotions,
Speaker 1: and lack of resources for Italian American students. So they
Speaker 1: had a legal case. They won, and within the City
Speaker 1: University of New York, Italian Americans are protected as an
Speaker 1: infirmative action class. And I should explain a little bit
Speaker 1: what affirmative action is, because there's been a great a push,
Speaker 1: especially amongst the American right to kind of discredit what
Speaker 1: it actually how it actually functions. It's not quotas. It
Speaker 1: hasn't been that case since the nineteen seventies with this
Speaker 1: case in California, in the Baki case. It's not quotas.
Speaker 1: It's not, oh, we need five Italians in this department.
Speaker 1: It's when you apply for a position or as a student,
Speaker 1: it's considered right, it's put into consideration, right, your identity
Speaker 1: as part of the hiring practices, because is a conscious
Speaker 1: understanding that this institution in the past has discriminated against
Speaker 1: this particular ethnic group or whatever. Various groups of primitive
Speaker 1: action covers where and when. Nowadays it's mainly at the
Speaker 1: state level because the Supreme Court completely gutted it. The
Speaker 1: institute was originally founded as the Italian American Institute, part
Speaker 1: of the Graduate Center, which is Quney's doctoral granting institution.
Speaker 1: We no longer a part of the Graduate Center now
Speaker 1: are part of Queen's College. And what the original intention
Speaker 1: was twofold one the kind of watchdog cuny and two
Speaker 1: provide student psychology and student services for Italian Americans therapist here.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately that's no longer really part of us anymore. But
Speaker 1: if there's a tiny American students dealing specifically with the
Speaker 1: Tian American problems, whether that be the parents, talent not
Speaker 1: to go to school, whatever that may look like, these
Speaker 1: group of therapists would be there to help them. And
Speaker 1: of course we kept demographic numbers and watch over aecunity,
Speaker 1: which we still do this today.
Speaker 3: Well see what I think that brings up an interesting
Speaker 3: point again when you think about discrimination, certainly in modern
Speaker 3: times we think of people of color, if you will,
Speaker 3: But there was a time, if I could make the extrapolation,
Speaker 3: where where many Americans thought of Italians, particularly Southern Italians,
Speaker 3: as people of color, if you will, and therefore discriminated
Speaker 3: in a sense. And we talked about it the first
Speaker 3: time you were on the program. Also where particularly as
Speaker 3: I said, Southern Italians who tend to be darker skinned,
Speaker 3: generally speaking, did experience a level of discrimination that other
Speaker 3: folks didn't. But so talk to that. What kind of
Speaker 3: discrimination has or have Italian Americans faced throughout the long
Speaker 3: history they've had in this country.
Speaker 1: I want to ununpack that a little bit, because people
Speaker 1: of color attempts to I don't think it's an accurate
Speaker 1: in accurate term to describe Italian Americans. It's specifically ascribed
Speaker 1: to African Americans and other people who have not been
Speaker 1: able to benefit from large scale systemic whiteness. Now, legally speaking,
Speaker 1: Italian Americans or Italians in America were always legally white, right,
Speaker 1: So this means they weren't subject to Jim Crow laws.
Speaker 1: This means they're able to go to places like California
Speaker 1: and Oregon at a time when black folks were not
Speaker 1: allowed to live there. If they assimilated culturally, at least
Speaker 1: there was a chance of great social mobility that didn't
Speaker 1: exist for historical peoples of colors such as African Americans
Speaker 1: and Indigenous Americans. On the other side, however, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean there was a discrimination. Of course, there was discrimination.
Speaker 1: Every ethnic group, even Germans face discrimination in America, right,
Speaker 1: the cultural discrimination is the religious discrimination. And also within
Speaker 1: this kind of cultures that have to kind of explained
Speaker 1: is the best. America has lots of hierarchies, despite the
Speaker 1: fact being land of the free. Right. So there's always
Speaker 1: been this hierarchy of at least since the sixteen hundreds
Speaker 1: when racial laws are codified in places like Virginia, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: White on top, black below. You're a slave because you're black, right,
Speaker 1: blathly existed before. But if you're a slave in America,
Speaker 1: you're a slave because you're black. Right. That's this unique
Speaker 1: relationship that has really developed in the American South in
Speaker 1: the colonial period. Right, It's already have this top and
Speaker 1: bottom relationship based on identity. Right. As time goes on,
Speaker 1: that becomes more developed and more complex. So even though
Speaker 1: Italians are legally considered white right within the strata of whiteness,
Speaker 1: there's also this hierarchy where Italians are considered lower. That
Speaker 1: doesn't now Now again that means you face discriminations, prejudiced,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But there isn't this large scale systemic exclusion
Speaker 1: and banning of Italian Americans like there ares of Chinese
Speaker 1: for example. Like again, you weren't black, you weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to If you were black, you weren't allowed to go
Speaker 1: to Oregon in California, and at certain points of history,
Speaker 1: Italians could always go there. So I think it's important
Speaker 1: to kind of parse like systemic racism from prejudices. And
Speaker 1: then I think, last year, if I remember correctly, stereotypes and stigmas,
Speaker 1: which which are from those historical experiences that still kind
Speaker 1: of linger today. But that's not the same as as
Speaker 1: like systemic racism.
Speaker 3: I think it's a great you made a great point, Steve,
Speaker 3: and and I think very well taken. But that brings
Speaker 3: us to another issue. I think, especially in the New
Speaker 3: York area, which we're coming from, where we're streaming from,
Speaker 3: most of the Italian Americans here tend to be Southern Italians,
Speaker 3: so I think people, and again through movies and some
Speaker 3: of the great film Italian American filmmakers so we can
Speaker 3: talk about generally come from the New York area. Again,
Speaker 3: so these association mostly with Southern Italians, so we tend
Speaker 3: to think of it sometimes as a monolith, but that's
Speaker 3: far from true. And in my introduction, it brought out
Speaker 3: the first Italian Americans coming we're actually northern Italians, and culturally,
Speaker 3: as we well know, even within the country of Italy itself,
Speaker 3: there's a big cultural difference between north and south. So
Speaker 3: talk to a little bit to that how Italian Americans
Speaker 3: are not this gigantic monolith as we often tend to
Speaker 3: see them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the monolith's speech aspect of it. I
Speaker 1: think you're hitting on something is the fact that the
Speaker 1: people who are in immediate positions to represent Italian Americans
Speaker 1: are representing the Italian America that they know, which is
Speaker 1: primarily Sicilian, Campania and Neopolitan. But which is why that's
Speaker 1: what we see in the public. But yeah, as you know,
Speaker 1: is actually quite complex. Literally five feet from where I
Speaker 1: sleep is Italian American club called the Club Trentino. It's
Speaker 1: a group of people from from North Italy that came
Speaker 1: after World War One, and it's just in New York
Speaker 1: City and white Stone Queens was a club of people
Speaker 1: from Friuli. There's another club in Astoria of Italians from Astoria.
Speaker 1: Now nowadays it's a Mistria. Nowadays it's more Croatian than Italian,
Speaker 1: but that was a kind of shared multicultural region Istria.
Speaker 1: It is Italians, Croats, Sloveins and and a Romanians who
Speaker 1: are Romanian speaking minority. You notice, you know, you noted
Speaker 1: Cesarey Alberti, who is the first Italian American, but the
Speaker 1: first community of people from Italy to live in the
Speaker 1: US are actually from the valleys of northern Pedamont. That
Speaker 1: well then seen as they settled in Staten Island, and
Speaker 1: there's all and Pedamont is the north. What's that, I'm
Speaker 1: really a bad direction. This is the north west part
Speaker 1: of Italy. There's historic communities of Venetian glass blowers coming
Speaker 1: down to Virginia, much smaller they call the community might
Speaker 1: be a little bit exaggeration, but it just kind of
Speaker 1: shows you that it's not just Northerners coming here in January.
Speaker 1: I mean not just southerner is coming here in January.
Speaker 1: I went out to Tanti Town, which is in Arkansas, right,
Speaker 1: You know that that I traveled all over. They're primarily
Speaker 1: from the Veneto in Friuli area, right, which is northeastern Italy.
Speaker 1: You go to California, a lot of those people are
Speaker 1: from Lombardy and Ligoria. And as you you've talked to
Speaker 1: me earlier about these posts, I'm making all months. One
Speaker 1: of the posts I'm gonna make is actually the fact
Speaker 1: that not all Italians are from Italy. Talking to Istrie earlier,
Speaker 1: but many of those California Italians are from Italian Switzerland,
Speaker 1: from the canton Tuccino, or from the Gione or Grissins,
Speaker 1: which is another Swiss canton that has Ramann speaking but
Speaker 1: Italian speaking on the most southern peripheries of it. So
Speaker 1: it's actually quite quite mixed, quite complex. And during the
Speaker 1: Great Migration period more Italians left northern Italy than southern Italy.
Speaker 1: They just went to Brazil and Argentina, right they went
Speaker 1: to Uruguay, Paraguay, they went to places like Colombia. I
Speaker 1: was joking with my girlfriend, she's Colombian, that you're just
Speaker 1: as likely to be in the United States, you're just
Speaker 1: as likely to be Italian American as you are likely
Speaker 1: to be Italian Colombian. They're roughly about four and a
Speaker 1: half percent of the population. I had two roommates in
Speaker 1: my first New York City apartment. One was Brazilian, one
Speaker 1: was Colombian. Both of them had an Italian grandparent from
Speaker 1: northern Italy. So this history is a lot more layered
Speaker 1: and nuanced than a lot of us like to tell ourselves.
Speaker 3: Well, with that in mind, and you mentioned the Waldensians,
Speaker 3: correct me with the correct pronunciation. Well yeah, and I
Speaker 3: researched them with a very interesting group overall, and one
Speaker 3: that we wouldn't again within our world of the Southern
Speaker 3: Italian ethos, et cetera. Really kind of different. Describe them
Speaker 3: a little bit where they came from, what their movement
Speaker 3: was like, because it struck me as really different as
Speaker 3: what we might think of as typically Italian American. Talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about them. They're interesting.
Speaker 1: I love talking about them because they complicate the history
Speaker 1: so much and both the day aspara for the fact
Speaker 1: that their first community about two hundred and fifty of
Speaker 1: them in Staten Island, but also because of their history
Speaker 1: with Italy. So they emerged as a kind of dissenting
Speaker 1: sect in the twelfth century. So like the eleven hundreds
Speaker 1: led by this guy named Peter Valdo in Lyon, France.
Speaker 1: Now we should nation states and things like this are
Speaker 1: really nineteenth and eighteenth century kind of constructions. In even
Speaker 1: twentieth century, so people traveling back and forth, moving through regions,
Speaker 1: you didn't need a passport back. That was much different.
Speaker 1: So Peter Valdo's preachings particular were particularly popular in the
Speaker 1: Latin speaking Alps. So this is like what's today, what's
Speaker 1: this called the Roan Alps region of France, Provence region
Speaker 1: of France, Turin, pedamnt of Italy in the Valde Aosta,
Speaker 1: and then also what was historically Savoy. So people who
Speaker 1: speak various Neo or Vulgar Latin languages in the Alps.
Speaker 1: His followers are denounced by the Church and many of
Speaker 1: them are basically forced to convert. However, there's two kinds
Speaker 1: of trajectories. Ones deep in the Alps in Pedamont managed
Speaker 1: to survive, and others are scattered throughout the Mediterranean, and
Speaker 1: many actually find safe haven in southern Italy, establishing communities
Speaker 1: like Order Piedamonte in Calabria. I was just talking to
Speaker 1: someone today because we had an event on Pullia at Calandra,
Speaker 1: and her family is from this village in Pulia, which
Speaker 1: is southern Italy that was repopulated by Valdensians, and like
Speaker 1: the fourteen or fifteen hundreds, so they went all over
Speaker 1: the peninsula. The ones that remained in Piedamont were actually
Speaker 1: not all of them, but many of them were massacred
Speaker 1: in this event known as the Pedamont Easter, and that's
Speaker 1: the originions of that Staten Island community is they basically
Speaker 1: chased out of Piedamont during the Counter Reformation because the
Speaker 1: Duke of Savoy was like, I need all the people
Speaker 1: in my in my in my in my domains to
Speaker 1: be Catholic. And they actually have a really rich stats
Speaker 1: where they have a heritage society that kind of connects it.
Speaker 1: They went to Paraguay. There's a town in North Carolina
Speaker 1: called Valdez, right with Valdetsa. It's all settled by Waldensians.
Speaker 1: There's another town in Missouri that I went to called
Speaker 1: Monette or Monette investinating in French. It was also settled
Speaker 1: by Waldensians, right, and they were like trilingual. They would
Speaker 1: speak like a French dialect and like a Piedamonte's Italian
Speaker 1: dialect and obviously English because they were living in Monett.
Speaker 1: And you go to the cemetery there, it's really fascinating
Speaker 1: because some of the gravestones, I would say about fifty
Speaker 1: percent of them were French, twenty five percent of them
Speaker 1: or Italian, and then you can see there were some
Speaker 1: Anglos or whatever buried in the mix as well, so
Speaker 1: they really complicate this history in places like Texas. They
Speaker 1: were actually the first people to establish as Italian communities
Speaker 1: of Galvelson I'm thinking about right now, where there's I
Speaker 1: was reading stories of you have this long term Waldensian
Speaker 1: Northern Italians who were then having these Southern Italians work
Speaker 1: for them in Galveston, Texas. So they demonstrate that this
Speaker 1: history is a lot more complex, layered and nuanced than
Speaker 1: many of us like to think. It's basically, you know,
Speaker 1: grandma and Grandpa left Italy, they came to America, they
Speaker 1: were good Catholics, they learned in language, and they assimilate it.
Speaker 1: When in reality it's it's much more and more complicated
Speaker 1: than what people want to really engage with. Not everyone,
Speaker 1: of course, but there are some people you know specifically,
Speaker 1: and you know, positions of power want to kind of
Speaker 1: simplify the story, you know, well.
Speaker 3: You know, and it's interesting and as I was doing
Speaker 3: my research, and as you mentioned, this incredible diversity, but
Speaker 3: I think Italian Americans run into the early on had
Speaker 3: the same mindset that that sometimes people today used to
Speaker 3: denigrate migrants today is they're only here to make money.
Speaker 3: To send back to their families, and they're going to
Speaker 3: go back anyway after the successful Well that was the
Speaker 3: from what my research I did, that was very much
Speaker 3: the early Italian mindset. They were going to come here,
Speaker 3: they were going to make some money, They're going to
Speaker 3: send them back because it was needed, and then when
Speaker 3: they were well off, they were going to go back too.
Speaker 3: So it's not so different. And again that's kind of
Speaker 3: used as a cudgel by right wingers today against migrants
Speaker 3: as well. They don't want to assimilate to this country,
Speaker 3: they just want to take from it. And early on
Speaker 3: that that kind of changed as Italian Americans really contributed.
Speaker 3: But in the beginning they were just interested in kind
Speaker 3: of taking true.
Speaker 1: Every single talking point you see today used against specifically
Speaker 1: Latin American immigrants, it's the same exact thing you'd see
Speaker 1: us against the times. They don't want to assimilate and
Speaker 1: learn their culture, right, Well, there's some truth to that.
Speaker 1: Something like I think it was only thirty percent of
Speaker 1: Italian American men in nineteen twenty New York New English
Speaker 1: the immigrant class, and something like eleven percent of woman.
Speaker 1: You didn't need to learn a language, you lived in
Speaker 1: an enclave. Everyone spoken languages, don't need to learn it.
Speaker 1: Of the in the the the rotational aspect of the
Speaker 1: diaspora amongst Italians is much more higher. Fifty one percent
Speaker 1: went back between eighteen eighty and nineteen twenty four. Fifty percent.
Speaker 1: That's the majority of them, right, and in many ways
Speaker 1: they were much less. The newer immigrants coming in now
Speaker 1: are much more assimilatory, right, despite the fact that there's language,
Speaker 1: there's late help with language and stuff. They're much more
Speaker 1: assimilatory than what Italians were. There was way more. There's
Speaker 1: something like one hundred and something Italian newspapers in the country.
Speaker 1: There's very few Spanish speaking newspapers, and you had but
Speaker 1: two major medior television networks. The thing with the remittances, right,
Speaker 1: So the point I'm trying saying is not everyone came
Speaker 1: here to assimilate, and it's it's not just became we
Speaker 1: learned English and that was it. Some people did thata.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's true. If there's different people, they have
Speaker 1: different experiences. There's no one thing sets all, but there
Speaker 1: are these general trends that we can find. That's the
Speaker 1: thing is remittance is one of my one of the
Speaker 1: most fascinating characters in the town of Marriican history. Is
Speaker 1: this guy named Giovanni Scabo, who is I posted about
Speaker 1: him yesterday if you saw who's really checkered in in
Speaker 1: how I feel about him. But I generally speaking, I
Speaker 1: like him. Problematic guy. But one of his jobs was
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenties or nineteen thirties, is he worked for
Speaker 1: this bank and he went all all over the country
Speaker 1: and he was basically trying to get Italians in these
Speaker 1: various communities South America to use this bank to send
Speaker 1: the remittances back to Italy. And I'll tell a personal
Speaker 1: story about that. My great grandfather, right, and talking about
Speaker 1: some tropes. Right, my great grandfather who came from Abruzzo.
Speaker 1: They were ten in farmers, right, They were landless, Contentini.
Speaker 1: They came to America. They went to a dry county
Speaker 1: upstate Pennsylvania, and you can look on a map, Dray
Speaker 1: County con point exactly wherever it is by bull of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He worked in the mind and then he bootlegged Grappa
Speaker 1: because the dry county and liquor was a commodity. What
Speaker 1: did he do He sent it back to his father
Speaker 1: in Italy. Who was able to buy a farm, which
Speaker 1: was the original attempt for many. Of course, some people
Speaker 1: came and wanted to become American, want to assimilate, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But there's not one size fit all. And this is
Speaker 1: not an uncommon an uncommon trend. You go to any
Speaker 1: southern Italian village and you will hear a story. My
Speaker 1: grandfather went there and came back from broughtland. My uncle
Speaker 1: went there, went back and came along and bought land.
Speaker 1: A big reason why a lot of Italians able to
Speaker 1: come here post war, after after nineteen forty five, it's
Speaker 1: because they've had their parents were born in America and
Speaker 1: then they went back and therefore their kids have American citizenship.
Speaker 1: My barber in my neighborhood was raised in Italy, born
Speaker 1: in Italy. His father was an American citizen. He was
Speaker 1: able to easily get here in nineteen sixty eight, ninety
Speaker 1: sixty nine. But back to my great grandfather, he's able
Speaker 1: to buy a farm in Italy and then he raised
Speaker 1: his family and Italy right. He didn't come to America.
Speaker 1: Who lived in American dream. He came to America because
Speaker 1: wages were better and the opportunity was presented here, allowed
Speaker 1: him to buy land over there, and what did he do?
Speaker 1: He raises eleven kids in Italy, not in the United States. Right.
Speaker 1: My grandmother her American citizenship right, The quote like what
Speaker 1: we call it an anchor baby right was used in
Speaker 1: her arranged marriage. Right for her husband to come here
Speaker 1: and get a better opportunity than what was available in
Speaker 1: great Depression Italy. Kind of gives you an ideal that
Speaker 1: the fascists actually managed a great depression must work than
Speaker 1: the Americans did. But it just shows you how complex, right,
Speaker 1: And there isn't a single story. And again, of course
Speaker 1: there are people who came here and wanted to learn
Speaker 1: the language and assimily, but that's not everyone. And that
Speaker 1: was even the majority. That fifty one percent went back,
Speaker 1: and many made multiple trips and.
Speaker 3: Interesting and as you mentioned, in each family different. My
Speaker 3: family from the South, Okay, my grandfather was very important
Speaker 3: to assimilate, and I don't believe he ever went back.
Speaker 3: My grandmother would take vacations to go back, but my grandfather,
Speaker 3: I don't believe any ever went back. And I think
Speaker 3: I mentioned the story, and I'm very sad about it.
Speaker 3: We lost the language because he was so adamant about assimilating.
Speaker 3: He would not allow Italian to be spoken in the house.
Speaker 3: It was English first, in the Italian as the second language.
Speaker 3: So right there, just between you and I, it's a
Speaker 3: dissimilar some similarities, but also dissimilar. But I think you
Speaker 3: also brought up another great point. There are many many
Speaker 3: famous Italians internationally famous you know, Columbus being one. We've
Speaker 3: debated that we'll save that for another day. But people
Speaker 3: like Leia PoCA, Enrico Fermi, the great physicist, These are
Speaker 3: certainly more commonly known internationally. But who are some of
Speaker 3: the other Italians and particularly Italian Americans of note that
Speaker 3: we should know about.
Speaker 1: There's a lot that we should know about that we
Speaker 1: don't know about. To me, number one is Carlo Tresca.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with him?
Speaker 3: No? Please?
Speaker 1: In like night. Yeah. Tresca is actually from the village
Speaker 1: next to where my grandmother grew up, in Simona, Abruzzo.
Speaker 1: He was a synaclist in Italy. He comes from this
Speaker 1: minor noble family. They were landowners. He gets radicalized by
Speaker 1: the railroad there and he's basically arrested for organizing workers
Speaker 1: in rebel rousing nant to say things like unions to
Speaker 1: some places were legal for a long time. He ends
Speaker 1: up coming to America and he ends up becoming the
Speaker 1: leading organizer and radical of Italian Americans. If there was
Speaker 1: any strike evolving Italian Americans in the nineteeneens, you bet
Speaker 1: he was there. What he did. And I'll give you
Speaker 1: two stories quick because we only have so much time.
Speaker 1: One is there's this textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite stories to put the share where primarily
Speaker 1: it's a multi racial, multi ethnic workforce, when Italian Americans
Speaker 1: are or component of this. They win this strike, right,
Speaker 1: but the state punishes these three leaders Joseph attour Our
Speaker 1: Tour Driven, Givonetti, and Angelo Bruno. The state wants to
Speaker 1: punish the three main Italian American organizers of this strike,
Speaker 1: and the strike wins by the way, the workers that
Speaker 1: want to strike in a tax thousand lords, they win
Speaker 1: one of the few cases of a massive strike winning
Speaker 1: at that time period because it was so rare. Then,
Speaker 1: so the state punishes the leaders, right. They basically try
Speaker 1: to pin a murder that the police killed this woman
Speaker 1: in a lo pizzo and they said, oh, he's basically
Speaker 1: necessary for the crime. So what happens is the International
Speaker 1: Workers of the World at IWW who are organizing to
Speaker 1: strike called in Tresca, right, And what Tresca is able
Speaker 1: to do is basically reorganize the workers after they just
Speaker 1: want to strike, and got them to go on strike
Speaker 1: again after all the demands we already met, in order
Speaker 1: to release those three men that were basically being punished
Speaker 1: by the state because they organized a strike. We should
Speaker 1: think the state in the industrial class often not all
Speaker 1: them at every moment, but often work together. Great story
Speaker 1: of Tresco. It's in Butte Montana, right, one of those
Speaker 1: I think, either Butte Montana or the Massabi Iron Range,
Speaker 1: one of those places. It's up in that area in
Speaker 1: the deeper mid parts of the Midwest, when he's organizing
Speaker 1: Italian workers there and these strike breakers are following them
Speaker 1: in the truck doctor in so Tresca gets out of
Speaker 1: the truck and he goes, they're here from me, So
Speaker 1: I'll walk beside the truck and you guys will be
Speaker 1: all right. And someone saw this and they go Corraggio, Courage, courage,
Speaker 1: because this is the type of guy that is. And
Speaker 1: as the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, goes on when
Speaker 1: the American labor movement is really squashed by the Red
Speaker 1: Scare of nineteen eighteen nineteen ninety. He ends up becoming
Speaker 1: history of the whole other story. He ends up becoming
Speaker 1: the leading Italian American anti fascist, especially in New York City,
Speaker 1: and he leads the fight against Mussolini's attempt to fascisticize
Speaker 1: Italian Americans completely forgotten from the Italian American cultures. Like
Speaker 1: guys to me that if you're gonna be, you to
Speaker 1: pick one person this moment that needs to be re
Speaker 1: champion fast him. There's many other fantastic people as well,
Speaker 1: but we have some. We only have so much, so
Speaker 1: much time on our hands.
Speaker 3: Well, again a good good segue. How would you describe
Speaker 3: the Italian ethos? And again that's a tough question because
Speaker 3: it's it's not a monolith. And if you know Italy
Speaker 3: at all, and we've spoken of that, sometimes the town
Speaker 3: the very next town over is like, oh, we don't
Speaker 3: talk to them, we speak a different language, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So it's incredibly diverse. But but what are some of
Speaker 3: the common themes that are that we might call the
Speaker 3: Italian head or mindset? Ethos oof.
Speaker 1: I hate general generalizations. To me, I think it's the
Speaker 1: one thing is that our families left Italy or the
Speaker 1: Italian region, right, And that's the kind of biggest thing
Speaker 1: that we share, because even our senses of Italiny, our
Speaker 1: italianess are different based on when A great example, and
Speaker 1: you know a great example of this is I was
Speaker 1: with my barber who I mentioned earlier, who was born
Speaker 1: an American citizen in Italy because his father was an
Speaker 1: American citizen who repatriated back to Italy. He was cutting
Speaker 1: my hair, and I'm multi generational on one side, on
Speaker 1: fifth generation, and on my mother's side, I'm like third
Speaker 1: fourth because my grandmother was born here though she was
Speaker 1: raised in Italy and then she came back instead. That
Speaker 1: make her first or second I don't really know, but
Speaker 1: I'm multi generational. I'm definitely not first generation, and I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not second generation, and my third generation is questionable,
Speaker 1: and at most fifth I have one great grandparent that
Speaker 1: was born here. So I'm really this on my augulation
Speaker 1: of Italian in American, my first language English. I grew
Speaker 1: up Blue Geen, CD's rock and roll, that kind of stuff, disco,
Speaker 1: So he was cutting my hair one day and he
Speaker 1: goes and he's off the boat. He came here in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, sixty and nine, one of those years, sixty seven,
Speaker 1: late sixties. He's cutting my hair and he's born and
Speaker 1: raised in Italy. Accent, makes his own wine, that kind
Speaker 1: of guy. And he goes, you sees a lot of
Speaker 1: guys coming in because already heard gentrifying. He goes, a
Speaker 1: lot of guys are coming into the neighborhood. Now you
Speaker 1: know that? And I go, yeah, isn't it a great
Speaker 1: you know, because we live in a neighborhood that's most
Speaker 1: of the Italians is eighty years old plus, right, they're older,
Speaker 1: and they go, yeah, it's it's nice, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we have more people to talk Italian with whatever. And
Speaker 1: he goes, not like us. I look over, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? He goes, you and I were different type
Speaker 1: of Italian, not like them. And I go, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? Not like them? You're born you were raising Italy.
Speaker 1: They're born and raised in Italy. He goes, they're different,
Speaker 1: they're different. So you know, even this guy, he it
Speaker 1: shows you how later layered it is and how and
Speaker 1: how how Tinian Americans relate to each other. Where you
Speaker 1: have this guy who's an immigrant from Italy, who's guys
Speaker 1: are from southern Italy too. They're not from like Veniczaueligoria,
Speaker 1: once from Realme, once from Naples. I know them. I
Speaker 1: don't wonder to listen to this, right, but he's associating himself,
Speaker 1: this long term Italian immigrant sees more of himself and
Speaker 1: someone like me than these recently arrived Italian immigrants. To me,
Speaker 1: that's the Italian American right there.
Speaker 3: Yes, we'll leave it at that. But you also mentioned
Speaker 3: something to you your travels to discover Italian America. What
Speaker 3: what spurred you to do that and what did you find?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm part of this organization called the Italian
Speaker 1: Enclaves Historical Society, founded by this guy, Ray Gerini, who
Speaker 1: was the very I was a very forward thinking Italian American.
Speaker 1: UH from Baybridge. We'll make sure that the neighborhood from Baybridge.
Speaker 1: He's also multi generational. His dad's off the boat and
Speaker 1: I think his mother's parents were born in Italy. And
Speaker 1: what he noticed was that a lot of Italians were
Speaker 1: leaving his neighborhood right Baybridge. Think John Travoltas had a
Speaker 1: night fever, but those of you at a certain age,
Speaker 1: my dad's My dad's of an age where that movie matters,
Speaker 1: so that means it matter to me growing up. And
Speaker 1: he started documenting Italians leaving these New York City neighborhoods
Speaker 1: and he's like, you know, obviously we can't stop it,
Speaker 1: but the least we can do is document it. And
Speaker 1: he then had the foresight to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: those other places they're leaving too, so let's document that
Speaker 1: as well, and he created this historical Society's a couple
Speaker 1: of members. It's me on the board, it's him from
Speaker 1: New York. There's this woman Jenna from Colorado, this guy
Speaker 1: dominic from Detroit, this other woman Dominique from Maryland, right,
Speaker 1: So we try to capture different parts of the country.
Speaker 1: So that's how I kind of got into it because
Speaker 1: I was talking to him and he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to document this stuff, and I was like, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I love the historian documents. Something designed, something there hasn't
Speaker 1: been something that I don't want to document. So that's
Speaker 1: how I originally got into this documentation of these Italian localities.
Speaker 1: And my girlfriend at the time, and to this question,
Speaker 1: you're asking me. Why I did this past winter. My
Speaker 1: girlfriend at that time is doing her PhD at University
Speaker 1: of Kansas. Now she's doing it abroad. Story from the
Speaker 1: day and when I went to visit her, I was like,
Speaker 1: we're right by Kansas City. There's a lot of Italians
Speaker 1: in Kansas City. And that kind of started my interest
Speaker 1: of Italian Americans in the heartland what I call it.
Speaker 1: So I ended up going to Italian settlements and Missouri
Speaker 1: all over Kansas, the huge that the south, the southeastern part, Nebraska, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. You want to make sure some specifics about
Speaker 1: each of.
Speaker 3: Them, please do we have We have some time I'd
Speaker 3: love to.
Speaker 1: Hear, I think, yeah, so I'll give you a general
Speaker 1: feel for all of them. Salim's worker way up from
Speaker 1: the top Omaha, primarily Sicilians pulling my leg, Yeah, a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot, like tens of thousands. Also community, by the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Soun's liviterally lodger is great. Some of the nicest people.
Speaker 1: I've actually kept in contact with quite a few of them.
Speaker 1: Some of the nicest people who haven't met right Midwestern
Speaker 1: nicest plus plus the Italian Italian American hospitality A great
Speaker 1: combination I think something like seventy five or sixty five
Speaker 1: percent of them are from the same few towns in Sicily,
Speaker 1: one of them being Carlatini. They just sistered it this
Speaker 1: year they celebrated through one hundredth anniversary of their local
Speaker 1: feasts Santa Lucia. And it's really a community there there there.
Speaker 1: It's really cool if if anyone that ever goes to Omaha,
Speaker 1: check out little Italy. And they used to own a
Speaker 1: bunch of steakhouses. Wow, only ones left. They still have
Speaker 1: two bakeries, they still have a hall, they still have
Speaker 1: a national parish. Right, it's still there's still a sense
Speaker 1: of it being in a community. Another one I went
Speaker 1: to was Kansas City. That one's really big and a
Speaker 1: little bit more dispersed. They still literally though shrinking, but
Speaker 1: they have some fantastic red sauce joints and some of
Speaker 1: the best Italian American food I've ever had, and I've
Speaker 1: been every Italian American food up and down the East coast.
Speaker 1: Right Kansas City. This is a place called Cascon. There's
Speaker 1: another place called Gaspers, just really fantastic. They're also primarily Sicilian,
Speaker 1: and what you find is a lot of those communities
Speaker 1: along the kind of Mississippi River came up through New Orleans,
Speaker 1: which was this huge port of entry for Sicilians. Again,
Speaker 1: these places aren't exclusively Sicilian, but the majority Sicilian. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned already, there's the Tanti town in Arkansas, primarily
Speaker 1: from northern Italy. Their community has this fascinating history where
Speaker 1: they originally came over as cotton farmers and they had
Speaker 1: horrible condition and this pre Spectro Bandini leads them out
Speaker 1: of this plantation called the Sunny Time Plantation to found
Speaker 1: county Town named after the Tonti brothers, who were the
Speaker 1: founders of Detroit in the French colonial period. But there's
Speaker 1: so much players it is amazing. I love it. I
Speaker 1: see your face right now right. And they're really famous
Speaker 1: wine growers and they still grow wine today. They still
Speaker 1: have Italian American restaurants there today, and they have a
Speaker 1: specialty of spaghetti and fried chicken. I loved it, they
Speaker 1: said already. I went to Monette, which was this which
Speaker 1: is community founded by Waldensians. They were from the Vallet
Speaker 1: Police in Piedmont. They first went to Uruguay. I think
Speaker 1: it was Uruguay. It was South America. They didn't like
Speaker 1: it and they ended up in Missouri. Unfortunately, there's not
Speaker 1: much of a tangible feeling of them left anymore. Contra
Speaker 1: to a place like Valves, which was settled by Valdensians
Speaker 1: in nineteen the eighteen nineties, which still felt very much
Speaker 1: and Monette not so much. I also went to Creb's, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: which is is Oklahoma's literally right. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: Italians working in the minds there. There's actually several cities,
Speaker 1: little tiny cities two three, five, you know, two to
Speaker 1: five thousand people that had a lot of Italians as crabs.
Speaker 1: There's I don't know many of their names right now,
Speaker 1: but there's multiple communities down there that were settled by Italians.
Speaker 1: But Crebs is really the hub. Still has several red
Speaker 1: sauce restaurants, and they have this local Italian American delicacy
Speaker 1: called lamb Fritz, which is fried sheep testicles. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: And what's great is there's this history of Italian and
Speaker 1: indigenous cooperation there where Italians and chalk tall Native Americans
Speaker 1: brewed beer together. And this Italian American restaurant called Pete's
Speaker 1: Place sells this thing called chalk Bear.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's Italian American restaurant where one of its specialties is
Speaker 1: homemade beer. Right, it's so layered in nuanced. There's a
Speaker 1: fantastic store there called Laveras and it's it's probably better
Speaker 1: than a lot of the Salama rias you'd have in Brooklyn. Fantastic.
Speaker 1: They're from a Broupson Piedamont to be able to go
Speaker 1: to the north and the in the south there. I've
Speaker 1: also went to South yeah, my southeastern Kansas, to a
Speaker 1: couple of communities there frontinac where Gammon and it's one
Speaker 1: of those places where it's definitely receding, but there's still
Speaker 1: some Italian presidence left. I went to a restaurant called
Speaker 1: a Napoli, but they call it Napoli. The food there
Speaker 1: was really good. There's a really cool deli called Pelucas
Speaker 1: that's this fantastic Neon sign. And I went to a
Speaker 1: fried chicken restaurant called Bartos, which was established by Italian
Speaker 1: Americans there were The history is interesting because it was
Speaker 1: the most Eugene Debs was the Socialist Party candidate supporting
Speaker 1: part of the country. It was like Ierentific. It was
Speaker 1: mostly Italians, right, It's a mixed but mostly Italians and
Speaker 1: places like Frontinac, but it was the most like Eugene
Speaker 1: Debs supporting localities in the country and all the mayors
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds and these heavily Italian American
Speaker 1: towns with all socialists. So it kind of gives you
Speaker 1: ideal that the history could be super layered. Right, we
Speaker 1: have a religious community, right, we have this like really
Speaker 1: super left wing community of minors. We have this time
Speaker 1: American community open in the steakhouses. So it's all, you know,
Speaker 1: it just shows you the kind of uh, what are they?
Speaker 1: What are those things called with the quilts, the mosaic
Speaker 1: American mosaic.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, well we certainly are everywhere. It's great to know.
Speaker 3: And you know, we we teased in the beginning, and
Speaker 3: we're gonna have to talk a little bit about pizza
Speaker 3: and the mafia. We have we have avoided stereotypes, but
Speaker 3: sometimes things become stereotypical because they have some basis in reality,
Speaker 3: and both pizza and the mafia are real and really
Speaker 3: associated with Italian Americans. So we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about that after the break. This has been absolutely terrific
Speaker 3: so far, so interesting. It's Italian American Heritage Month, and
Speaker 3: my guest is a scholar and Italian American historian, Steve Ceruli.
Speaker 3: And we'll be back with more Being Frank right after
Speaker 3: these commercial messages. Remember're going to talk pizza and the
Speaker 3: mafia gotta do it, so don't go away. Much more
Speaker 3: coming up on Being Frank right after this don't go away.
Speaker 2: Hudson River Radio dot com, Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 4: This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 5: This is Hudson River Radio dot com, Hudson River Radio
Speaker 5: dot com.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Being Frank, the Intelligent Conversation podcast. Thanks
Speaker 3: for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank Lebono and
Speaker 3: as always our engineer as mister Neil Richter. You know,
Speaker 3: we bring our audience a fresh topic every week and
Speaker 3: we stream from Hudson River Radio, which is located in
Speaker 3: beautiful and historic Stony Point, New York. Some Italian Americans
Speaker 3: up there as well. But remember you can catch any
Speaker 3: Being Frank anywhere you get your favorite podcasts, and because
Speaker 3: every Being Frank is archived, you can listen to any
Speaker 3: program anytime you like. Find the link to Being Frank
Speaker 3: on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our
Speaker 3: website Hudsonriverradio dot com. Just click and you're there. My
Speaker 3: guest is Italian American scholar Steve Ceruli. We've talked and
Speaker 3: generally avoided the stereotypes is often associated with Italians. But
Speaker 3: as I mentioned before the break, some things become stereotypes
Speaker 3: because they have a certain commonality within a culture, and
Speaker 3: that includes for most people, if certainly, if they think
Speaker 3: of Italians, it's fair enough to think of pizza. And
Speaker 3: because of the proliferation of gangster movies, it seems like
Speaker 3: almost every movie about an Italian American is about the
Speaker 3: mafia or a gangster. And we know there's so much
Speaker 3: more to it than that. But let's let's let's take
Speaker 3: them both apart a little bit, have some fun talking
Speaker 3: about it. Steve, I'll give you your choice. Which one do
Speaker 3: you want to talk about first? Pizza or or the
Speaker 3: mafia and the history of it and how it came
Speaker 3: about and how it became so ingrained in Italian culture.
Speaker 1: Which YouTube, Let's do the mafia first so we can
Speaker 1: finish with a nice note A pizza terrific.
Speaker 3: Great idea.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the mafia. What is again a
Speaker 3: very broad term I think, and you'll you'll clarify that
Speaker 3: there's not kind of there are a number of different
Speaker 3: things of organized crime that we tend to use under
Speaker 3: the umbrella of mafia. That's not the case. Break it
Speaker 3: down for us, please.
Speaker 1: I mean, which mafia are we talking about? We're talking
Speaker 1: about there you go, so we're talking about Nagaa. The
Speaker 1: mafia emerges with capitalism. I think there's something we really
Speaker 1: should think about, right. There is no mafia in Futal Italy, uh,
Speaker 1: mainly as to create these kind of like syndicates over
Speaker 1: the Orange tree. Now for the American case, I have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a complicated, uh take on it
Speaker 1: because I consider class as well. So obviously the mafia
Speaker 1: is organized crime right as simple as its organized crime
Speaker 1: ran by Italians and Italian Americans. There's different families who
Speaker 1: have different geographical territories. There's there's different mafias depending on
Speaker 1: what region vidally you're from. I'm not a I'm not
Speaker 1: particularly an expert on this history, and I know the
Speaker 1: basics of it. I understand it emerges out of East
Speaker 1: Harlem the way we think of like the the Mafia
Speaker 1: and the Godfather sense, and it emerges out of the
Speaker 1: relegating in East Harlem, and there's a war between your
Speaker 1: politans and the Sicilian. But I want to provide little
Speaker 1: any wants to take. So Carlo Tresca, who I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: had this term. It was something along the lines of
Speaker 1: like Camora Frominale, which he considered the mafia, the church
Speaker 1: and the Italian embassy. Right as is, three kind of
Speaker 1: oppressive forces within the Italian American community. And something we
Speaker 1: need to think about is the first people to exploit
Speaker 1: Italian Americans were usually other Italian Americans. And in the
Speaker 1: case of the mafia, that rings very true. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, right, that's one thing we have to
Speaker 1: reckon with. But on the flip side, this is a
Speaker 1: group of uneducated immigrants who lack social mobility, and joining
Speaker 1: a mafia family or a mafia crew in many ways
Speaker 1: provided them, right, these young Italian American men specifically access
Speaker 1: to social mobility which they would have been gate kept
Speaker 1: from in twentieth century and late nineteenth century American society.
Speaker 1: So it is kind of double edged sword where it
Speaker 1: does provide social mobility in an avenue that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: for these people, but at the same time, especially in
Speaker 1: the early decades, right, it becomes a little bit more
Speaker 1: complicated in the fifties and sixties, when it becomes more
Speaker 1: the thirties, forties and fifties when it become really more professional.
Speaker 1: But in the early era, right, the eighteen nineties, early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, it very much is about exploitating and oppressing
Speaker 1: other Italian Americans. Then it turns into with prohibition. Mainly
Speaker 1: it's kind of trade of liquors and alcohol. So I
Speaker 1: just think we should think about that when we talk
Speaker 1: about the mafia, and of course they're just exploited group
Speaker 1: of people, But at the same time, it was one
Speaker 1: of the few avenues available for working class Italian American
Speaker 1: men in a culture, right, in a culture that doesn't
Speaker 1: particularly provide access to education. In a society though that's
Speaker 1: not oppressing them completely, is hostile to their ethnicity, right
Speaker 1: in some places, their religion and certainly their language and
Speaker 1: cultural customs. What's available to you other than a life
Speaker 1: of crime? And we see this throughout history, right, really
Speaker 1: modern history, all over the place. Why is someone in
Speaker 1: a cartel, right, why is someone in the Russian mafia?
Speaker 1: Why is someone in whatever particularly crime group? You know,
Speaker 1: so you know before denouncing you know, of course we
Speaker 1: should say yeah, mafia is bad, but before before kind
Speaker 1: of having the simplistic understanding it's just bad guys doing
Speaker 1: bad things. Right, we should consider the positionality of the people.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You look at a place like East Harlem, right, where
Speaker 1: the mafia and American mafia really emergise the poorest community
Speaker 1: in New York City. Right, you don't have good education
Speaker 1: there in nineteen ten, nineteen eleven, nineteen twelve. What are
Speaker 1: you going to do for work? Do you want to
Speaker 1: be a work on the docks getting paid crap? So
Speaker 1: you then continue to have your family live in the
Speaker 1: same tenement that you grew up in, or are you
Speaker 1: going to do something like spell liquor run the numbers?
Speaker 1: And then again, I'm not saying when you celebrate these things,
Speaker 1: I'm just being honest about understand what it is. Right.
Speaker 1: It provided social mobility for a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: for many Italian Americans they felt and in some cases
Speaker 1: very much true, that this was the only avenue that
Speaker 1: they could provide for themselves and their families. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that as a defense, right, but I'm saying
Speaker 1: we should be honest about that, and I find it
Speaker 1: kind of irkresome when you have a lot of these.
Speaker 6: College educated uh, college educated uh in high level in
Speaker 6: terms of economic level, Italian American like denouncing mafia movies
Speaker 6: and and and I'm kind of running away from that.
Speaker 1: The working class origins right of that. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because they're denouncing this places like people like Coppola, and
Speaker 1: and and and Scorsese, who are kind of the major
Speaker 1: Italian American artistic figures. So it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: double like hold up your nose situation where you're denying
Speaker 1: this history that actually exists and you're taking crops, taking
Speaker 1: crap literally on uh, two of the most prominent Italian
Speaker 1: American artists. So and again this is not to celebrate
Speaker 1: the Mafia, but this is to be honest about the
Speaker 1: actual function of it.
Speaker 3: Well, and I guess and I understand it too, but
Speaker 3: it's it's what is what is the fascination? I have
Speaker 3: my own thoughts on it, and I think part because
Speaker 3: part of the strength of the Mafia is it plays
Speaker 3: on some of the strongest cultural aspects of being Italian,
Speaker 3: which is family. And like even people would say the
Speaker 3: strength of a movie like The Godfather is it's. Yes,
Speaker 3: it is a quote unquote gangster movie, but it's also
Speaker 3: a family drama as well. And I think in a
Speaker 3: sense it's kind of almost the perversion and your thoughts
Speaker 3: of it, where the mafia, an organized crime uses something
Speaker 3: very sacred in a way to cement their strength and power.
Speaker 3: And I think that provides fascination often to other people
Speaker 3: who see it as as I said, like a Tony
Speaker 3: Soprano's he's despicable in some ways and he's admirable in others.
Speaker 3: So there is that kind of balance. I think that's
Speaker 3: what you're trying to hint at. It strike there, there
Speaker 3: is that balance between good and evil, and again, depending
Speaker 3: on what situation you're in, you could choose one or
Speaker 3: the other.
Speaker 1: I'm a little less cynical. I think they actually believe,
Speaker 1: you know, in their social systems and and and their
Speaker 1: codes and all that kind of stuff. I generally charitable.
Speaker 1: Very few people am I actually is in the club.
Speaker 1: It was usually people with a lot of power, not
Speaker 1: the people on the bottom. I mean, yeah, like it
Speaker 1: provides a sense of meaning for some people, you know,
Speaker 1: I can draw meaning from this, and when you don't
Speaker 1: have any kind of strong alternatives, right. And this is
Speaker 1: also a failure in our part to provide Italian American alternatives.
Speaker 1: Where are those people that are complaining about the Mafia movies?
Speaker 1: Where's their counter movie?
Speaker 3: Interesting that you mentioned that there's a movie out now recently,
Speaker 3: I shouldn't say very recently about Mother Cabrini. Who people are,
Speaker 3: whether you're religious or not. It's a brilliant film about
Speaker 3: a brilliant woman. And yet it but it made me
Speaker 3: have some average you know, it certainly didn't make a
Speaker 3: youthe splash on the movie scene.
Speaker 1: It wasn't made by Italians though. The point, the point
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is, you know, the complain about
Speaker 1: these movies that are being made a fine, you're completely
Speaker 1: can complain about it. Go make something else, tell a
Speaker 1: different story. Why not make a movie about Pietro Mandini?
Speaker 1: Why not make a movie about Carlo Tretska? Right, And
Speaker 1: you're so worried about denouncing the criminals in your own
Speaker 1: committee or about the larger criminals in our society. It's like, again,
Speaker 1: it's not like a defense, but it's just like it
Speaker 1: feels like a very selective kind of punch down in
Speaker 1: some ways. And this is not to defend them because
Speaker 1: you know, again, the first people to exploit Italian Americans
Speaker 1: are the Tynan Americans, and the black can certainly exploit it.
Speaker 1: But I just find this kind of this kind of
Speaker 1: hypocrisy and the people that are so outraged, uh, who
Speaker 1: are so outraged by that? I just find it, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I personally don't want to be represented by
Speaker 1: the mafia, but I certainly understand why a working class
Speaker 1: Italian American from a place like the South Bronx already
Speaker 1: East Harlem or choose to go to that life.
Speaker 3: All right, well, now we've got to talk about pizza.
Speaker 3: We're gonna talk on the upside. Everybody skips like everybody
Speaker 3: he likes pizza?
Speaker 1: What what?
Speaker 3: What is the history? Again, all pizza is not equal
Speaker 3: and depending on where it comes from, et cetera. I
Speaker 3: think most of us again here in New York, the
Speaker 3: New York Metropolitan area tends to gravitate towards the more
Speaker 3: Neapolitan style of pizza, if I'm correct, But why don't
Speaker 3: you tell us there? What is the history of pizza?
Speaker 3: How important is it in Italian culture? And Italians kind
Speaker 3: of look at it a little bit differently than Americans
Speaker 3: and Italian Americans do I'll throw the ball in your
Speaker 3: court with all of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I love pizza. Podcast is over no.
Speaker 3: Enough enough.
Speaker 1: So the pizza that we think adam it I would argue,
Speaker 1: has like kind of two origins. Of course, people of
Speaker 1: making flatbreads with stuff on pizza, all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: in ancient Roman times, right, Greeks are putting flatbreads in
Speaker 1: Romans are making flatbreads, but they kind of they use
Speaker 1: like that. I think it's Aristotle, like the form, like
Speaker 1: this is the perfect ideal of a chair, right, the
Speaker 1: perfect ideal of like the pizza is how we know
Speaker 1: it emerges out of Naples, right, and there's the legend
Speaker 1: of the queen coming down and the birth of the
Speaker 1: margarity the pizza. But really it's his street food of
Speaker 1: the working class of Naples. And the way we think
Speaker 1: of it today is Neopolitan immigrants in a place like
Speaker 1: New York recreating this Neopolitan street food that they had
Speaker 1: in Naples. Now that's kind of like the very general
Speaker 1: gist official of pizza's Neopolitan dish, right, But other places
Speaker 1: have made flatbreads and pizzas that were different all throughout
Speaker 1: of the league. For many, many centuries and for a
Speaker 1: long time. But the pizza as we know it today
Speaker 1: is also in many ways of product of the asparas.
Speaker 1: So something like tomatoes aren't just in Italy, right, they
Speaker 1: were part of the Colombian exchange. If the year was
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, you were much more people in America knew
Speaker 1: about pizza percentage wives than Italy because it was such
Speaker 1: a regional Neapolitan Neopolitan dish, right. It's the reason why
Speaker 1: you don't go to a place like Milan or other
Speaker 1: large cities like Biscara, for example, even in the South,
Speaker 1: and you don't have pizzerias from like eighteen ninety or
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, nineteen fifteen, right, a lot of them. It
Speaker 1: becomes more popular in Italy nationally after the Second World War.
Speaker 1: And there's a really good historian and I can't remember
Speaker 1: his name now, he's a great podcast and he talks
Speaker 1: a lot about kind of debunking these kind of mysts
Speaker 1: of like a national Italian cuisine, and that Italians going
Speaker 1: back and forth between the US and Italy are really
Speaker 1: what helps set national cuisines with things like pizza, but
Speaker 1: it has this Neopolitan origin and in places like New
Speaker 1: York and New Haven. Right, it kind of transforms into
Speaker 1: our modern sense from this kind of nice and fork
Speaker 1: eating squishy street food through like crispy, charred, really cheesy.
Speaker 1: You know, you go to Italy, they don't have that
Speaker 1: much cheese under pizza.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a different thing, and they eat it differently
Speaker 3: as they often. I mean, whereas we tend to have
Speaker 3: it as a meal in and of itself, they'll have
Speaker 3: it as a part of a meal or a snack
Speaker 3: or a little It's their approach to it is a
Speaker 3: little bit different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this this leads to a larger question.
Speaker 1: What is Italian food? It's you know, it's what Italians
Speaker 1: will be making and eating, right, It's what they had
Speaker 1: access to, changing based on their material conditions, based on
Speaker 1: their wealth, based on based on the the the fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables and grains that are available to them. I
Speaker 1: had a really interesting Oma Hostyle pizza while I was there,
Speaker 1: and it was it was it was like a spincione,
Speaker 1: you know that is It's like it's like a Sicilian
Speaker 1: dish with bread crumbs on it. It's like a pizza, right,
Speaker 1: It's like a Sicilian type of pizza. But in Omaha
Speaker 1: they had omahas all this pizza that I never saw
Speaker 1: anywhere else, and it was taste like with Spincione, had
Speaker 1: the eration like the since Fione, but instead of having
Speaker 1: bread crumbs on top, which is what Sincione has, it
Speaker 1: had chopped meat.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: What's available in large numbers, in large quantity in Omaha
Speaker 1: beef and cattle right Omaha, you think of all how
Speaker 1: you think snakes out. They had access to cattle and cheaply.
Speaker 1: So what did they do. They invented this type of
Speaker 1: pizza Sicilian style because it's squared right, because they're from Sicily,
Speaker 1: and they put chopped meat on top in a way
Speaker 1: that you see it's from shone with breadcrumbs on top.
Speaker 1: I love it to me, It's fantastic. You know what
Speaker 1: Italian food is, what the talient to making?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. And the food is a reflection of
Speaker 3: the culture as it is in almost every single case.
Speaker 3: And I think we mentioned that the last time we spoke.
Speaker 3: The first time when I was a very young man,
Speaker 3: went to Italy and went north first, and I couldn't
Speaker 3: order off the menu. I didn't know any of the
Speaker 3: things because I'm Southern and I said, okay, I can
Speaker 3: have this that I look at the menu. What is this?
Speaker 3: I don't even know what this is. So once again
Speaker 3: the very very layered and nuanced. It's it's it's not
Speaker 3: a monolith. One last question before we closed, Steve, why
Speaker 3: is it important to have heritage heritage months? Why is
Speaker 3: it important to continue? I mean, we all want to
Speaker 3: be we're all Americans and et cetera. But every month
Speaker 3: we honor another another group. Is it important? And if so,
Speaker 3: why is it important that we continue these things?
Speaker 1: So there's a whole lot of you know, like copie responses,
Speaker 1: Oh tradition and where and how and how long honoring
Speaker 1: ancestors that's cool and all. But to me, I look
Speaker 1: at it, you know whatever, I'm not going to make
Speaker 1: funny I have. I have my ancestors hanging up all
Speaker 1: over my walls. I have my great grandparents hanging up
Speaker 1: literally in my living room. Beautiful wedding ship photo, fantastic
Speaker 1: for nineteen twenty four. But for me, I look at
Speaker 1: it as a month to critically reflect, right and to
Speaker 1: really deeply think about this history and cultural and the
Speaker 1: process is behind that, not as like a blind celebration
Speaker 1: though we should celebrate, right. I'm certainly not afraid to celebrate.
Speaker 1: But I'm not like, oh, we need to be dot
Speaker 1: or and sour, right, but a critical celebration. Right, What
Speaker 1: does it actually mean to be an Italian American? Why
Speaker 1: did my family actually Italy? What type of experiences did
Speaker 1: they have? Why did we move to this place over
Speaker 1: that place? Why did we eat this and not that?
Speaker 1: Why did we go into those jobs? So for me,
Speaker 1: I I'm for this. I like having heritage months. I
Speaker 1: like having months where we can reflect, right, because America
Speaker 1: is very multicultural and we should celebrate that multicultures and
Speaker 1: Italy very multicultural. So for me, it's I look as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to critically reflect on a group that is
Speaker 1: very much part of the American fabric. You go anywhere
Speaker 1: in the country, you're going to find pizza.
Speaker 3: Well, keeping within our theme, I'm good to say, Grace, Mile,
Speaker 3: Steve Surly, thank you very much for joining us and
Speaker 3: being frank here on our program today. It was just great.
Speaker 3: I again, every time I have you one, I learned
Speaker 3: more and more. And I'm an Italian American and I
Speaker 3: still learn more from you all the time. Bravo.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Of course, we also spend orfer special thanks to our
Speaker 3: listeners because they take some time and their busy days
Speaker 3: to give us a voice in their lives. Remember, we
Speaker 3: offer a fresh topic every week and you can catch
Speaker 3: us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcast. It
Speaker 3: includes apples, Spotify, iHeartRadio and all the others. Check us
Speaker 3: out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page. Like us
Speaker 3: and leave us a comment, and we also ask you
Speaker 3: to consider sharing being Frank with others. They always leave
Speaker 3: you with two last little things. A kind of a
Speaker 3: quote that I think is appropriate in some music, and
Speaker 3: the quote I'm going to give it to you an
Speaker 3: Italian and I'm going to try to do it slowly.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful language and pronunciation is key melio solo,
Speaker 3: ke maale a campagnato, which means better alone than in
Speaker 3: bad company. Okay, And I think hopefully we're not a
Speaker 3: bad company for you today. And to enjoyed our program,
Speaker 3: we got some closing music again from one of my
Speaker 3: friends and another Italian American, Bobby Deblasio, and it's called
Speaker 3: Hidden Virtues Engineer the Mailman near Neil Richter. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: Frank Lebonna. We hope to have you join us on
Speaker 3: the next being Frank. We're the only way to be
Speaker 3: is frank.
Speaker 7: Thanks again everyone, Why so sad.
Speaker 1: Is almost common?
Speaker 4: You're in and vertues have suddenly become strong. And as
Speaker 4: for the mename that makes it the ysty Your questionensis
Speaker 4: written in past him take a heady straight to the line.
Speaker 4: Revery wishes back of it. There is no grea to
Speaker 4: be up.
Speaker 1: This time.
Speaker 4: I know we got it. Life is too short, skinny
Speaker 4: shorter every day. Tell me a good sport. Chase your
Speaker 4: demons away time maybe running out, run not so fast
Speaker 4: the other reasonable doubt there's still time to make it.
Speaker 4: Lie to take a long bye. We heading straight to
Speaker 4: the line your repre oasis by comment, there is no dread.
Speaker 3: To be up.
Speaker 1: This time.
Speaker 4: I know we've got it bad. You won't have to
Speaker 4: cry down anything about you can do without it. You
Speaker 4: won't have to worry about anything about it, not about it.
Speaker 4: You won't have to show down thing that talk about it.
Speaker 4: You don't have to worry about anything by some one.
Speaker 4: When you say before the subject change, you can't do
Speaker 4: the conclusion. It's better off to be a strange with
Speaker 4: no morrow commitment. Don't cross the band at the end
Speaker 4: of your mortality, maybe the only one to take out
Speaker 4: Longa by heading straight to the line. You refre wishes
Speaker 4: my command. There is no Drea to be up.
Speaker 1: This time.
Speaker 4: I know we've got it made to take on the line.
Speaker 4: We're any straight to the light, you refre wishes my command.
Speaker 4: There is no dream.
Speaker 1: To be up.
Speaker 2: This time.
Speaker 4: I know we've got it.
Speaker 2: Hudson River Radio dot com