Who is writing the real stories of Italian American life?

Amidst the uproar generated by the latest controversy over Italian American stereotypes in the media, one of the most disturbing aspects of this issue is being overlooked. Sadly, the many authentic voices depicting Italian Americans are going unheard. The Italian American stories that do get the most attention are fakes, and this cultural fraud is being prolonged because it makes a lot of money for a lot of powerful people in both Hollywood and New York.

That many of the stories of Italian American life are often told in the mass media by non-Italians is cause for deep concern in the Italian American community, and I think this is perhaps the element that is implicitly most distressing to us. Consider the broad appeal of popular entertainment such as “Moonstruck,” “Saturday Night Fever,” “Grease,” and, of course, “The Sopranos” - to my knowledge, these scripts were not penned by Italian Americans. (A notable exception is Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky movies although the Italian American cultural background is negligible.)

As Richard Gambino has written in “The Crisis of Italian American Identity,” when mainstream society holds dominant myths about a subculture, that group’s self-understanding is distorted to the extent of the strength of those artificial cultural myths. The mafia myth seems ineradicable, and it so powerful that it distorts Italian Americans view of themselves. This is reflected by the degree of popularity of Francis Coppola’s Godfather films as well as the books by Mario Puzo among many Italian Americans as well as the larger society as a whole. However, one could create a related category: entertainment masquerading as genuine art for the purpose of making a profit but acceptable to most Italian Americans because many of us, like many Americans in general, may secretly admire the outlaw, especially if he/she is at the same time recognizably

one of us.

Consequently, the Italian American community must become more assertive about telling their own real stories and more openly supportive of those who do, in particular novelists and filmmakers since they have the most widespread influence. Why has this support been lacking in the past? Why has it grown weaker as Italian Americans in general have become more prosperous and well educated?

Why hasn’t the Italian American community - especially the legions of college educated professionals and intellectuals - lent more of their support to the first generation writers such as Pietro DiDonato and John Fante, as well as third or fourth generation writers, that is, contemporary authors like Tony Ardizzone and Jay Parini? How many Italian Americans outside of academe even recognize these names?

To some extent, I can understand why assimilation held such a high priority for my parents, who grew up in the ethnically diverse East End of Hartford, Connecticut and raised my sisters and me in the suburbs. Economic stability and material success were the top priorities for a generation raised during the Great Depression. However, this Assimilation Syndrome, which began with the first wave of Italian immigrants and continues to the present day, is presumably the root cause of cultural euthanasia and the main reason for the minimization of the Italian language in America (try to find a public school that offers it), but that’s another essay.

More to the point, although I can understand why working class Italian American families, whose main concern is survival, may place their cultural heritage on the back burner, I’m dismayed by the number of Italian American artists who are willing to do the same thing. Whenever Italian American directors make movies, from Capra to Minnelli, to Coppolla and Scorsese, they use mainstream archetypes (Mr. Smith) or fall back on the cultural stereotypes (Vito Corleone). Driven most likely by the profit motive and caught up in Hollywood’s homogenization machine, these talented storytellers have forfeited an opportunity to make their own wonderful and uniquely Italian American movies with the freedom of Fellini, DeSica, and Antonioni.

I’m equally disheartened by the scores of Italian American novelists who have opted for the mainstream culture and the promise of mega profits from the corporate-owned word-packing industry (i.e., large commercial publishers), and I hereby reproach them (rather audaciously, I admit) for severing their deep European Italian roots and grafting themselves onto the wrong literary tree. I assert that even those writers who grew up without any or only minimal exposure to Italian culture would be even greater artists if they now embraced their natural soil, though I’d be hard pressed to explain exactly how I know this. It is part of every true writer’s responsibility to teach others about their cultural history, and to do this one must know it oneself.

Unfortunately, most Italian Americans are unaware of their rich literary heritage. When most of us think about Italian American writers the names of Mario Puzo and Gay Talese come immediately to mind. Yet there are hundreds of lesser known writers, from Pietro Di Donato (his novel, Christ in Concrete, was an instant bestseller when it was first published in 1939) to Jerre Mangione (Mount Allegro, A Memoir of Italian American Life, 1942) to Tony Ardizzone (In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, 2000), all equally deserving of our attention, whose unique perspective on Italian American life is as genuine as it is complex.

Why does this phenomenon exist in the Italian American community? Perhaps it is rooted in the cultural insecurity of our immigrant ancestors who, for reasons best known to them, were in a hurry to shed their old world customs and their native language as quickly as possible. For the second generation, my father’s generation, the Italian heritage was embarrassing at best and anathema at worst, and they strove to distance themselves speedily from their immigrant provenance - this desire was intensified, no doubt, by the despicable behavior of Mussolini’s Fascists. In any case, it seems that in the 1950’s the real Italian American heritage got diluted down to the sugar and water of popular entertainers such as Connie Francis, Annette Funicello, Jimmy Durante, Perry Como, Dean Martin and others - good entertainers but not ethnically interesting or significant - while the mobster sub-sub-culture, virulent and colorful, was magnified and embraced by the mainstream media with very little fuss from most hard-working good- citizen Italian Americans proud of Frank Sinatra’s public persona and ready to dismiss his possible underworld connections as the price of fame. The middle-class Italian American community had withdrawn into the suburbs grateful to have escaped from the vicissitudes and confinement of their urban neighborhoods (only to regret this and reminisce about them later). The Italian American intellectuals of the 1950’s and 60’s, such as poets John Ciardi, Gregory Corso and Diane diPrima, were busy with other concerns, presumably.

Why do the authentic voices of Italian American culture have so much trouble being heard today? Popular culture and the mass media must share some of the blame for this. Everyone knows there is a fascination for evil in human nature, but to pander to this is unconscionable. (Shakespeare may offer us villains but counterbalances them with admirable characters.) Mobsterism makes money for Hollywood, and movies magnify everything out of proportion.

However, another culprit is the Italian American culture itself which has always

encouraged a kind of broad-spectrum omerta, the unspoken code of keeping quiet about our personal problems and our intimate feelings. Silence and stoicism are virtues instilled in us from day one. Children and grandchildren of Italian immigrants were taught not to speak openly about family matters or personal concerns. We must put on a beautiful face, la bella figura, for the outside world. Therefore, in the past, Italian American authors and other artists who might be so bold as to express their real feelings, who revealed the true stories about their families, would be viewed by some members of the Italian American community as turncoats. They knew they would be shunned, and their work would go unsupported. In the worst case, they could be ex-communicated from their families and their truths denied. Better to use the mainstream stereotypes, thus playing the Hollywood game for enormous profit while maintaining our silence about the real Italian American experience. Those books that did tell the truth in the form of memoirs, for example, Mangione’s Mount Allegro, were of interest mostly to sociologists - until now. The growing popularity of autobiographical works by writers such as Louise De Salvo and Regina Berreca may indicate the beginnings of a sea-change.

I am compelled to assert my own truths about my cultural heritage partly because of the distortions in the media, and this may be the reason the Italian American community is undergoing a shift towards greater openness. Ironically, now that most Italian Americans consider themselves fully assimilated, the third and fourth generations may feel more secure, more confident, and possibly more willing to lend their ears and their support to the authentic voices emanating from the cultural margins. I hope at some point in their intellectual development the younger generation will be ignited by a curiosity about the immigrant phenomenon and begin to wonder about the long journey from small Italian villages to the American suburbs.

It’s not enough to decry the media stereotypes. Italian Americans must assert their love and respect for their own cultural heritage. They must support their authentic artists, the ones telling their own stories as honestly as they can. Only then will the general public reject the stereotypes and recognize the value of our rich heritage.