People - 3 Aprile 2018 As the Columbus Day Debate Rages On, So do the Time-Worn Stereotypes The number of Italian Americans who hold themselves apart from the Columbus standard bearers is substantial. That we do not have a public voice is not for the lack of trying. There are academics, journalists, and independent scholars pursuing the subject in the form of presentations and publications. Yet, when these folks come together to discuss concerns related to Columbus, or other matters pertinent to Italian Diaspora studies, the mainstream media is nowhere to be found.
People - 27 Marzo 2018 Are Italian Americans the White’s Clowns? Not Only Columbus Has Failed Us Italian Americans have become the worst of ourselves. We made Columbus into the representative for the vestiges of a vanishing identity. Interestingly, perhaps subconsciously, we have selected someone whose conquests align with an ultra-masculine identity we deem as authentically Italian American. I came to experience that outsized and outdated machismo first hand. I had just come back from college after coming out...
People - 11 Marzo 2018 Meredith, from New York to Cagliari to Study the Italian language of Her Ancestors The story of Meredith lies a little outside the leitmotif of this column, through which we retrace the steps of Goethe's “Journey in Italy”: "My family has been Italian for at least three generations. The first ones to arrive in the USA were my great-great-grandparents, who emigrated to the United States in 1905. My grandparents and my father, however, did not speak and still do not speak Italian, and today I am the only one in the family who knows the language", she said.
People - 13 Gennaio 2018 In Memory of Carlo Tresca, The Italian Vanguard of Anti-Fascism in New York Tresca’s life was heroic. In 1904 he immigrated to America where he joined the sovversivi (subversives) in a cultural war, for the soul of Italian America, against the Black Hand, the capitalist class, and the Church. On January 11, 1943, Tresca was viciously gunned down by mobster Carmine Galante. Carlo Tresca's path was promethean in many aspects.
People - 4 Dicembre 2017 Monongah’s Italian Miners: Mistreated in Life and Death Nativist culture in West Virginia, oral traditions among 19th Century Italian migrants and faulty US research made difficult reporting and commemorating the centennial of a 1907 West Virginia disaster that killed 169 Italian miners - made difficult in the US, as well as Italy. Since that time, Italian commemoration entrepreneurs echoed myths, created non-facts and embellished tragedy without consulting research and transformed a US-Italian tragedy into farce.
New York - 9 Ottobre 2017 Columbus, Our Lady of Loreto and the Ironies of Italian American History Ironically Columbus Day began as an attempt to reconcile the new immigrants with Americans and even Native Americans. A final irony: as the Italian American community gathers to celebrate and march past Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Ave, the beautiful neo-Renaissance Our Lady of Loreto church in Brooklyn, built by Italian emigrants in 1906 in their “spare” time, is being torn down.
People - 26 Settembre 2017 Hands off Christopher Columbus: Alberto Milani’s Italian American Muster Alberto Milani leads the most important Italian American Chamber of Commerce in the United States, and declares to La Voce di New York that he has been defending the Columbus Day and the Genoese explorer’s statue, which has been threatened with being torn down in Manhattan: "Colombus's biography also has some dark passages, but he first believed in the American dream"
New York - 21 Luglio 2017 Giglio Feast: Real Brooklyn’s Italian Passion Siamo stati a Williamsburg per un video sugli appassionati portatori dell’altissimo (e pesantissimo) Giglio con il Santo di Nola che da oltre cento anni rinnova una tradizione campana a New York
Arts - 18 Maggio 2017 How Wally Lamb’s Italian-ness Inspires Everything He Writes Known for featuring strong women characters, spotlighting mental illness and grabbing titles from songs he loves, the mainstream press never seems to notice one strong theme: Lamb’s Italian background.
Arts - 2 Maggio 2017 Joe Zangara’s Hurtful Humanity Comes to In Scena! 2017 Radical ideas, heartbreaking story and a quest for redemption: Ernesto Orrico comes back to In Scena! and this time brief the hurtfully human story of Joe Zangara to New York's theatres. On stage on May 4th and 7th, this show will bring take you on a journey inside Zangara's head.