Sense of Origins

Rosemary Serra, Scott R. Kapuscinski

Description

In Sense of Origins, Rosemary Serra explores the lives of a significant group of self-identified young Italian Americans residing in New York City and its surrounding areas. The book presents and examines the results of a survey she conducted of their values, family relationships, prejudices and stereotypes, affiliations, attitudes and behaviors, and future perspectives of Italian American culture. The core of the study focuses on self-identification with Italian cultural heritage and analyzes it according to five aspects—physical, personality, cultural, psychological, and emotional/affective.

The data provides insights into today's young Italian Americans and the ways their perception of reality in everyday interactions is affected by their heritage, while shedding light on the value and symbolic references that come with an Italian heritage. Through her rendering of relevant facets that emerge from the study, Serra constructs interpretative models useful for outlining the physiognomy and characterization of second, third, fourth, and fifth generations of Italian Americans. In the current climate, questions of ethnicity and migrant identity around the world make Sense of Origins useful not only to the Italian American community but also to the descendants of the innumerable present-day migrants who find themselves living in countries different from those of their ancestors. The book will resonate in future explorations of ethnic identity in the United States.
Foreword
Jerome Krase, Professor Emeritus

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Field Research

1. Theoretical Structure, Methodological Path, Description of the Sample

2. Values, Family, and Primary Socialization

3. Ethnic Identification

4. Different Identity Models of Young Italian Americans: The Significance of Being Italian American Today

5. The Image of Italian Americans

6. Italy and the Italians

7. The Stereotypical Images of Italian Americans

8. Attitudes and Affiliations

9. The Future

10. Knowledge of and Attachment to the Italian and Italian American Cultures

Part II: Identity Profiles

11.The American Identity in Generational Flux

12. Profiles of Young Italian Americans: Sketches in Chiaroscuro

Concluding Reflections

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Migration
• Regional
• History of the Americas
• Region
• Ethnic studies
• Local history
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438479200
• Langue: English

Extrait

SENSE OF ORIGINS
SUNY SERIES IN ITALIAN/AMERICAN CULTURE
Edited by Fred L. Gardaphe
SENSE OF ORIGINS
A STUDY OF NEW YORK’S YOUNG ITALIAN AMERICANS
ROSEMARY SERRA
Translated by Scott R. Kapuscinski
Cover art: Mid-Manhattan Winter Night by artist William Papaleo, oil on canvas, 20 by 28 Inches. Courtesy William Papaleo.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Serra, Rosemary, author. | Kapuscinski, Scott R., 1987- translator.
Title: Sense of origins : a study of New York’s young Italian Americans / Rosemary Serra ; Scott R. Kapuscinski, translator.
Other titles: Senso delle origini. English
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2020. | Series: Suny series in Italian/American culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000960 (print) | LCCN 2020000961 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438479194 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781438479200 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Italian Americans—New York (State)—New York—Ethnic identity. | Italian Americans—New York (State)—New York—Social conditions—21st century. | Italian Americans—New York (State)—New York—Attitudes. | Youth—New York (State)—New York—Social conditions—21st century. | Youth—New York (State)—New York—Attitudes. | Ethnicity—New York (State)—New York. | New York (N.Y.)—Ethnic relations.
Classification: LCC F128.9.I8 S4713 2020 (print) | LCC F128.9.I8 (ebook) | DDC 305.8009747—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000960
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000961
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dejen tranquilos a los que nacen. Dejen sitio para que vivan. No les tengan todo pensado, no les lean el mismo libro, dejen los descubrir la aurora, y poner le nombre a sus besos.
Leave the newborn in peace Leave room for them to live Don’t think for them Don’t read them the same books Let them discover the sunrise And name their own kisses
— PABLO NERUDA , Estravagario
CONTENTS
FOREWORD Jerome Krase, Professor Emeritus
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I: FIELD RESEARCH
CHAPTER ONE Theoretical Structure, Methodological Path, Description of the Sample
CHAPTER TWO Values, Family, and Primary Socialization
CHAPTER THREE Ethnic Identification
CHAPTER FOUR Different Identity Models of Young Italian Americans: The Significance of Being Italian American Today
CHAPTER FIVE The Image of Italian Americans
CHAPTER SIX Italy and the Italians
CHAPTER SEVEN The Stereotypical Images of Italian Americans
CHAPTER EIGHT Attitudes and Affiliations
CHAPTER NINE The Future
CHAPTER TEN Knowledge of and Attachment to the Italian and Italian American Cultures
PART II: IDENTITY PROFILES
CHAPTER ELEVEN The American Identity in Generational Flux
CHAPTER TWELVE Profiles of Young Italian Americans: Sketches in Chiaroscuro
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
FOREWORD
Like Rosemary Serra, my own interest and even more so my involvement as an activist-scholar, in Americans of various generations of Italian descent has grown over a very long period of time. As opposed to her natural and deeply-felt personal Italian roots that connect her to the subject of her research, I did not discover my own shallow half-Italian (rather Sicilian) roots until I was about twenty years old. This is not a random reflection on my putative ethnic origins. My distinguished old friend Rudolph Vecoli, (1927–2008) would consider that Dr. Serra was one of the millions of firmly rooted (racinated), although hyphenated, Americans. On the other hand, I would clearly fit the bill of being one of the uprooted (deracinated) by the premier scholar of turn of the twentieth century American immigration, and fellow Brooklyn-born, Oscar Handlin. Handlin’s The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (1951) is considered by many in the field of immigration as the father of modern immigration studies. Vecoli passionately criticized Handlin’s thesis, which overemphasized the willingness of America’s immigrants, especially those of the Italian kind, to assimilate in his Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted (Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1964). He went even further in his criticism of this widely accepted misinterpretation in an essay with the provocative title “Are Italian Americans Just White Folks?” (1995). Dr. Serra’s Sense of Origins , without directly wrapping it around Vecoli’s thesis, is a major confirmation that, in fact, Italian Americans are not “just” anything.
My pioneering studies of Italian American students at Brooklyn College (1975, 1978, 1986) came about because of my commitment, not to my yet unrecognized co-ethnics, as I did not yet see them in that light, but because, like other minorities in the CUNY system, they were not understood and therefore suffered academically because their needs were neglected. Had Dr. Serra conducted this research at that time (1975), I am sure their needs would have been better met than was the response to my limited study. My limited survey research, introduced by Vincent J. Fuccillo, who at the time was director of the Center for Italian American Studies at Brooklyn College, led, not coincidentally, to the establishment of the Institute to Foster Higher Education that was the precursor of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, which greatly facilitated Dr. Serra’s later, more expansive work. The major finding of my work was that Italian American students of all immigrant generations did not feel at home at Brooklyn College.
Given the guaranteed praise that Dr. Serra will receive for her work, I am more than pleased that she included my own, more limited discussions of Italian Americana as to changes in the community leading to the obsolescence of simple notions of “Italian-ness” (Krase, 2004, p. 136). One might have simply assumed this, since, as she notes:
Between 1870 and 1970, approximately twenty-six million people left their ancestral home to work abroad; many of them ultimately returned to Italy. From 1876 to 1914, one-third of the fourteen million Italian migrants reached North America (primarily the United States) and another one-fourth arrived in South America (especially Argentina and Brazil). (Gabaccia, 2003)
Today there are sixty million descendants of Italian ancestry living outside Italy, and two-thirds of this diaspora live in the Americas.
Dr. Serra honors me as well with reference to my argument as to the powerful impact of real and imagined Little Italies on the simple and often damaging representations of Italians in American society. Over the years of her research I have had the pleasure to meet and intensely discuss her work at various stages of development. I know I learned a great deal from her and was always impressed by her intelligence, and exceptional diligence, during her difficult labor of love as well as scholarship. Dr. Serra was also far better prepared than most scholars, including myself, for this extremely detailed, in-depth, almost exhaustive multimethod study of a segment of Italian Americans. As to research design, I am sure she will be lauded for a project that includes an excellent review of the multidisciplinary literature on Italian Americans and the careful employment of a wide variety of qualitative as well as quantitative methods. In my opinion, multi-methodology is an approach that is required in order to see the multifaceted phenomenon of adjustment of immigrants as they variously struggle, for example, to “make it” in America, or simply to tolerate or fit into it. As an urban ethnographer, the most impressive feature of the study for me were her fifty-one in-depth interviews. Such probing is the only way to get at the core, the heart of ethnic identity. The details provided in Sense of Origins of the questionnaire she used, should be used as a guide for others. Most importantly, this exceptional work provides a solid platform from which to do much-needed comparative research within and between ethnic groups and cohorts. As a visual sociologist, I also have a special interest in the image and stereotype of the members of the Italian American community as they have a reciprocal relations to both still and moving images as well as their portrayal in literature. Dr. Serra’s book clearly demonstrates that there is no easy “one image fits all” for her—and may I now say “my”—community. As will what I hope shall be many other readers of Sense of Origins , I look forward to the many scholarly fruits of her labor, and especially await to learn of the future prospects for Italian American culture.
JEROME KRASE, PHD Emeritus and Murray Koppelman Professor Brooklyn College of The City University of New York
REFERENCES
Handlin, O. (1951). The uprooted: