When I Am Italian

Joanna Clapps Herman

Description

"My ancestral Italian village in America was in Waterbury Connecticut." In this sentence, Joanna Clapps Herman raises the central question of this book: To what extent can a person born outside of Italy be considered Italian? The granddaughter of Italian immigrants who arrived in the United States in the early 1900s, Herman takes a complicated and nuanced look at the question of to whom and to which culture she ultimately belongs. Sometimes the Italian part of her identity—her Italianità—feels so aboriginal as to be inchoate, inexpressible. Sometimes it finds its expression in the rhythms of daily life. Sometimes it is embraced and enhanced; at others, it feels attenuated. "If, like me," Herman writes, "you are from one of Italy's overseas colonies, at least some of this Italianità will be in your skin, bones, and heart: other pieces have to be understood, considered, called to ourselves through study, travel, reading. Some of it is just longing. How do we know which pieces are which?"
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Many Missing Stones

What Does It Mean to Be Italian?

Quando sono italiana: When I Am Italian

Waterbury, Connecticut, My Ancestral Village

Up the Farm
What Crawls around Inside Us
Housing Memory
Blue
What We Remember
Go Fish

Food, Food, Food, and Hard Work

Creature Life
My Mother's Letter to Her Sister
Hard Work and Good Food
Sunday on the Farm
My Only Irish Aunt
Minestra Means Soup

Move to America

Chiesta ca, or This One Here
After Eden
My First New York Story, 1965
200 Square Feet in the Village, or My Soluble Fortunes
My Friend Elizabeth
On Not Writing My Thesis

Italia, sempre italia

Part I. Southern Italy
The Stones of Dialect
Siamo arrivati
"That Winter Evening"
My Neapolitan Wedding

Part II. The Opposite of Southern Italy
After the Manner of Women

The Grief Estate

Visiting Our Dead
My Father's Bones
Voglio bene
Somewhere My Bill

Notes

Sujets

• Migration
• Memoir
• Ethnic studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 22 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438477190
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE FOR When I Am Italian
“A beautiful book. It takes us through the decades of the last century and into this one to ask what it means to be Italian long after one generation’s arrival, and to consider how deep and elemental the facts of that are. This is a subtle, moving, and original piece of work—to read it is to see the world around us differently.”
— Joan Silber, author of Improvement: A Novel
“ When I Am Italian , Joanna Clapps Herman’s exquisite new memoir, begins with her rich, cocoonlike childhood inside an extended Italian American family in Waterbury, Connecticut. With its all-encompassing rituals of food, talk, and work, her family has transposed the rhythms of southern Italy to the new world. It’s only when Clapps Herman leaves home—to escape the restrictions and claim her own life—that she realizes that this part of her identity does not necessarily reflect how the rest of America sees itself. With beauty and insight, When I Am Italian gives us Clapps Herman’s fully lived understanding of the complex interweaving of culture and finding self.”
— Lisa Wilde, author of Yo, Miss: A Graphic Look at High School
WHEN I AM ITALIAN
WHEN I AM ITALIAN
Joanna Clapps Herman
Cover image: The family at Sunday dinner. Courtesy of the author.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 Joanna Clapps Herman
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.
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Herman, Joanna Clapps, author.
Title: When I am Italian / Joanna Clapps Herman.
Description: Excelsior editions. | Albany, NY : State University of New York Press, Albany, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019000459| ISBN 9781438477183 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438477190 (ebook : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Herman, Joanna Clapps. | Italian Americans—Biography. | Italian American women—Biography. | Italian Americans—Ethnic identity. | Herman, Joanna Clapps—Family. | Herman, Joanna Clapps—Travel—Italy. | Italian Americans—Connecticut—Waterbury—Social life and customs. | Waterbury (Conn.)—Biography.
Classification: LCC E184.I8 H47 2020 | DDC 973/.0451—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000459
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Per Lucia, sorella di luce
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Many Missing Stones
What Does It Mean to Be Italian?
Quando sono italiana : When I Am Italian
Waterbury, Connecticut, My Ancestral Village
Up the Farm
What Crawls around Inside Us
Housing Memory
Blue
What We Remember
Go Fish
Food, Food, Food, and Hard Work
Creature Life
My Mother’s Letter to Her Sister
Hard Work and Good Food
Sunday on the Farm
My Only Irish Aunt
Minestra Means Soup
Move to America
Chiesta ca , or This One Here
After Eden
My First New York Story, 1965
200 Square Feet in the Village, or My Soluble Fortunes
My Friend Elizabeth
On Not Writing My Thesis
Italia, sempre italia
PART ONE: SOUTHERN ITALY
The Stones of Dialect
Siamo arrivati
“That Winter Evening”
My Neapolitan Wedding
PART TWO: THE OPPOSITE OF SOUTHERN ITALY
After the Manner of Women
The Grief Estate
Visiting Our Dead
My Father’s Bones
Voglio bene
Somewhere My Bill
Notes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are always too many people to thank and acknowledge at the conclusion of any project. But to make an attempt, I want to thank my beloved friend Myra Goldberg who read and reread these pieces too many times, always with love and encouragement. My sister, Lucia Mudd, who reads my work and is always with me when I need her, and as much as when I don’t; my oldest best friend and cousin, Beatrice Avcolli, who lived through much of this with me and who found a piece, an important piece of my writing that had gone missing.
I also want to thank my Italian sisters who make my world a better place in which to read, write, think, and whom I love deeply: Edvige Giunta, Nancy Carnevale, Annie Lanzilotto, Maria Lisella, and Maria Laurino.
I thank my Italian brothers Peter Covino, George Guida, and Joseph Sciorra.
I love and thank Theresa Ellerbrock, Judy Solomon, Linda Sherwin, Wendy Dubin, Liz Rudey, Maria D’Amico, Lisa Wilde, and Sarah Marques, who are my friends, writers, and artists.
I am grateful to Katharine Bernard for editing and proofreading; my lovely stepdaughter, Donna Herman, for proofreading and editing, as well as Robert Oppedisano for editing and fine suggestions for cuts and additions.
Working with Jenn Bennett-Genthner and Michael Campochiaro has been a great pleasure. Actually more fun than I think it’s supposed to be. I’m extremely grateful to both of them.
But above all I want to thank James Peltz for his enduring qualities as an editor and as a friend.
INTRODUCTION: MANY MISSING STONES
My son, James Paul Herman, who is a neuroscientist, has explained a few basics about the brain to me. He tells me that there is so much sensory information impinging on our senses every instant that it’s necessary for us to selectively prioritize only a small portion of that stimuli on which to base our moment-by-moment decisions, thoughts, and actions. We’re built to respond to stimuli, but we simply can’t respond to each and every bit of information that incessantly arrives at the portals of our perception.
He’s also explained that memory actually works very differently than we think it does. The recollection of a past event is less like visiting a favorite painting in a museum—the viewing of an unchanging object that we can examine any time we choose; instead it is more like re-creating the painting, and in the act of remembering storing it away with new modifications. Over time, our memories accrue distortions. Although they derive from our original experiences, each time we return some aspects are amplified, others diminished; new details are added, and some lost forever. In short, memories are never accurate recordings of what we have experienced, and are further altered every time we go back to them.
These are the facts.
I point this out because writing works in a similar way to our perceptual processes. Moreover, memoir writing is inherently problematic.
To write anything it’s necessary to eliminate much of what comes to mind as we work, so that we can create order out of the plethora of words, ideas, and images that swim forward as we try to fasten language to a page or screen. Then too, a writer has to create a through line, and hold her focus, which means we cannot and should not allow ourselves to go down every path that presents itself as we work.
There are many missing stones along this path. (Reading my earlier memoir, Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America , will fill in some of the missing pieces, but only some). Like all memory, it’s also distorted, but never willfully. I attempt to be simultaneously as truthful as I can be and still shape the narrative as a writer. Probably that’s oxymoronic.
The central question underlying this book is this: can a person born outside of Italy be Italian? This question can’t be answered with a simple hyphenation of Italian-American. This hyphenated identity coming from the academy, while technically correct, is for some of us (me in particular) too formal and technical. It wasn’t what we called ourselves: therefore, it feels inauthentic when I say it. While I know I am American, I know, too, that I am Italian.
How do I claim such an identity when I am not able to speak the language more than primitively? The voices I heard around me: tones and cadences, the broken English, the letters from Italy being read out loud to my grandmother, the dialects that were spoken, the kinds of jokes and stories we told, the Italian and American songs, the vernacular English, even the provincial accent I carry with me are all a part of the grounding soil from which I came. It’s all in the soup of vocal and written words that I call on when I write.
How do we keep all of these aspects of our identity and our questions about what identity means in perspective? An ethnic identity can embrace and give comfort and it can confine and imprison. How do we keep this clear to ourselves as we investigate these questions? If, like me, you are from one of Italy’s overseas colonies, at least some of this Italianità will be in your skin, bones, and heart: other pieces have to be understood, considered, called to ourselves through study, travel, reading. Some of it is just longing. How do we know which pieces are which?
There are as many ways to be Italian as there are Italians, Italian Americans, Italians in Italy, Italians in diaspora the world over. Moreover, the ways of being Italian have changed radically in all of our homes, along with modern life. Still there are some things that people who