Almost Italian

Photograph courtesy of Francesca Folinazzo

A lot of you will be traveling this week. As you sit in airline terminals and wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic, whatever you do to get to Nonna’s house, please jot down a few questions for your family. I’m asking you to do this in the hope that I can fill in some gaps in my own family’s culinary history.

My Sicilian grandfather was only fourteen years old, his brothers and sister not yet teenagers, when they arrived at Ellis Island in 1904. They all became fluent English speakers while continuing to speak, read, and write in Sicilian dialect, even though they were mere children when they left the society in which Sicilian had been their only language.

One question I have is how their acquisition of Sicilian continued to the sophisticated level required for their professional careers.

My maternal great-grandparents had had little formal schooling, but their boys were lucky enough to go to good schools and continue their educations—but only in English. One graduated from West Point, another became a physician, another had his own insurance agency.

How they kept and polished their Sicilian is a mystery to me. And they did indeed keep their Sicilian. Well into their careers, they served a largely immigrant population in Middletown, Connecticut. It’s a particular mystery to me how my great uncle explained—in polished Sicilian diaect—appendicitis or gall bladder disease to semi-literate Sicilian patients during the Depression, let alone discuss their treatment options.

And it’s just as much a puzzle as to how my grandfather, the son of a cobbler, came to learn his repertoire of Sicilian recipes. Cultural codes back in Sicily certainly would have kept a young boy out of the kitchen in 1904, and once in America, he went away to a church-run boarding school. Yet somewhere, somehow, he did learn to cook the traditional dishes, to the extent that he taught them to his own wife, my grandmother. I just don’t know when he learned them or from whom. But surely, my family’s case is not unique.

I’d love to hear stories and speculation on this from other Italian-Americans. Alas, I’ve no one left in my own family to interview.

It’s easy enough to ascertain how certain traditional Italian recipes morphed into Italian-American dishes; that’s what the Almost Italian project is about. But how did the original recipes arrive intact? We need to ask how they made the trip from Italy to America in the first place, especially since we already know that many of the immigrants were so poor in Italy they couldn’t have afforded to cook them back home.

So start making YOUR lists. The questions you pose could prove to be lifesavers during those awkward Thanksgiving moments when talk turns to Hillary Clinton, ethanol, or immigration reform. When your aunt starts asking about your little nose-ring or latest tattoo, or someone has just spilled an especially dark Zinfandel on the lace tablecloth, you’ll be glad you can divert everyone’s attention with:

So, do you think Zio Beppo’s sausages, the ones he cured in the trunk of his ‘68 Impala, were more Calabrese or Abruzzese?

Is it true that cousin Tony sold his sister’s collection of Mass cards on Ebay?

When it comes to family history, there are many truths…share some of yours, right here, on Almost Italian.

My editor Holly, and I wish you a very happy Giorno di Ringraziamento, Happy Thanksgiving.