Stereotypes can be comforting. They reassure us that what we know about the world, good or bad, is accurate. Every culture has stereotypes formed about them, and they form their own about other cultures. We often think that if we credit a certain group with some positive traits, that the stereotype can’t be so bad. We can says that Jews are good with money, blacks are great athletes, and Italians love to cook. But it’s not always easy being trapped in other people’s ideas about how you live.
Steven R. Schirripa, “Bobby Bacala” from The Sopranos, has written several hilarious books that celebrate Italian-American stereotypes. A Goomba’s Guide to Life and The Goomba’s Book of Love are witty and lighthearted looks at growing up and living la vita italiano-americano. And it’s fun to read about “Goomba Heroes” (Joe DiMaggio, Dean Martin, and, of course, Frank Sinatra), “The Things a Goomba Can’t Resist” (gambling, dressing sharp, gold jewelry), and “Mob Slang”.
I, for one, have always loved Italian-American culture, and have happily bought into the stereotypes of big Sunday dinners, mobsters in the family, and a pictures of the Pope around the house. It’s fun to believe that all Italian-Americans live that way. Why? There are so many great movies that show us how they live, so many spot-on characterizations of family life that look so fun and exotic and unlike how many Heinz 57-Americans live their lives. Goodfellas has lots of great cooking scenes; my favourite is when they are in jail, and they’re getting all that great salami and prosciutto and wine and bread for their elaborate Italian meals, slicing the garlic with a razor blade so it’s thin enough to liquefy in the pan with just a little oil. The wedding scene in The Godfather with music and lots of food and drinking, everything looking so perfect and Italian. And, of course, Saturday Night Fever, which shows working-class goombas in Brooklyn who don’t do much but chase girls and go to the disco.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a film that has some stereotypical elements to it. I am Serbian, not Greek, but it’s so much fun to watch something like that which so closely portrays a culture very similar to mine. I can point to it and say, “My family’s just like that!” And though many Italian-Americans resent the way they have been portrayed on TV and in the movies–that they are all spaghetti-eating, gold chain-wearing, goomar-having Mafiosi–the majority of them embrace it. The first time I went to Cleveland’s Little Italy, I saw so much Sopranos merchandise! And every store seemed to have Sinatra playing, and sold 8x10s of Ol’ Blue Eyes. It was fun for me, since I was shopping for an Italian-American guy I liked, and knew he would appreciate something stereotypical.
Were You Always an Italian? is Maria Laurino’s memoir of growing up on the wrong side of the social tracks in Short Hills, New Jersey, in the 1970s. In the chapter entitled “Scents”, she opens by saying:
I can still remember the day when my ethnicity no longer felt like the tag line of my narrative, reluctantly affixed to my American self, but instead signified an inescapable me. (16)
In gym class, a pretty blonde girl asked if Maria had been shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue recently. Maria said she had. The blonde girl saw her there, and told her mother, “That’s the smelly Italian girl who stands in front of me in gym class.” Maria did not know what to say, so she just stood there, in silence, as the girl continued to speak. It was then that she realized what a stereotype was, and how hurtful it could be. Instead of fighting back, however, young Maria decided she no longer wanted to be Italian.
She longed to fit in, to be a normal American girl and eat normal American food–and to have a normal American name. She asked her mother why she named her Maria instead of Mary. “Why didn’t you change our last name to Laurin?” she wanted to know, thinking that getting rid of that “o” would make her less obviously Italian.
I have come to hate the books and documentaries about the ‘Italian-American experience’, full of treacly discussions of food and family, describing ‘the beautiful song’ of our heritage, those snapshots of golden days forever gone. (30)
Saying that Italian-Americans have a unique heritage, and that they learned about self-sacrifuce and respect for the family–Laurino finds it almost offensive to act as if no other ethnic groups love family life and their national histories. She calls this the “myth of the italiano”.
Laurino addresses the love-hate relationship some prominent Italian-Americans have with stereotypes. When Rudolph Giuliani was inaugurated for the second time as Mayor of New York City, he screened The Godfather for his friends, calling the film his all-time favourite.
Mario Cuomo, as the first Italian-American New York governor, chose to distance himself from such images. Cuomo and his wife were invited to the Godfather premiere by then-New York City Mayor John Lindsay, in an effort to get him to join the administration. When Cuomo pointed out that Don Corleone was a murderer, a criminal, Lindsay replied simply with, “Oh, it’s only a movie, you’re too sensitive.”
Cuomo was famous for using ethnic nostalgia and family stories in his speeches, and did it better than anyone. But his version of personal narrative came from a place other than the established vision of Italian-American history. He is a family man, not because he is of Italian descent, but because he was raised to be so.
The title of this book comes from Cuomo’s own lips. He was sitting for an interview with Laurino, and casually asked the question, “Were you always an Italian?” Laurino shook her head no. “I know all about ethnic self-hate,” he admitted. Cuomo grew up surrounded by Irish-Americans, and felt like an outsider. Upon finishing law school, he was encouraged by his dean to change his name to try to get a job on Wall Street. He loves telling the story, imagining out loud how people would react to him being introduced as an uber-WASP. “Hi, I’m Mark Conrad,” he jokes. “I play tennis. I play golf.”
Young Maria was not always alone in her fear of being seen as a “smelly Italian”. In the “Clothes” chapter, she writes about her aunt and mother dressing her at different periods of her life. Her aunt, a flamboyant widow in her forties, dressed her until she was about ten years old. Her mother, subtle and simple, took over from ten till about thirty.
Her mother was most afraid of looking gavone, the dialect word derived from the Italian cafone, which means an ignorant person. In dialect, it is used to indicate a low-class person. Gavone is gaudy and colorful, and what many Italian-Americans considered sexy. But to be called gavone was not a compliment. And Maria’s mother did not want her to be looked at as many outsiders viewed all Italian-Americans–outrageous, loud, and tacky. She knew that, to fit in and be successful, to be American, one must leave behind the Italian stereotype of the gavone. A confusing message from her mother, who tried to preserve their traditions, except the ones considered low-class.
On the other side of the coin, there are those Italian-Americans who see themselves as the stereotypes, who proudly emulate Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever or Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. Laurino poses the question:
After years of television and movie portrayals, does Hollywood imitate life or did the mobster and the cugine adopt the traits of their fictional counterparts, mimicking the language and characteristics that have been assigned to Italian-Americans responding to an offer that they cannot well refuse? (140)
Saturday Night Fever was based on a magazine article called “Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night”, written by Nik Cohn. Years after the film had become a classic, the story was revealed to be completely fictional. But the Tony Manero character struck a nerve with Americans, Italian or not. Kind of a dim bulb, but a sweetheart deep down, his hirsute Italian chest holding safely the cross that hangs from the golden chain around his neck, brushing his hair for hours until he gets it just right, admiring the Al Pacino poster that looks over his shoulder as he admires himself in the mirror–this figure is, according to Laurino, “how people want to see Italian-Americans, and how many Italian-American young men wish to see themselves.”
But the theme of Fever is about escaping the depressing, working-class life Tony and his family and friends feel trapped in. When Tony is dancing, he feels like he’s really doing something, and he knows he can get out of Brooklyn. He is intrigued by the life that Stephanie, a secretary, has made for herself. She has gotten out of the Brooklyn mentality, and is going to move to Manhattan. The movie ends with Tony’s dark subway ride from Brooklyn taking him to a bright new future.
Laurino’s epiphany came from her trip to Rome in 1981. She began the odyssey with the idea that “Italy meant fried dough and little ladies dressed in black”. But after that first day, after she allowed herself to open up to be overwhelmed by Rome’s beauty and culture, she felt right at home. She began to travel the Eternal City once a year, emerging herself in all things Italian: café life, open-air museums, outdoor markets, watching stylish Italians just walking around and being Italian. She wanted to finally learn the language, she wanted the identity she had been running from since that day in the gym so many years ago when she was called “that smelly Italian girl”.
“Finally,” she writes, “I had awoken to the beauty of my homeland…How could I have been embarrassed about my heritage if these were my roots?” But Rome was not where her roots lay. Her family was from southern Italy, the Mezzogiorno, and life there was far different than in the north. After traveling to Milan as a new mother, and not feeling as young and glamorous as she had on trips past, she realized that she did not need to have exotic roots. “One’s origins are not romantic,” she says. “Like the act of birth, they’re merely the seeds of the life we’re given–messy, tumultuous, mundane.”
Laurino visited her ancestral homeland in Conza, and realized the depth of her connection to the past, to this land she had been afraid, and unwilling, to visit for so many years. “We may think that we are modern creatures, but who isn’t linked in some way to tribal rituals, ancient customs?” No matter how American she had become, nothing could erase her roots.
“I am part of a past.” Simple. Eloquent. Heartfelt. Maria Laurino concludes her story with these words that all children of immigrants come to realize at some point in their lives. There is always a struggle between holding onto the past and venturing into the future. It doesn’t have to be that way. Things evolve, some ideas and traditions may fade, but the essence of who we are is always rooted in the past.
It’s hard enough to make your way through the world when the larger culture has certain fixed ideas about who you are supposed to be. But when those negative images are turned inward, or when those stereotypes are embraced and perpetuated by members of the subculture, it makes it even more difficult to find a real identity, as a person, and as a group. I am certainly guilty of being infatuated with Italian-American stereotypes. I love The Godfather (its theme is the ring tone on my cell phone) and Goodfellas, and my favourite TV show is Growing Up Gotti. And I must admit my disappointment when I meet Italian-Americans who don’t listen to Dean Martin and know their mother’s secret ingredient for Sunday gravy.
I loved Were You Always an Italian? because it is an honest account of a woman’s struggle with identity. Even if you don’t come from an ethnic family, there are still underlying themes everyone can relate to. In the end, Maria Laurino discovers her appreciation for the Italian-American heritage she had tried to escape. Despite the images people have of what it means to be Italian in America, she figured out for herself what it was all about. When one looks inward, and looks to the past, one can find all the answers.
Now it’s time to watch My Cousin Vinny.
(Winner of the 2006 Italian American Cultural Foundation Essay Contest. Originally published in Voices in Italian Americana, Volume 17 Number 2 2006 http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/calandra/bordighera/books/voices/index.htm)
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And you know, just like this election, the thing that really upsets me is the gay Republican. [The Human Rights Campaign] asked every candidate from the Democrats to the Republicans to speak on Logo, do you remember that?…
r head, you’re not the only one,” says Gemma Viets, one of OGB’s organizers. “I think that people are exhibitionists, and it’s one of the few outlets that allows them to express themselves the way they want to and not be judged. We want you to come away thinking, ‘Wow, I can really be myself, that was really a lot of fun.’”…
amp Sunrise, the Center for Integrated Therapies, and the Leather Archives and Museum, among many others. CLAW is a four-day, multi-venue leather event that draws thousands of people — and tens of thousands of dollars — from around the country and across the globe to Cleveland each spring. The entire Wyndham Hotel at Playhouse Square is reserved for CLAW guests and various features such as their unparalleled three-day auction, the largest leather vendor mart in Ohio (showcasing over 20 American and international vendors), a Sunday brunch and some spectacular parties. There’s also a juried BDSM art show (one of the few in the country) downstairs in the Halle Building, as well as field trips that will take attendees to the Rock Hall, the Christmas Story house, and a Tribe vs. Yankees game. It’ll be hard to miss 30 guys all dressed in leather at the Prog!…
e popular Italian dessert tiramisu (“pick me up”) can be traced back through the centuries. Though a similar treat was created in 17th century Siena, Tuscany, for a visit by Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici III, the first recorded reference to what we know as tiramisu was by Giuseppe Maffioli in 1981. He wrote that tiramisu was just ten years old at that point, and was born at a Treviso restaurant called Le Beccherie. This is where the classic recipe–layers of savoiardi (ladyfingers) soaked in espresso, marscarpone cheese and bitter cocoa powder–was created. Unfortunately for Le Beccherie’s owners, they did not patent the recipe or the name, as tiramisu became incredibly popular. It was soon served at restaurants all over Treviso, and then spread across Italy. In 1980s America, tiramisu became a favorite dessert for couples on dates. Today, most Italian bakeries and restaurants worldwide sell versions of the original recipe tiramisu….
