Abstract
Strega Nona is the main character of many picture books published by renowned Italian-American author Tomie dePaola. This chapter uses Strega Nona as the vehicle to explore the ebbs and flows of the identity formation of two generations in comparison (children of immigrants of the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries). That is, it examines the ramifications of stories of mobility and migrations in different eras and analyzes similarities and differences in processes of identity building and ethnic belonging in the U.S. The chapter concludes that language, as a highly distinctive identity marker, is the crucial difference between the two generations under analysis. In the early twentieth century, social, political, and economic constraints forced children of immigrants to neglect the language of their families, contributing to the creation of hyphenated identities.
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Notes
- 1.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Morpheus is the son of the god of sleep, who was believed to populate the dreams of people with human figures.
- 2.
In the poetic stage, very much like the Homeric stage of ancient western literature, the storytelling is influenced by oral traditions; in Italian-American writing, Gadarphé identifies with this first stage, the stage of the God, all the early attempts to negotiate an American identity. That is, immigrant writers strongly maintained their Italianness as an ideal. In the mythical stage, protagonists of the stories (mostly of immigrant origins) are invested of heroic qualities; in this stage, immigrants will find themselves in a transient position, where hybrid identities are usually created. In the third stage, the age of Man, immigrants become defined mostly by their Americanness, which becomes natural and almost complete. This classification encounters the same criticisms that Gans pronounced against straight-line theory of ethnicity. It does not leave space for situationally based belongings and sees Italian-American literature as a monotonous struggle toward acceptance into the category of American literature.
- 3.
Insana, Lisa “Strega Nona’s Ethnic Alchemy: Magic Pasta, Stregheria and that Amazing Disappearing “N”” MELUS Vol. 31, N. 2, Varieties of Ethnic Experience (2006), pp. 207–243.
- 4.
“Othering” is “a process of stigmatization that defines another in a negative manner.” Macquarrie, Colleen, and MacQuarrie. “Othering.” In Encyclopedia of Case Study Research, edited by Albert J. Mills, Gabrielle Durepos, and Eleden Wiebe. Sage Publications, 2009. Accessed on July 10, 2019. https://ezproxyemc.flo.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagecsr/othering/0?institutionId=1968
- 5.
The 1924 Immigration Law was the ultimate re-elaboration of several restrictive immigration laws passed earlier (the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1917 Immigration Act passing the Literary Test to be taken by every immigrant of age 16 and above, the Asiatic Barred Zone Act excluding from entry everyone from the lose geographic definition of Asiatic zone, and finally the 1921 Emergency Quota Act), which deliberately placed obstacles to enter the U.S. to immigrants from Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe.
- 6.
The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act or the McCarran-Walter Act modified the 1924 Immigration Act to allow the issuance of 154,277 visas and the national origins quotas were changed to one-sixth of 1% of each nationality’s population in the U.S. in 1920. The law relieved Asian migrants who were able to demonstrate to be skilled migrants, but it added provisions against immigrants whose countries’ political views could be detrimental to the American way of life. This happened at the beginning of the Cold War and people from countries where socialist ideas were widespread were considered risky (again, Italy, China, and Eastern European countries).
- 7.
Americanization: the 1910s U.S. nationwide effort to homogenize the countless immigrants arriving in the U.S. through educational movement. The movement was principled in acculturating immigrants to the standardized social values of twentieth-century America; food, language, education, dress, and etiquette were all subject to Americanizing (Roberts, Peter The Problem of Americanization (Norwood: Norwood Press), 1920).
- 8.
Cabaniss, Emily R. and Abigail E. Cameron, “‘Unassimilable and undesirable’: News elites’ discursive construction of the American immigrant during the Ellis Island years” Discourse and Society Vol. 28 No. 6 (2017), pp. 614–634.
- 9.
Guglielmo Jennifer and Salvatore Salerno, Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2003), p. 34.
- 10.
Portes, Alejandro, and Min Zhou, “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political Social Science, Vol. 530, Interminority Affairs if the U.S.: Pluralism at the Crossroads (Nov. 1993), p. 96.
- 11.
I use Porter and Zhou established theoretical concept of segmented assimilation to compare the two generations of Italian-Americans under analysis in this chapter. It is beyond the scope of this article to try to answer questions posed by Portes and Zhou in the article cited about segmented assimilation in the 1990s and immigrant minorities in the U.S. at that time.
- 12.
Hall, Stuart, “The Question of Cultural Identity,” in Stuart Hall et al. eds., Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, (London: Blackwell, 1996), p. 608.
- 13.
Hall, Stuart, “Conclusion: the multi-cultural question,” in Hesse, B. ed., Un/Settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions (New York: St. Martin’s Press/Zed Books), pp. 225–226.
- 14.
Portes, Alejandro and Min Zhou, “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political Social Science, Vol. 530, Interminority Affairs if the U.S.: Pluralism at the Crossroads (Nov. 1993), pp. 74–96.
- 15.
It is not the aim of this chapter to produce an in-depth analysis of the sociological “straight line theory” of acculturation and assimilation. This reference will serve the simple purpose of underlining the need for an analysis of ethnicity more complex than a process toward American homogeneity.
- 16.
Gans, Herbert J., “Symbolic Ethnicity: the Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 2, N. 1 (1979), pp. 1–20.
- 17.
Basile Green, Rose. The Italian American Novel. A Document of the Interaction of Two Cultures (Associated University Press: Cranbury NJ), 1974.
- 18.
Just as a quick reference, I here use signifier as in linguistics studies influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure where the signifier is part of a sign, made of a signifier and a signified. “In linguistics, a signifier is a word or related symbol that refers to a class of objects; the signified is the object referred to. […] The distinctive assumption of Saussurian linguistics is that the signifier is arbitrary, from which it follows that language is a social construction, not something that can have a natural or objective reference point.” Stager Jacques, Roy, and Stager Jacques. “Signifier and Signified.” In Encyclopedia of Case Study Research, edited by Albert J. Mills, Gabrielle Durepos, and Eleden Wiebe. Sage Publications, 2009. https://ezproxyemc.flo.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagecsr/signifier_and_signified/0?institutionId=1968
- 19.
This subtitle is written in quotation marks because while here I intend to discuss the peculiarity of the individual stories of Strega Nona and her creator, the title is also a direct citation of one of the books Tomie dePaola wrote about Strega Nona—Strega Nona. Her Story.
- 20.
For specific images check the digital collections of the New York Public Library https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-dc88-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
- 21.
I will use italics for the word Italianness (Italianità) throughout the chapter to underline an unresolved definition of the concept, which here I intend as an intangible filler of identity vacuums (see later in the chapter).
- 22.
Elleman, Barbara, Tomie dePaola: His Art and His Stories (Putnam Publishing: New York), 1999.
- 23.
Among some of Giotto’s frescos we see representations of religious scenes in the context of villages and town’s life with houses with porticos and stairs as in the Ascension of St. John the Evangelist, the Legend of St. Francis, the Expulsion of the merchants from the Temple, or the Massacre of the Innocents.
- 24.
Commedia dell’Arte is a typical form of theatrical art that was created in Italy around the 1500s. The novelty of this form of art was the presence of women on stage, the short writing texts with an almost improvised performance. It was so representative of Italian culture that is also simply known as Commedia Italiana.
- 25.
Nona was the actual given name of the character, but I did not know it the first time I checked the book out of the library.
- 26.
Milani, Lorenzo, Lettera a una professoressa, (Firenze: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1996), p. 21.
- 27.
Nona here stands for grandma, which in Italian is spelled Nonna. I’d like to acknowledge that dePaola clarified that Nona in the books is the given name of his character. Nevertheless, this is not the only linguistic incongruence the Italian public encounters when reading Strega Nona’s stories.
- 28.
O’Connor, Flannery, The Complete Stories, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York), 1971, p. 233.
References
Cabaniss, E. R., & Cameron, A. E. (2017). Unassimilable and undesirable’: News elites’ discursive construction of the American immigrant during the Ellis Island years. Discourse & Society, 28(6), 614–634. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926517710990.
Elleman, B. (1999). Tomie DePaola: His art and his stories. G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers.
Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1979.9993248.
Green, R. B. (1974). The Italian-American novel: A document of the interaction of two cultures. Associated University Press.
Guglielmo, J., & Salerno, S. (2003). Are Italians white?: How race is made in America (1st ed.). Routledge.
Hall, S., & Gay, P. (1996). Questions of cultural identity (Reprint ed.). Sage.
Hannibal-Paci, C. (2002). Un/settled multiculturalisms: Diasporas, entanglements, transruptions. Ethnohistory, 49(2), 436–439. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-49-2-436.
Insana, L. (2006). Strega Nona’s ethnic alchemy: Magic pasta, stregheria and that amazing disappearing “N”. MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 31(2), 207–243. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/31.2.207.
Macquarrie, C., & MacQuarrie. (2009). Othering. In A. J. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of case study research. Sage. Credo reference: https://ezproxyemc.flo.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagecsr/othering/0?institutionId=1968
Milani, L. (1996). Lettera a una professoressa. Libreria Editrice Fiorentina.
O’Connor, F. (1971). The complete stories (FSG classics) (1st ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530(1), 74–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716293530001006.
Roberts, P. (1920). The problem of Americanization. Norwood Press.
Stager Jacques, R. (2009). Signifier and signified. In A. J. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of case study research. Sage. Credo reference: https://ezproxyemc.flo.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagecsr/signifier_and_signified/0?institutionId=1968
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Ravagnoli, V. (2021). Strega Nona: The Spell on Identities. In: Banjo, O.O. (eds) Immigrant Generations, Media Representations, and Audiences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75311-5_14
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