A CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL REVIEW DEDICATED TO THE  ITALIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

IN THE NEW WORLD

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Who is Italian American?

    We view ethnicity partly as a dynamic inner process. The immigrant generation, having few encounters with the host country, retains trust and love for its original culture; the next generation, coming into contact with the new country through school and work, experiences conflict over the differing values of its home culture and the new country; the following generation tries to resolve these conflicts and develop an individual identity; and succeeding generations put to rest such conflicts, combining an individuation integrated with their heritage and their personal goals.

None of these stages of ethnicity, of course, evolves in any kind of straight path. Variations exist, but such a construct gives form to what so many Italian-American men and women experience. It allows for an Italian American not to be in lockstep as to where they are on the continuum. We offer here one definition--which includes both descent and consent--which readers might want to debate and modify. An Italian American resides in, or has resided in, the Americas and is one who has been raised with Italian cultural values with an ancestor who was Italian, or, if he or she is the immigrant, he/she was an Italian national. An Italian American chooses to continue some of those cultural values, whether consciously or not (at times without consciously knowing it). While we use the above definition, which better suits our purposes, we recognize that historians and sociologists refer to all the descendants of Italian immigrants as Italian Americans and we respect this definition.