Were You Always an Italian?: Ancestors and Other Icons of Life in Italian America

Maria went through virtually the same experiences I did. Discrimination continued to run rampant in the 1980's, when I was growing up. I grew up in a German and Irish neighborhood and nearly every time I tried to go outside and play I would be hassled and called names that I didn't understand. I could understand and feel her hurt, pain, and confusion when her Jewish girlfriend called her "that smelly Italian girl." Maria was not being "whiny." She was simply stating a fact of life. I love it when people tell Italians to get over the discrimination we faced and continue to face yet we are saturated with stories of how much the English discriminated against the Irish during the mass migration in the mid-1800's. EVERY immigrant group's story of discrimination needs to be told so we can avoid the mistakes of the past and indeed "move on." Maria's point of anything Italian being instantly Americanized was demonstrated with her own book. The original book cover had a lovely portrait of an Italian woman in native costume, but I guess that was too Italian, hence the generic present-day cover. This is a great addition to any ethnology student's collection.

I read this book in 4 days, which is unheard of b/c I consider myself a slow reader. In her book, Maria Laurino captures the Italian-esque that I grew up with in my family. Her use of the Italian language, especially the italian dialect words that she had heard from her parents is a great source for the intimate relationship between her family and the " outsiders ". This is a book that I would recommend for anyone who is of Italian descent and would like an insight to a different viewpoint on their heritage. The book reads with a perfect flow and when on the last page, I was disappointed that it was finished. This book gets a spot on the bookshelf!

Anyone who has grown up under the cloud of diversity=perversity will find common ground with Laurino's quest to understand her heritage and create an identity that is not defined by the dominant narrative. She writes with clarity and a generous emotional honesty. Although my parents emigrated from the southern United States to the West, I share many of Laurino's experiences with body smells, strange foods, dialect words, clothes, and the habit of saving new or luxury items for a special occasion. I too attribute this to a family background where smells, clothes and food were evidence of class distinctions. My mother was as concerned as hers with disassociating her family from the lower classes. The one true point of difference, and it's a big difference, is that her family brought her up American, mine tried to instill in us a nostalgia for an imagined past. I enjoyed this book immensely, sympathized with Laruino's questions and her search for meaningful answers. Here is an example of her poetic imagery, p. 174: "One knows that his people had to weave the knowledge of life and death into the rise and fall of each day."

Every ethnic group has found themselves subject to stereotyping as we make our journey from immigrant to American. Second- and third-generation hyphenated Americans feel the brunt of this in complex ways as we try to establish our own identities somewhere between the Old World and the New. "Were You Always an Italian?" tackles this issue head on, with humor and graceful writing. Everyone I know who has read this book comes away with a better understanding of themselves and their families as well as a feeling that they are not alone in dealing with the struggle for ethnic identity. Smart, fun to read, and wise -- I have made sure everyone I know has this book.

What a great book! Were You Always an Italian? made me laugh and think. Laurino uses stories from her life and the lives of others to tell some important truths about what it means to be a third generation American of any ethnicity, especially Italian. She takes on tough issues of class, religion, and even race relations with intelligence and humor. Most of all, she brings a rare combination of warmth and skepticism to topics many of us feel but may find hard to articulate: our families, our religion, our clothes, our appearance. Laurino's book uses the best of memoir, reporting, and essay to tell her story, often with some beautiful writing. This is a clever, yet intensely personal book that people will enjoy whether or not their name ends with a vowel.