- We're now joined by Dr. William "Bill" Connell, who is La Motta Chair of Italian Studies at Seton Hall University, one of our higher education partners.
Good to see you, doctor.
- Great to see you, Steve.
Thanks for having me on.
- You got, listen, obviously I grew up as a young Italian American boy in Newark, New Jersey, all around Italian American culture my whole life.
Connell is not an Italian, just clarify this for me.
- No.
- It is not an Italian last name - It is an Irish name.
And my parents came from Wisconsin with Irish and German backgrounds.
And so there's probably not a day in my life that someone doesn't ask, "Why have you devoted your life to Italian history, Italian American history?"
- Go ahead, answer it.
- And well, there's a long one.
But the short answer, as a boy of seven, playing stickball in the streets of Yonkers with Italian American boys, their nonne, their grandmothers would come out to give the kids cookies at three o'clock.
And the grandmothers didn't speak English and they would give two cookies to the little Irish boy who said a word in Italian.
- By the way, Bill, let's have a whole separate conversation on Irish-Italian interaction and the disproportionate number of marriages between, my wife happens to have Irish background as well.
There's an Irish-Italian thing that is fascinating on many levels.
- Absolutely.
- Let's leave it at that.
Okay?
- Another show.
Great.
- That's another show.
Real quick.
Do this for us.
There are 17 million Italian Americans living in the United States.
Italian American culture is deeply embedded in certain communities, but at the same time, growing up in Newark, Sunday dinner was what it was.
Gravy is gravy, not sauce.
We'll go into, that's another conversation as well.
But growing up in the community I grew up in, virtually everyone was Italian American.
It was a big part of our lives.
As kids and their families started moving and spreading out all over the place, I was in Newark, New Jersey.
To what degree are you concerned about Italian American culture being lost in our country?
- Well, first of all, it's, in the country, fifth largest ethnic group according to the census.
New Jersey, however, it's the single largest ethnic and racial group.
- Number one.
- So it is an issue with assimilation, mixed marriages, moving to the suburbs.
And so it's a question that we address in the book that I've just published.
- Yeah, talk about that book, Bill.
- Yeah, it's called "The Routledge History of Italian Americans."
Big book, 700 pages.
It's an attempt, my attempt, and attempt of a good number of scholars and collaborators, there are 40 of us, to give a textbook for Italian American history so that in our growing our classes that have growing numbers of students in Italian history would have a good textbook that tells the accurate story.
- And that brought on a full, what award did that win?
- Oh, yeah, so we just, I was flown to Rome.
- Fulbright award?
- I was flown to Rome for a ceremony at the foreign ministry and the American embassy.
The Fulbright relationship between the United States and Italy is 75 years old.
And so this project was awarded that special honor.
It was really a great thing.
- Congratulations, Bill.
Do this for us.
I wanna ask you about this and I want you to expound upon it.
So my grandfather, Luigi Calvello, came to the United States from, people say Naples, but you know well that it wasn't really Naples.
Many people came from small towns, villages outside of Naples, but it was Provincia di Avellino And I know you know what I'm talking about.
But he came here in 1919.
Seven years later, Vincenta Calvello, he sent for her because he came here to make a living.
And until he could afford her coming here, that's when she came here.
Seven years they waited for each other.
That's another story.
Why do I raise this?
Because many Italian Americans whose parents and grandparents came from Italy talk about immigration in a certain way and believe that immigration today is dramatically different.
Am I oversimplifying that?
- I think immigration today involves a lot of the same issues, financial stress, families and their homeland.
Very important that way.
But there's something special about the Italian American experience.
I see it as really two experiences of migration, especially strong in the case of Newark, which you just mentioned.
That is, there's a distancing, a sense of alienation, of wondering where your future is going to be that comes from leaving the homeland, from leaving Italy.
But there's a second migration that takes place in the 1960s, '70s, that you know very well from Newark.
Your father combated, did everything he could, to deal with that sense of alienation and bring people together.
But there's also a sense of old homelands of Little Italy's being lost, that I think, that second era of, second aspect of alienation is important for Italian Americans.
- By the way, the term Little Italy, people talk about Little Italy is if it's Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan, which is not what it was.
But our family, there was a Little Italy in what was called the Old First Ward in Newark, New Jersey by St. Lucy's Church, the St. Gerard Feast, take a look at our programming we've done on that.
The reason I say that, there are Little Italy's all across this nation and in those communities, where my parents, grandparents, were from, they were poor, they were together, they supported each other, but to not overly complicate it, but many of those communities don't exist any longer.
Is that fair to say, Professor?
- Yeah, sure, I mean, in Newark, there were at least three.
I mean, there's also, in the Ironbound, there was a Little Italy and also around St. Rocco's Parish.
- That's right.
- Largest was north, was the north ward.
- In my neighborhood, right.
- And where you were, around St. Louis.
But yeah, a lot of them have disappeared, and yet there's an attachment and nostalgia.
So as you well know, I've gone to weddings and funerals at St. Lucy's.
There's this return from the suburbs back to these old places.
The church is very important in those... - And by the way, Bill, and I'm sure in Bill's book, "The Routledge History of Italian Americans" will also explain this, I'm sure, that the disproportionate number of Italians who came to the United States, or the first wave in the 1890s and other, the immigration effort, or the immigration initiative from Italy to United States, not from the north, but from the south.
- Yeah.
- Poor, difficult to find work, a totally different culture than Rome and Florence and other places.
So when people talk about Italians in Italy, Sicily's another story, but the bottom line is, many Italy's are there not, real quick, before I let you go, Bill?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they settle in what are known as urban villages.
So often people from the same town would gather together and recreate a kind of village with a parish church, with a baker, with a sausage shop, with a printer, with a mutual aid society.
And it would be a kind of reproduction of the town in Sicily or Provincia di Avellino or Calabria or wherever.
- Do you know what that was called?
They called the paes.
- Yeah, the paes.
The paes is (laughs) - Sorry.
- And the people within, they were the paesans, you know, within.
- Paesans.
(laughs) We'll have an offline conversation.
Professor, Dr. Bill Connell, La Motta Chair of Italian Studies at the Seton Hall University.
Thanks, Bill.
We'll talk offline more about this stuff.
I'm too passionate about it.
It's an Italian thing.
Stay with us.
We'll back after this.
- Be well.
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