. UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MACERATA DIPARTIMENTO DI STUDI LINGUISTICI, FILOLOGICI E LETTERARI MODERN AND COMPARATIVE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES CICLO XXX “IDENTITY ON THE MOVE” FOOD, SYMBOLISM AND AUTHENTICITY IN THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN MIGRATION PROCESS RELATORE DOTTORANDA Chiar.ma Prof.ssa MARINA CAMBONI Dott. CAMPANARI ALESSANDRA COORDINATORE Chiar.mo Prof. ALESSIO CAVICCHI ANNO 2018 CONTENTS Introduction 1 Italian Immigration into the United States 1.1. The Italian Diaspora: Over a Century of Migration 5 1.1.1. Food Culture in the Italian Immigration Experience 10 1.1.2. Birds of Passage and the Tension of Assimilation 11 1.2. Food and National Identity: the Construction of Italianità in America 14 1.3. Eating Cultures: Eating Cultures: Different Theories About the Italian 16 American Table 1.3.1. Toward a Reconstructionist Approach to Food Ethnic Identity 19 The Others in Ourselves: Negotiating Cultural Food Boundaries 2.1. The Meaning of Food: From Nature to Culture 22 2.2. The Sphere of “Individual Memory” 23 2.3. The Sphere of “Collective Memory” 28 2.4. The Sphere of “Invented Tradition” 35 Searching for My Food: the Experience of Italian American Writers 3.1. Autobiography and the Quest for Identity 39 3.2. Jerry Mangione in Mount Allegro 41 3.3. Helen Barolini’s Festa: A Memoir of Italian Recipes 46 3.4. Laura Schenone and the Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken 50 Taste, Smell, and Flavor: The Italian Restaurant in America 4.1. Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Historical Development of the Italian Food 55 Market in the U.S. 4.1.1. Italian Food in the American Way 58 4.2. The Rise of Italian Restaurants in America 60 4.2.1 Fusion or Con-fusion? A New Multicultural Cuisine 64 4.3. The Authentic Fake: The Phenomenon of “Italian Sounding” 68 An Ethnographic Research Project in Florida 5.1. Case Study: Italian Americans Performing a Symbolic Authenticity 72 5.2. Case Study: The Invention of Tradition in Italian Restaurants 82 Conclusion 91 Appendix 95 Bibliography 129 Introduction The late 1960s and the early 1970s saw a surge of popular as well as scholarly interest in ethnicity, with significant production of scholarly analyses of ethnicity, immigration, and intergenerational relationships among first generation immigrants and their descendants. In particular, Italian American communities played an active role in the phenomenon of ethnic revival. In the context of this inquiry into ethnicity, Food Studies also emerged as an interdisciplinary field that examines the role that food plays in constructing our sense of identity. Researchers have been challenged to go beyond focus on the aesthetic pleasure of food to a broader analysis of how personal and collective identities are constructed through food choices. In fact, food means much more than mere sustenance: it is a cultural expression that defines who we are and how we differentiate ourselves from others. My work contributes to the study of the human experience of “food space”, understood as a social construction that encompasses patterns of human behavior and their sensory relationship to a place. It also explores the theme of ethnic entrepreneurship. In fact, from production to consumption, food represents both a physical, geographical and territorial area as well as a cultural, social and economic sphere of debate between tradition and innovation. Indeed, food symbolizes a chain of meanings that shapes our culture and identity and incorporates the eater into a specific culinary framework. Like language, food is a relatively conservative system of symbols that human beings internalize from the time they are born. On the other hand, food practices and preferences also reflect changes in the way people prepare and consume meals in different historical circumstances. This is particularly true in the experience of Italian migration to the United States. Study of food choices offers a unique perspective from which to examine the evolution of ethnic identities in space and time and to gain understanding of the fluidity of our identity. Furthermore, it is safe to say that Italians have always had a straightforward relationship with food as a factor of cultural identity. In the Italian American experience, also, food has been of exceptional importance both as a culinary tradition and a socio-cultural and economic element of innovation. As an identity maker, food tells us stories of nostalgia, assimilation, resistance and change, and helps us comprehend the negotiation of our ethnicity in the “liminal space of alterity” (Rollock 66). As Italians immigrated to America, they brought their food system with them, but they also tried new products and recipes, and adapted their cooking and culinary style 1 to the American habits and tastes. In doing so, they forged a hybrid culinary culture that merged tradition and innovation and helped create a new sense of belonging in an unknown place. The core of this research project is a multi-generational investigation of the multifaceted Italian immigration process, using food culture as a vehicle for examining how immigrants lost their old identity and forged a new one in a foreign land. The focus on the United States was motivated by the fact that starting in the late 19th century, it was one of the primary destinations for Italian emigration. In fact, 5.5 million Italians moved there between 1820 and 2004 (Cavaioli 221). To explain how regional cuisine in America became a collective symbol of ethnicity and a factor of a distinct national identity for Italian Americans, I adopted the model created by Werner Sollors and Kathleen Neils Cozen regarding the “invention of ethnicity”. The overall purpose of this dissertation is to examine how food served as a nostalgic link with the homeland for the first generation, a cultural compromise for the second, and a tool in formulating a hybrid ethnicity for later generations. The lens of food is also used to explore the development of Italian ethnic entrepreneurship, followed by the rise of Italian restaurants during Prohibition and their role in the process of culinary homogenization and invention of tradition in the contemporary world. Finally, two case studies are presented and discussed, and a qualitative approach is used to analyze the creation of a solid Italian American identity in contemporary America through the use of hybrid food practices. The opening chapter presents an overview of Italian immigration to the United States, and then discusses methodology. The chapter first explores the large-scale migration that affected Italy and Italian cultural history for over a century, and then follows the development in time of food and foodways, “the eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period”.1 The first section of this chapter describes the cultural significance of food and its role in constructing a national identity beyond the borders of Italy. The segment starts with analysis of the early phase of the Italian Diaspora to the United States, during which Italy was still a nation of regions, each with its unique way of cooking. Next, the historical analysis focuses on the subsequent variation in food habits during the mass immigration. The chapter concludes by illustrating the theoretical framework used to explore different dimensions of ethnicity. It describes changing ideas about the concepts of assimilation and 1 The definition of “Foodways” was taken from Merriam-Webster Dictionary http://bit.ly/2ifl3i9 2 Americanization, reviews the debate on cultural pluralism, and provides an overview of theories about the invention of ethnicity, and how they are used to understand the construction of identity. The second chapter starts from the assumption that identity is socially constructed and constantly changing. It analyzes the not-fixed nature of food, explored through three distinct but often overlapping spheres: “individual memory”, “collective memory”, and “invented tradition”. In terms of “individual memory”, we see how the first Italian immigrants tended to conserve their regional traditions, and how as the years passed, their remembrances of Italy no longer corresponded to the contemporary reality of a country left decades before. Through the perpetuation of rituals of eating at home, the first immigrants promoted a “mythical tradition” by selecting ancestral values and transmitting them to following generations. In terms of collective memory, we can observe the conflict between the first and second generation of Italian immigrants in response to the social pressures of their new country. Here, the elders use food and symbolic rituals to keep their children close, while the second generation struggles to give birth to a new innovative culture, closer to the American one. This intergenerational conflict is solved around the “table” through a food-based contract that helps to create a more cohesive identity. The result is a step forward into a more united Italian-American cuisine. The analysis ends with the representation of later generations committed to recreating a separate culture of food as a symbol of creolized identity. Chapter three, the first empirical chapter of the dissertation, analyzes various literary forms in which second, third and contemporary generations of Italian-Americans reminisce on or seek to learn more about their heritage, and shows the importance of Italian food in shaping Italian-American identity. This part focuses on intergenerational changes in the expression of food identity and construction of a new ethnic identity. The fourth chapter outlines Italian food economic history in America, in an ethnic narrative that brings together economic, social and cultural aspects of the Italian diaspora in America, from the early inexpensive restaurants that offered diners traditional Italian home- cooking, to the development of a recognizable Italian-American style of cooking. Moreover, the chapter focuses on the cultural dialogue between local ethnic cuisines and the globalized world, to show how the process of culinary integration in modern times passes through cross-cultural understanding.