AMERICA IS ALSO ITALIAN

About AMERICA IS ALSO ITALIAN

This podcast aims to explain Italian characters and behavior. A full-length portrait of my compatriots may occasionally be witty, grave, cynical, compassionate, melancholy, glittering, scholarly, and stimulating. What is important is that we share these emotions. Italians have discovered America for the Americans; taught poetry, statesmanship, and the ruses of trade to the English; military art to the Germans; cuisine to the French; acting and ballet dancing to the Russians; music to everybody. Suppose someday this world of ours should be turned into a cloud of radioactive dust in space. In that case, it will be by nuclear contrivances developed with the decisive aid of Italian scientists—{Luigi Barzini, in the Italians}. Between 1880 and 1920, over 4 million Italians immigrated to the United States. No other ethnic group has sent so many immigrants in such a short time. Before 1870, only thousands of Italians had come to areas outside Europe, either to North or South America. Up to 1900, most Italians had emigrated to either Argentina or Brazil. Those entering the United States were primarily male, and many intended to return to Italy after making some money. However, for various reasons, many ended up staying in America. {Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted}. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Publisher

Walter Potenza

Category

education · history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 Jun 2022

Latest episode

14 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

17 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 Jun 2026

   Who We Are

   There is a moment, if you have Italian blood in you, when you realize that the country you live in and the country that lives in you are not two separate things. They never were. Somewhere between the docks of Palermo and the tenements of lower Manhattan, between the vineyards of Calabria and the fishing boats of Gloucester, Massachusetts, between a grandmother's kitchen in Naples and a kitchen in Providence or Pittsburgh or San Francisco, something happened that America has never fully accounted for. A civilization crossed an ocean. And it never left. This is not a nostalgia project. I want to be clear about that from the beginning, because Italian Americans have been served enough nostalgia. We have been fed the sepia-toned version of ourselves — the pushed cart, the tenement stoop, the red sauce Sunday, the accordion in the background — and while there is beauty in all of that, there is also a danger. Nostalgia softens the edges of history. It makes suffering picturesque. It turns a complex, living civilization into a costume, and it lets the harder truths go unexamined. The harder truths matter. The Italian immigrants who came to this country in the great waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not arrive as guests. They arrived as laborers, as outsiders, as people who were not always welcomed, not always trusted, not always considered fully white by a society still sorting itself out along the sharpest of racial and ethnic lines. They were exploited in the mines and on the railroads. They were lynched in Louisiana. They were interned during the Second World War alongside Japanese Americans, a fact that almost no one talks about. They built this country with their hands and were, for decades, repaid with contempt. And yet they stayed. And yet they built. And yet they cooked. That last word is not a diminishment. Food, for Italians, has never been a minor matter. It is theology. It is memory. It is the most direct line between who you are and where you come from. When an Italian grandmother makes Sunday ragù, she is not simply making lunch. She is performing an act of cultural transmission that goes back centuries, that carries within it the soil of a specific region, the dialect of a specific village, the accumulated knowledge of women whose names we will never know but whose hands shaped everything. That knowledge crossed the ocean. It adapted. It found new ingredients and new neighbors and new contexts. And in doing so, it became part of what Americans eat, what Americans taste, what Americans reach for when they want comfort or celebration or the feeling of being home. Italian food in America is not Italian food. I say that not as a criticism but as a fact of cultural history. What Italian immigrants created in this country was something new — a cuisine born of necessity and memory and improvisation, shaped by what was available and affordable, by the mixing of regional traditions that would never have met back in Italy, by the particular hunger of people trying to hold onto something while building something else entirely. That cuisine — the pizza, the pasta, the meatball, the hero sandwich, the feast of the seven fishes — became American food. It became so American that most people have forgotten it was ever anything else. That forgetting is part of what we are here to address. This podcast aims to explain Italian characters and behavior. A full-length portrait of my compatriots may occasionally be witty, grave, cynical, compassionate, melancholy, glittering, scholarly, and stimulating. What is important is that we share these emotions. Italians have discovered America for the Americans; taught poetry, statesmanship, and the ruses of trade to the English; military art to the Germans; cuisine to the French; acting and ballet dancing to the Russians; music to everybody. Suppose someday this world of ours should be turned into a cloud of radioactive dust in space. In that case, it will be by nuclear contrivances developed with the decisive aid of Italian scientists—{Luigi Barzini, in the Italians}. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

2. 

   8 Jun 2026

   Breadmaking on Federal Hill

   Breadmaking on Federal Hill In our home, the weekly ritual of breadmaking was my mother's domain. Every week, she would bake four loaves to feed our family—a testament to her old-world ways. The process began with her scooping nearly eight pounds of flour from a giant ninety-pound sack into a large, handled bread pan. After adding precise measurements of salt, yeast, and water, she would tie a bandana over her hair and begin kneading the massive ball of dough, working it patiently until it reached the perfect, elastic consistency. Once the dough was ready, she would cover it with a white cloth. Then came our task: my siblings or I would carefully carry the heavy pan by its handles from our house to the Patriarca Bakery on Knight Street. Nearly every family on Federal Hill followed the same custom, which led to a predictable rush on baking day. The goal was to arrive just as the baker emptied his own shop's bread from the giant ovens, their residual heat perfectly poised to bake our homemade loaves. Each pan was tagged with a number, and a corresponding slip was pasted onto the huge, round loaf the baker shaped from our dough. This system, however, was not foolproof. Sometimes a child would get distracted, or the baker himself might make a mistake, placing the wrong loaf back into the wrong pan. Chaos would ensue when a mother who had carefully prepared her dough using a cherished Sicilian recipe ended up with a loaf from Apulia or Naples. I can still hear the outraged screams of our Sicilian neighbor, Assunta, echoing down the street when such a mix-up occurred. Eventually, this tradition of baking homemade dough in the community oven gave way to the convenience of home delivery. Our bread then came from Pracacinni's on Spruce Street. To order, we would place a sign in our front window that read, "one Italian and one American," instructing the bread man to leave one loaf of crusty Italian and one of soft American bread. To any stranger passing through, these cryptic signs must have been a complete mystery—a secret code known only to the families of the neighborhood. This podcast aims to explain Italian characters and behavior. A full-length portrait of my compatriots may occasionally be witty, grave, cynical, compassionate, melancholy, glittering, scholarly, and stimulating. What is important is that we share these emotions. Italians have discovered America for the Americans; taught poetry, statesmanship, and the ruses of trade to the English; military art to the Germans; cuisine to the French; acting and ballet dancing to the Russians; music to everybody. Suppose someday this world of ours should be turned into a cloud of radioactive dust in space. In that case, it will be by nuclear contrivances developed with the decisive aid of Italian scientists—{Luigi Barzini, in the Italians}. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

3. 

   29 May 2026

   Healthcare on Federal Hill

   This episode is titled: Healthcare on Federal Hill. When my sisters were about six or seven years old, one of them fell seriously ill with a throat infection. In those days, doctors still made house calls, and so our family physician, Doctor Romano, was summoned to our home. After examining my sister, he diagnosed an infected tonsils and announced they needed to be removed immediately. While he was there, he checked my other sister’s throat and recommended she have her tonsils out as well. He offered my parents a deal: the operation was $15 for one child, but he would perform both for $25. My parents agreed, and our kitchen was promptly converted into an operating room. Two chairs were placed in the center of the room. To assist him, the doctor called upon our family friend, Mrs. Cerce, whom we considered an amateur nurse because she volunteered at the Federal Hill House clinic. A anesthetic cone was fashioned from newspaper and lined with cloth. A can of ether was prepared with two holes punched in the top. My sisters were seated in the chairs, their heads tilted back, and the makeshift operating theater was ready. Everyone was sent out of the kitchen, though we managed to peek from the bedrooms and pantry, witnessing the entire procedure. Doctor Romano dripped ether from the can into the cone, placed it over the first patient’s nose and mouth, and once the anesthetic began to take effect, he handed this duty to Mrs. Cerce. She continued to administer a few drops at a time at his command while also helping to hold the girls still. The doctor swiftly operated, placing the removed tonsils in a glass, and then tended to his groggy patients. Afterward, my sisters, who looked like two limp rag dolls, were put to bed. They recovered with no ill effects, and our family was profoundly grateful to Mrs. Cerce. Our mother’s prayers had been answered. In a bizarre epilogue, the used ether can was retrieved from the trash by a neighborhood character we called Tatono (Sal) Mattera. He used the residual fumes to intoxicate his pet cat, turning the creature into a stumbling, drunken cartoon character. This was typical behavior for him; on another occasion, he captured a rat, tied a string around its neck, and walked it around the neighborhood—needless to say, he walked alone. Rats were a common nuisance in our community, largely because garbage and trash were never wrapped. We had a bin and several 50-gallon drums enclosed in chicken wire in the backyard for garbage, plus a cement ashbin for stove ashes, cans, bottles, and other refuse. The most exciting—and hazardous—time was when the ashbin needed emptying. My father would contact Mr. Zinni, the ash man. We children would watch, wide-eyed, as he opened the bin door, pitchfork in hand, ready to strike at the rats that would leap out when their nests were disturbed. He hauled the waste away in his horse-drawn wagon. The weekly garbage collectors faced similar perils, and we knew exactly what had happened whenever we heard one of them scream. This podcast aims to explain Italian characters and behavior. A full-length portrait of my compatriots may occasionally be witty, grave, cynical, compassionate, melancholy, glittering, scholarly, and stimulating. What is important is that we share these emotions. Italians have discovered America for the Americans; taught poetry, statesmanship, and the ruses of trade to the English; military art to the Germans; cuisine to the French; acting and ballet dancing to the Russians; music to everybody. Suppose someday this world of ours should be turned into a cloud of radioactive dust in space. In that case, it will be by nuclear contrivances developed with the decisive aid of Italian scientists—{Luigi Barzini, in the Italians}. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

4. 

   28 May 2026

   Crime and Punishments

   Crime and Punishments (By Antonio Fantetti) During my youth in Federal Hill, the local crime scene was a small-time, underground economy built on bookmaking, craps games, the sale of stolen goods, the Italian lottery, Irish sweepstakes, and the daily numbers racket we called "black pool." It was the press and the police, through their sensationalism and attention, who inflated this humble operation into a legendary, million-dollar enterprise. From my perspective, those involved were merely playing a part—a role influenced by movie depictions of charismatic criminal heroes. Their tough personas were often just an act, divorced from their true personalities. While a few hardened thieves operated in the neighborhood, they typically practiced their trade elsewhere. On The Hill itself, their demeanor was consistently friendly, generous, and respectful. Regardless of the hour, it was always a safe and welcoming place to stroll, shop, or hang out—a fact any former resident from that era will gladly confirm. The press invariably exaggerated events in our community. I recall a bank robbery committed in broad daylight by a local boy known to the tellers—a harmless soul who never hurt a fly. He was quickly caught with only a small amount of cash, yet the papers ran stories highlighting an "undetermined amount taken." We always suspected the banks used such claims as a convenient way to balance their books. The young men involved in this world never harmed anyone outside of their business dealings. When violence did occur, the older generation universally sympathized with the parents of those who met tragic ends. These individuals had chosen their path and paid the ultimate price when things went wrong. As kids, we shared this sentiment, though we were blissfully unaware of how easily the street could have consumed any one of us. In the end, most of us turned out well, and in later life, we could only feel a profound sadness for those who ultimately fell victim to their own choices, to crime and punishment. This podcast aims to explain Italian characters and behavior. A full-length portrait of my compatriots may occasionally be witty, grave, cynical, compassionate, melancholy, glittering, scholarly, and stimulating. What is important is that we share these emotions. Italians have discovered America for the Americans; taught poetry, statesmanship, and the ruses of trade to the English; military art to the Germans; cuisine to the French; acting and ballet dancing to the Russians; music to everybody. Suppose someday this world of ours should be turned into a cloud of radioactive dust in space. In that case, it will be by nuclear contrivances developed with the decisive aid of Italian scientists—{Luigi Barzini, in the Italians}. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

5. 

   18 Feb 2026

   A Century in the Spotligh

   A Century in the Spotlight As the 20th century progressed, Italian immigrants steadily entered the mainstream of U.S. society. By the 1920s and 30s, the immigrant generation had begun to see their children grow up as Americans—a process that many immigrants viewed with some ambivalence. The U.S. public school system provided immigrant children with a new language, a new set of patriotic symbols, schoolyard immersion in U.S. popular culture, and sometimes even a new Anglicized name. At the same time, though, this process often created a cultural gap between the second, Americanized, generation and their parents, who would always belong, at least in part, to the old country. Over time, Italian Americans achieved advances in the U.S. workforce. The major labor unions soon opened their doors to immigrant workers, and Italians were able to continue their activism on a much larger scale. As they gained more experience, Italian Americans were able to move into a wider range of careers and became business owners and managers in greater numbers. Works by Italian-American authors began appearing in bookstores, and the Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso became a best-selling artist among Italians and non-Italians alike. With prosperity came greater political clout, and candidates began currying favor with Italian-American associations as elections drew near. The coming of World War II saw Italian Americans step permanently into the center of U.S. cultural life. Nearly one million Italian Americans served in the armed forces, about 5 percent of the Italian-American population, and millions more worked in war industries. As with many other immigrant groups, national service brought Italian Americans even greater social mobility, more access to education, and a higher profile in the nation's popular imagination. According to one account, an Italian-American aircraft worker, Rose Bonavita, inspired a 20th-century icon, Rosie the Riveter. From the 1940s on, the children of Italian immigrants could be found in all regions of the U.S., in almost every career and nearly every walk of life. This was especially true in New York City, where Italian American culture soon became a major component of the city's personality. For many Americans, the city's longtime mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, served as an energetic and erudite ambassador both for his city and for his national heritage. For a comprehensive collection of photographs of Italian Americans in the war years, and particularly in New York City, visit the collection Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives and search for "Italian American." With the explosion of mass media after the war, Italian Americans became ubiquitous. Every aspect of show business, politics, science, and art seemed to have a prominent Italian American in its vanguard. Rocky Marciano revolutionized the sport of boxing. Diane Di Prima pioneered the rough poetry and prose of the Beat movement. Enrico Fermi continued his Nobel Prize-winning work on the mysteries of the atom, becoming arguably the greatest physicist alive. Joe DiMaggio, the son of a San Francisco fisherman, led the New York Yankees to nine World Series championships. The crooners Perry Como and Dean Martin ruled the airwaves, and Hoboken, New Jersey's Frank Sinatra was, for a time, the most popular entertainer in the United States. Today, Italian Americans are represented throughout U.S. society, from the Supreme Court to the National Academy of Sciences to the National Basketball Association. More than 100 years after the great era of Italian immigration began, the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the original immigrants continue to celebrate the heritage their forebears brought to their new home. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

6. 

   18 Feb 2026

   Under Attack

   Under Attack: "Where the Blame Lies" Labor struggles were not the only conflicts Italian immigrants faced. During the years of the great Italian immigration, they also had to confront a wave of virulent prejudice and nativist hostility. As immigration from Europe and Asia neared its crest in the late 19th century, anti-immigrant sentiment soared along with it. The U.S. was in the grips of an economic depression, and immigrants were blamed for taking American jobs. At the same time, racialist theories circulated in the press, advancing pseudoscientific theories that alleged that "Mediterranean" types were inherently inferior to people of northern European heritage. Drawings and songs caricaturing the new immigrants as childlike, criminal, or subhuman became sadly commonplace. One 1891 cartoon claimed that "If immigration were properly restricted, you would never be troubled with anarchism, socialism, the Mafia, and such kindred evils!" Attacks on Italians were not limited to the printed page, however. From the late 1880s, anti-immigrant societies sprang up around the country, and the Ku Klux Klan saw a spike in membership. Catholic churches and charities were vandalized and burned, and Italians were attacked by mobs. In the 1890s alone, more than 20 Italians were lynched. One of the bloodiest episodes took place in New Orleans in 1891. When the chief of police was found shot to death on the street one night, the mayor blamed "Sicilian gangsters" and rounded up more than 100 Sicilian Americans. Eventually, 19 were put on trial and, as the nation's Italian Americans watched nervously, were found not guilty for lack of evidence. Before they could be freed, however, a mob of 10,000 people, including many of New Orleans' most prominent citizens, broke into the jail. They dragged 11 Sicilians from their cells and lynched them, including two men jailed on other offenses. Anti-immigrant sentiment continued until the 1920s, when severe restrictions on immigration were put into place by the U.S. Congress. When this legislation passed, the great era of Italian immigration came to an end. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

7. 

   18 Feb 2026

   Working across the Country

   Working Across the Country As the great surge of immigration continued into the 20th century, Italian communities bloomed across the country. As they did so, the Italian immigrants put their hands to a wide variety of work. In San Francisco, home of a longstanding Italian enclave, the new arrivals found their way to the docks for work as fishermen and stevedores. In Appalachia and the mountain West, they went into the pits and mines to dig for coal and ore. Stonemasons who had learned their trade on the rocks and crags of southern Italy worked in the quarries of New England and Indiana. Meanwhile, Italians labored on farms and ranches in every corner of the country, from the cranberry bogs of the northeast to the strawberry beds of Louisiana to the bean fields of California. Some Italians seized upon entrepreneurial opportunities in their new home. Italian immigrants in upstate New York formed the Contadina food company in 1918, and Andrea Sbarbaro of Genoa helped establish the California wine industry. In turn-of-the-century San Francisco, an Italian American named A.P. Giannini began offering small loans to his fellow Italians, going door to door to collect interest. Eventually, Giannini's operation grew until he was forced to rent an office in North Beach, then to buy a building. Today, Giannini's Banca d'Italia has become one of the world's largest financial institutions: Bank of America. Many Italian immigrants, however, found themselves toiling for low pay in unhealthy working conditions. At the turn of the 20th century, southern Italian immigrants were among the lowest-paid workers in the United States. Child labor was common, and even small children often worked in factories, mines, and on farms, or sold newspapers on city streets. Many thousands of Italian immigrants found themselves prisoners of the padrone, or patron, system of labor. The padroni were labor brokers, sometimes immigrants themselves, who recruited Italian immigrants for large employers and then acted as overseers on the work site. In practice, many padroni acted more like slave holders than managers. A padrone often controlled the wages, contracts, and food supply of the immigrants under his authority, and could keep workers on the job for weeks or months beyond their contracts. Some padroni built vast labor empires, keeping thousands of workers confined in locked camps, behind barbed wire fences patrolled by armed guards. The padrone system, despite its many injustices, was not eradicated until the middle of the 20th century. Italian immigrants fought against unscrupulous management and unsafe conditions by taking organized action. Because several of the major U.S. unions barred foreign workers from membership for many years, many immigrants formed their own unions, such as the Italian Workers union in Houston, or joined the radical International Workers of the World. Italian union organizers fanned out across the nation, often risking arrest or death for their efforts. Italian workers were active in most of the great labor struggles of the early 20th century, leading strikes in the Tampa cigar factories, the granite quarries of Vermont, and the textile mills of New England. In 1912, during a bitter textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Italian IWW organizers Arturo Giovannitti and Joseph Ettor, along with striker Joseph Caruso, were imprisoned for nearly a year on false murder charges. In the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, when Colorado National Guardsmen attempted to break a miners' strike by burning down the strikers' tent village, the two women and eleven children who died in the fire were all Italian immigrants. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

8. 

   18 Feb 2026

   A city of Villages

   A City of Villages The Italian immigrants who passed the Ellis Island test went about transforming the city they found before them. Many previous immigrant groups, such as those from Germany and Scandinavia, had passed through New York City in decades past, but most had regarded the city merely as a way station and had continued on to settle elsewhere in the country. This generation of Italian immigrants, however, stopped there and made their homes; one-third never got past New York City. They scattered all over the New York region, settling in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and nearby towns in New Jersey. Perhaps the greatest concentration of all, though, was in Manhattan. The streets of Lower Manhattan, particularly parts of Mulberry Street, quickly became heavily Italian in character, with street vendors, store owners, residents and vagrants alike all speaking the same language--or at least a dialect of it. In part because of the social and political divisions of the Italian peninsula, southern Italian villages tended to be isolated and insular, and new immigrants often preserved this isolation in their new country, clustering in close enclaves. In some cases, the population of a single Italian village ended up living on the same block in New York, or even the same tenement building, and preserved many of the social institutions, habits of worship, grudges, and hierarchies from the old country. In Italy, this spirit of village cohesion was known as campanilismo—loyalty to those who live within the sound of the village church bells. Many distinctive events and practices maintained the village's unity: weddings, feasts, christenings, and funerals. One that often caught outsiders' attention was the festa—a parade celebrating the feast day of a particular village's patron saint. Hundreds or thousands of residents would follow the saint's image in a procession through the neighborhood's streets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

9. 

   18 Feb 2026

   Tenements and Toil

   Tenements and Toil Urban life was often hazardous for the new immigrant, and housing could be one of the greatest dangers. At the turn of the century, more than half the population of New York City, and most immigrants, lived in tenement houses, narrow, low-rise apartment buildings that were usually grossly overcrowded by their landlords. Cramped, poorly lit, under-ventilated, and usually without indoor plumbing, the tenements were hotbeds of vermin and disease, and were frequently swept by cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis. The investigative journalist Jacob Riis, himself a Danish immigrant, launched a public campaign to expose and eradicate the exploitative housing that new immigrants were forced to endure. For Italians, this way of living came as an enormous shock. In Italy, many rural families slept in small, cramped houses; however, they spent most of their waking hours out of the house, working, socializing, and taking their meals outdoors. In New York, they found themselves confined to a claustrophobic indoor existence, using the same small room for eating, sleeping, and even working. A substantial percentage of immigrant families worked at home performing piecework—that is, doing work that paid them by the piece, such as stitching together garments or hand-assembling machinery. In a situation like this, an immigrant woman or child might go days without seeing sunlight. Immigrants' workplaces could be as unhealthy as their homes. A substantial number of southern Italian immigrants had only worked as farmers and were thus qualified only for unskilled, and more dangerous, urban labor. Many Italians went to work on the growing city's municipal works projects, digging canals, laying paving and gas lines, building bridges, and tunneling out the New York subway system. In 1890, nearly 90 percent of the laborers in New York's Department of Public Works were Italian immigrants. By no means was all Italian immigrants' work grim and hazardous. Italians found work throughout the city, in many of the improvised trades that have long been a haven for immigrants, such as shoemaking, masonry, bartending, and barbering. For a time, some observers felt that Italians operated every fruit vendor's cart in the city. For many immigrants, though, and especially women and children, work could only be found in sweatshops, the dark, unsafe factories that sprang up around New York. When a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911, killing 146 workers, nearly half of the victims were young Italian women. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

10. 

    18 Feb 2026

    Ellis Island

    For most of this generation of Italian immigrants, their first steps on U.S. soil were taken at Ellis Island, now a legend. Ellis Island was founded as a solution to a serious social crisis. New York's previous immigrant processing station, a decaying fortress called Castle Garden, had become a pit of corruption and theft, where new immigrants had to run a gauntlet of swindlers, pickpockets, and armed robbers before escaping with their freedom and their paperwork. To ensure a safe, controlled, and regulated entry process, the federal government took over immigration processing and built a set of new, purpose-built facilities on an island in New York Harbor. The immigration station at Ellis Island represented a new type of government institution and has become an enduring symbol of the immigrant experience in the United States. During the forty years it operated, Ellis Island saw more than 12 million immigrants pass through its gates, at a rate of up to 5,000 people a day. For many generations of Americans, and for almost all Italian Americans, Ellis Island is the first chapter of their family's story in the United States. When the first group of immigrants disembarked on Ellis Island in 1892, they found themselves in the grip of a bewildering, though still orderly, regime of bureaucratic procedures. Newcomers were numbered, sorted, and sent through a series of inspections, where they were checked for physical and mental fitness and for their ability to find work in the U.S. The consequences of failing an eye exam or of seeming too frail for manual labor could be devastating; one family member could be sent back to Italy, perhaps never to see his or her loved ones again, because of a hint of trachoma or a careless inspector. Fear of being separated from family led some immigrants to call Ellis Island 'the Island of Tears'. Even for those who successfully navigated the battery of inspections, Ellis Island was generally not a pleasant experience. The regulations were confusing, the crowds disorienting, the officials rushed, and the hubbub of countless competing languages must have jangled the nerves. The moment of departure, when successful immigrants boarded ferries for New York City or destinations further west, came as a tremendous relief. The third part of our special edition ends here. Thanks for listening Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

11. 

    14 Jan 2026

    The Great Arrivals

    This episode explores the Great Arrival Most of this generation of Italian immigrants took their first steps on U.S. soil in a place that has now become a legend—Ellis Island. In the 1880s, they numbered 300,000; in the 1890s, 600,000; in the decade after that, more than two million. By 1920, when immigration began to taper off, more than 4 million Italians had come to the United States, and represented more than 10 percent of the nation's foreign-born population. What brought about this dramatic surge in immigration? The causes are complex, and each hopeful individual or family no doubt had a unique story. By the late 19th century, the Italian peninsula had finally been brought under a single flag, but the land and its people were by no means unified. Decades of internal strife had left a legacy of violence, social chaos, and widespread poverty. The peasants in the primarily poor, mostly rural south of Italy and on the island of Sicily had little hope of improving their lot. Diseases and natural disasters swept through the new nation, but its fledgling government was in no condition to bring aid to the people. As transatlantic transportation became more affordable and as word of American prosperity spread through returning immigrants and U.S. recruiters, Italians found it increasingly difficult to resist the call of "L'America". This new generation of Italian immigrants was distinctly different in makeup from those who had come before. The immigrant population no longer consisted mostly of Northern Italian artisans and shopkeepers seeking a new market in which to ply their trades. Instead, the vast majority were farmers and laborers looking for a steady source of work—any work. There was a significant number of single men among these immigrants, and many came only to stay a short time. Within five years, between 30 and 50 percent of this generation of immigrants would return home to Italy, where they were known as ritornati. Those who stayed usually maintained close contact with their families in the old country and worked hard to earn money to send back home. In 1896, a government commission on Italian immigration estimated that Italian immigrants sent or took home between $4 million and $30 million each year, and that "the marked increase in the wealth of certain sections of Italy can be traced directly to the money earned in the United States." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

12. 

    14 Jan 2026

    Immigrant's Early Arrivals

    This episode explores the Immigrant's Early Arrivals Throughout the colonial and early national periods, immigrants from the Italian peninsula maintained a small but well-established presence in the North American population. Italian craftsmen were renowned the world over, and many traveled to the New World to help build its new institutions, working as sculptors, woodworkers, and glassblowers. Thomas Jefferson had a particular affinity for Italian culture; he recruited Italian stonemasons to work on his home at Monticello, and brought musicians from Italy to form the core of the Marine Band. In addition, he invented his own hand-operated pasta machine, the designs for which are still in the Library's collections. Italian immigration continued at a trickle throughout the middle of the 19th century. Although travelers from the peninsula continued to roam the world, most chose to settle in Argentina and Brazil. Between 1820 and 1870, fewer than 25,000 Italian immigrants came to the U.S., mostly from northern Italy. These early arrivals settled in communities all across the country, from the farm towns of New Jersey and the vineyards of California to the ports of San Francisco and New Orleans. The impact of their contributions can still be seen today. The poet Lorenzo da Ponte built the first opera house in the U.S., became a professor of Italian at Columbia University, and almost single-handedly established Italian opera in the United States. The abolition movement received key support from the prominent Philadelphia rabbi Sabato Morais, who brought a fierce commitment to freedom and human rights from his native Tuscany. Starting in the mid-1850s, painter Constantino Brumidi spent decades creating the paintings and frescoes that adorn the U.S. Capitol, including the spectacular images on the building's great dome. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

13. 

    24 May 2024

    The flight to Ellis Island

    Author Jerre Mangione's book {America is also Italian} proudly narrated by Chef Walter Potenza. Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers. Note: The podcast intends to honor and glorify Jerre Mangione's memory and the immense contributions he left behind! The Italian Heritage Network (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl0YYGxF92eUnxplP1TZrFA) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

14. 

    3 Nov 2023

    The Italians who came early Part 3

    Enjoy the third part of America is also Italian. Narrator, Walter Potenza Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers. The Italian Heritage Network (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl0YYGxF92eUnxplP1TZrFA) More podcasts by Chef Walter Potenza (https://flavorsandknowledge.com/podcast) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

15. 

    1 Oct 2022

    The Italians who came early Part 2

    Author Jerre Mangione's book {America is also Italian} proudly narrated by Chef Walter Potenza. Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers. Note: the podcast intends to honor and glorify the memory of Jerre Mangione and the immense contributions he left behind! The Italian Heritage Network (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl0YYGxF92eUnxplP1TZrFA) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

16. 

    29 Sept 2022

    The Italians who came early Part 1

    Author Jerre Mangione's book {America is also Italian, narrated by Chef Walter Potenza. Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers. Honoring the memory of Jerre Mangione Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

17. 

    23 Jun 2022

    THE ITALIANS BENVENUTI

    This podcast aims to explain Italian characters and behavior. A full-length portrait of my compatriots may occasionally be witty, grave, cynical, compassionate, melancholy, glittering, scholarly, and stimulating. What is important is that we share these emotions. Italians discovered America for the Americans; taught poetry, statesmanship, and the ruses of trade to the English; military art to the Germans; cuisine to the French; acting and ballet dancing to the Russians; music to everybody. If someday this world of ours should be turned into a cloud of radioactive dust in space, it will be by nuclear contrivances developed with the decisive aid of Italian scientists. {Luigi Barzini, in the Italians}. Between 1880 and 1920, over four million Italians entered the United States. No other ethnic group has sent so many immigrants in such a short time. Before 1870 only scattered thousands of Italians had come to areas outside of Europe to either North or South America. Up to 1900, most Italians had emigrated to either Argentina or Brazil. Those entering the United States were primarily male, and many intended to return to Italy after making some money. However, many ended up staying in America for various reasons. {Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted]. The Italian Heritage Network (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl0YYGxF92eUnxplP1TZrFA) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Contact AMERICA IS ALSO ITALIAN

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