Becoming Italian in the US: Through the Lens of Life Narratives

• Published in: Melus Vol. 29; no. 3-4; pp. 151 - 164
• Main Author: Luconi, Stefano
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 22.09.2004; Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Analysis; Children; Cultural identity; Ethnic identity; Ethnicity; Fascism; Fascist parties; Homeland; Immigrants; Irish politics; Italian Americans; Language history; Narratives; Negotiation; Parents; Regional dialects; Retrospect, Reconsideration, Revaluation; Source studies; World wars; United States
• ISSN: 0163-755X; 1946-3170
• DOI: 10.2307/4141848

Sociologist Francis Ianni suggests that immigrants from Italy and their children lacked an ethnic identity based on their common national ancestry when they came to the US at the turn of the twentieth century. Italian Americans, not unlike other immigrant groups, are subject to two widely-held notions about ethnicity in the US: first, that an individual's attachment to his or her ethnic group undergoes a process of transformations over time, and second, that the social boundaries of an ethnic minority are continuously re-negotiated through real-life encounters. Here, Luconi examines Italian Americans' autobiographical accounts and narrative sources in order to cast further light on the process that Ianni describes from his logical standpoint.