LA FAMILIA

'The Family'

Primo Canara

The test of an Italian/American family was how dedicated one was to the clan. Italian people are clannish, not only for the family but for Paesanos from their hometowns back in Italy and anyone Italian in American. They hung together and fought for each other, when joy came they surrounded themselves with good food and music, and when pain, suffering, and death visited, they rallied as one.

When a great Italian American or Italian boxer like Primo Canera fought, or, when Rocky Marciano and Rocky Graziano fought all the Italian Americans came out in support, he was, uno di noi, ‘one of us’. The importance that Italian immigrants and their children succeeded beyond the everyday jobs of street sweeping, household help and hard labor meant they were being assimilated into the mainstream of American life, which meant acceptance by ‘Il Medicanos’!

Patronizing their own, the new and young doctors, lawyers and businesses that had an Italian surname were where they went. Pride in the fact these children of American immigrants were defying the norm, saying to America: we can be just as American as you can! Art, design, and writing suddenly had a new level to measure itself Italian/Americans were making a statement, in English! Sometimes the statement was my doctor is Italian, he is not my son but he might be someday. To this day, when I see a doctor or lawyer, a politician, jurist or professor, I remember those days of discrimination and a rush of pride taking over once upon a time.

My dad loved baseball and the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Carl Furillo was his favorite Dodger but so were Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, and Phil Rizzuto. This was pride in our Italian nationality. 

We as an immigrant population were suspected, feared and discriminated against mostly because of the language barrier and the willingness to work hard for very little. One of the biggest discriminators or racists was Teddy Roosevelt, the President of the United States of America, yet we respected his office! Our problems were we were not all fair-skinned, all blond, we didn’t have the ‘Made in America’ signature. And of course worst of all: we didn’t speak English we were still foreigners.

My relatives were fugitives in the Fascist state of Italy, hiding in the hills and fighting the ugliness of Nationalistic government. When grandma and grandpa came to America, they came with a purpose, to make a better life, and to raise a family in pure freedom, with not needing to resort to arms, living in no fear that someone would come in the middle of the night and bang on their door to take them away.

But if you broke down the Italian/American, and looked into his/her daily life, what you would see in America, being reborn. Teachers, doctors and airline pilots, mathematicians, professors and clergy, politics and the media were slowly being assimilated into the mainstream of American culture. Refuse collectors and sanitation were suddenly becoming a respectable endeavor as well as custodians and building maintenance. Italian-American children left their classrooms and taught their parents to speak and read English, to write and to express their opinions without fear. That is why so many of the Italian-speaking parents demanded that their children speak to them only in English to learn the language.

Grandma loved Caruso, Valentino, and La Guardia, because they were making a statement to America, that they were successful and could be as good as the Irish, Germans, and Poles, as equal as the ‘All-American’ that prided himself in being born on these shores.

Today we have come a long way, Grandpa and Grandma laid the foundation for the generations to come to become the American experience. They could look back with pride that their sacrifice and the ignorance of others made their children and grandchildren stronger, perhaps so strong that we became part of the very fiber that America has always taken pride in. 

When I think back now, of how they came to a place that didn’t speak their language, didn’t appreciate their talents, didn’t know the quality to work, family and national pride they instilled, and their courage: I want to cry over the fact. 

I am proud of America, I am proud because it allowed my forefathers to prove themselves and their heritage today has been adopted in so many ways into the American fabric.

Thank you: grandma and grandpa, and thank you all the grandmas and grandpas who came to America, you were perhaps the real “Greatest Generation” be they Italian, Irish, Polish or any nationality, together they built this country!