Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives

The Italian Immigrant Basement Kitchen in North America

The Italian Immigrant Basement Kitchen in North America Lara Pascali For many Italian North Americans, the basement kitchen is the social center of the home. Less formal and often more spacious than the rooms upstairs, this is where Italian women typically prepare food, families gather for dinner, entertain guests, and celebrate holidays. The basement is also where Italians make tomato sauce, preserves, and sausages: a workplace where no one worries about making a mess.1 In contrast, Italians maintain the kitchen upstairs in pristine condition: a showroom that is virtually unused except for receiving the occasional special or unfamiliar guest. Although such a setup is pervasive in cities across North America, homes with two kitchens are uncommon in Italy.2 This chapter explores the significance of the basement kitchen as a feature characteristic of postwar Italian houses in and around Toronto, Montreal, and New York. As a subject of analysis, the basement kitchen is one that scholars have curiously overlooked despite its ubiquity as a cultural phenomenon and the frequent use of food as a lens through which to study Italian traditions and folklore. Italian homeowners and their children equally treat the custom as unremarkable: ‘‘Everybody has two kitchens’’ or ‘‘That’s just the way it is’’ are common statements made in response to inquiries into the practice, suggesting that the basement kitchen has become naturalized within the community to the point that it is no longer visible. And yet, it is precisely by bringing into focus the ordinary places we do not ‘‘see’’ that we shed light on the values and beliefs that underlie all human interaction with the built environment, and gain insight into the ways in which these places hold meaning in our everyday lives.3 In broad terms, this study is concerned with the human experience of space, which encompasses both human behavior patterns as well as their sensory relationships to place. To investigate the latter, oral testimonies are revealing because as in the words of folklorist Michael Ann Williams, ‘‘They give form to the intangible, experiential aspects of architecture.’’4 As I entered into the homes and kitchens of first-generation Italian immigrants, I was struck by the overwhelmingly emotional responses I received when asking Italian women about why they had two kitchens. Whether it was in Toronto , Montreal, or New York, intertwined with seemingly practical arguments for having a basement kitchen were shared notions of comfort and freedom associated with 49 50 Lara Pascali Preparing food in the Puglisis’ basement kitchen in Mississauga. (Photograph by the author.) the quality of the basement space. As homeowner Livia Liberace states, ‘‘Upstairs I feel closed [in], in the basement I am free.’’5 The Italian immigrant home with two kitchens provides a unique source to explore the immigrant experience in North America, and in particular, the ways in which Italian immigrant women use their domestic environments as vehicles through which to perform and construct their identities. In this chapter, I analyze the dynamic relationship between Italian women and their kitchens, arguing that the basement kitchen is a liberating space, free from the constraints of formality and traditional room divisions. This sense of liberation is intricately linked to the physical qualities of the basement as well as the meanings attached to upstairs and downstairs spaces. Folklorist Gerald Pocius has written that ‘‘People create meaning in their lives through their conceptions of the proper ordering of their actions and surroundings.’’6 By separating upstairs from downstairs, isolating ‘‘clean’’ from ‘‘messy’’ spaces, Italian women give meaning to domestic space and make their homes conform to a vision of propriety and order that is bound to self-identity. This conception of home is shaped by the social, cultural, and historical contexts of the Italian immigrant, who typically came to North America with dreams of a better life, and is particularly revealing of the values of Italian immigrant women, who are mostly responsible for cooking and cleaning the home. The Italian Immigrant Basement Kitchen 51 Often, Italian postwar immigrants in Toronto, Montreal, and New York bought homes with unfinished basements, using the first-floor kitchen for all cooking and eating-related activities until they acquired enough funds to finish the basement, complete with a second kitchen, dining area, living room, and/or recreation room. The family would then ‘‘move downstairs’’: The basement became their primary living quarters , while the upstairs spaces were reserved for sleeping or hosting the...