Una Famiglia che Mangia Insieme: Cibo ed Etnicita Nella Comunita Italoamericana di New York, 1920-1940 (review)

The book analyses the Italian American community in Harlem in the period between the two World Wars. This is the era of the second generation (those born in the United States to immigrants who left Italy during the great migration of the turn of the century). This was a crucial time for the definition of Italian American ethnic identity because it signalled the beginning of the process of integration into American society. Simone Cinotto applies the latest theories on ethnicity to this case study of a New York Italian American community from 1920 to 1940. The principal theories upon which the author based his study are Werner Sollors’ invention of ethnicity and Eric Hobsbawn’s invention of tradition. Both argue that in the process of negotiating identity, both with the older generation and with a multicultural society, ethnic groups must persistently invent and renegotiate themselves; to do so they develop “imagined” traditions from those symbols which are most adaptable and apply them to the new context. The author finds such a process at work in the development of ethnic food, Sunday dinner, Italian restaurants, and thus the concept of la famiglia, which are some of the most important symbols utilized by Italian Americans to define themselves in the New World, and to become Americans while maintaining their peculiar identity as a recognizable ethnic group.