Light on Italian American Radicalism
New Book Sheds Light on Italian-American Radicalism
By Francesca Di Meglio

Pizza, pasta, The Godfather, and assimilation. That is the abridged version of the Italian immigration story that most Americans know. But whole chunks have been missing from that history until now.
In The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism (Praeger, 2003), Editors Professors Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer open one’s eyes to the contributions Italian Americans made to then radical causes from the organization of labor unions to modern day feminism and the fight for gay rights. As a result, this book is a must-read for anyone seeking a fuller picture of radicalism in the United States.
Unlike others, Cannistraro and Meyer do not paint a sugarcoated portrait of Italian Americans. Instead, they chose 16 selections from noted authors, including Rudolph Vecoli and Jennifer Guglielmo, that feature astute and honest observations about everything from anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s execution to homophobia in the Italian American community.
This refreshing collection is not only a history text. Ultimately, it is about coming to terms with your ethnic identity and learning to relate to others who are different. The root of Italian American radicalism in the literature of the late twentieth century goes back to the family, is unceasingly about the family, as it struggles with the complexities of its own ethnicity and the divergent paths that children of families take regarding how they are going to live and whom they are going to love, writes Mary Jo Bona in chapter 15 about women’s radical novels.
Bona goes on to analyze the experience of lesbians in the Italian American community, but her point about family includes all Italian Americans and particularly the ones spotlighted in this book. The labor unions were extensions of the family. Jackie DiSalvo’s piece about white Civil Rights leader Father James Groppi concludes that, while he was in the church, Groppi’s congregation served as his family. In Julia Lisella’s well-written article about writer Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni, Lisella points out that Italian American women gained power from the family and not necessarily from public roles in the community.
Readers notice that once individuals accepted their roles within this larger family of the Italian American community, they had to find a way to identify with other ethnic groups. A shared interest in better working conditions, Communism, feminism, or Civil Rights united Italians with Greeks, Irish, Spanish, and, certainly, African Americans. Guglielmo explains that Italians were classified as non-whites when they first arrived to the United States, which made them targets for discrimination. This identification actually helped them relate with other immigrants, who were also outsiders in the New World.
The book, however, also shows that Italian Americans had their own prejudices from the competition between Italians and Jews in the labor movement to outright racism against African Americans. Taking on the trappings of the American Caucasian refraining from speaking Italian, avoiding discussions of their religious beliefs was part of the assimilation process. But Italians paid a cost for Americanization. In addition to losing tradition and losing a connection to Italy, Italian Americans gave up their radical history. Thanks to Cannistraro and Meyer, the community is now being reclaimed.