Interviews with Italian Americans, by Hailey Jankord
Interviews with different Italian Americans on the Italian American collective website can open our eyes to the perspective of Italian Americas. It is one thing to watch movies about Italians, or Italian immigrants, or even to read articles regarding these things, but getting firsthand interviews with Italian Americans is the best way to go about getting this information. Interviews from the Italian American collective website provide this resource. The interviews discussed in this article are from Alexandria Chiaberta, Carmine DiLonardo, and an interview with two women named Susan and Annie Settevendemie. These interviews have a relatively wide range of different people including an older male, a young woman and two older woman. These interviews go to show the variety but also the similarities amongst Italian Americans. Generally the stereotypes associated with Italians and even Italian Americans have to do with an emphasis on family importance, food, being hard-working, and importance of tradition. These are going to be some common themes among thee interviews. Some negative stereotypes associated with Italians include being mobsters or apart of the mafia, being loud, and overly emotional. A lot of the traditions that these interviews revolved around had a lot to do with food and also the fact that food gathered people which ties into family importance. Another big part of this article will be looking into the different ‘traditional’ Italian foods spoken about in these articles but also different foods that are considered Italian but actually have no root in Italy. This article will explore these three interviews and will delve deeper into the food mentioned in the interviews as well.
Part One: The Interviews The first interview we are delving into is the interview between Dr. Fioretti and Alexandria Chiaberta.
Alexandria is the youngest amongst the other interviewees on this article. Alexandria Chiaberta is an Italian-American from Youngstown, Ohio. She claimed that she feels connected to her Italian roots through her family’s traditions, but she identifies herself as an Italian American. Originally from France, her ancestors moved to Italy and then to the U.S. in the 1920s, where they settled in Youngstown’s steel town. Though her grandparents initially saw their move as temporary, they remained and worked to preserve their Italian heritage despite the pressures to assimilate, yet they also ended up wanting to assimilate. The motivation behind them moving to a steel town was to guarantee her relatives those factory job. Alexandria’s father wasn’t allowed to speak Italian as a child, which has led to a complicated relationship with their cultural identity. For Alexandria, Italian traditions, especially revolving around food, played a central role in her life as well as her family’s life. They continue to make homemade wine, prosciutto, pancetta, and cheese, skills passed down through generations dating back to when her family was actually living in Italy. Her family bonds over spontaneous gatherings, often debating who makes the best pasta sauce, though some recipes from her grandmother have been lost over time. While she mostly speaks English, Alexandria knows some Italian and wishes to visit Italy with her father and family, where they still have relatives. Inspired by her sister’s dual citizenship, she is open to the idea of pursuing it herself. As Youngstown has become more diverse, Alexandria remains proud of her heritage and wishes to pass on these traditions to her own children. She is critical of Italian stereotypes in media, particularly the emphasis on loudness, but appreciates how food is accurately seen as an expression of love and comunity. Alexandria values her family’s traditions and hopes to keep them alive across generations.
The second interview is about Carmine DiLonardo, born in Cincinnati in 1966. He is the son of Italian immigrants who moved to Ohio from a small Italian town called Cauci. His parents arrived in their twenties with little knowledge of English, but they worked very hard to build a life for their family according to Carmine. His father, employed at a tailor shop with his brother’s help, held additional jobs fixing machinery and cleaning a bank, which goes to show how hardworking his father was. His mother attended night school to learn English, which shows his mothers hard work ethic as well. Carmine grew up speaking Italian at home but retained only a basic understanding of the language as English was encouraged outside of the house. Raised with strong family values, Carmine spent much of his time with cousins and siblings, including his twin brother, and celebrated family gatherings rooted in Italian traditions, again, showing the importance behind family for Italians. Carmine has continued many family traditions, such as making wine and sausage using his mother’s recipes. After attending a Catholic high school, where he had to pay for part of his tuition, which helped engrain a hard work ethic, he pursued finance and marketing in college. Now president of an insurance company, he takes pride in his Italian heritage and wants to pass it on to his children, who also appreciate their cultural roots. Carmine’s life remains deeply intertwined with Italian traditions, celebrating big family gatherings, attending church, and trying to keep his heritage alive in these different ways.
The last interview is about Susan and Annie Settevendemie, who were both born in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1950s. They identify primarily as American with some Italian heritage, as only their father was Italian, so they are not extremely attached to their Italian heritage. Their Italian ancestors came from a lineage of vineyard workers, although their surname was altered by a clerical error upon immigration. Their grandmother, who rarely discussed her life in Italy, moved to the U.S. after her twin sister’s tragic death and ironically married the man initially promised to her sister. The family settled in Cleveland, notice a common theme of the Italians in this interview settling in Ohio, where they valued steady work, such as their relatives’ jobs with the railroad. Another commonality to the other interviews is that food and hospitality were key parts of their Italian traditions. Meals included scratch-made sauce, plenty of meat, and Italian holiday favorites like ricotta pie, Easter bread, and polenta with sauce. Although they didn’t preserve a traditional Christmas Eve fish dinner, they preserved the spirit of family gatherings and large meals. The family prioritized being American, so they did not speak Italian, yet family events still centered around Italian customs like bocce and the tarantella dance at weddings. Despite facing discrimination, including harassment from the Ku Klux Klan and anti-immigrant sentiments, they take pride in positive Italian stereotypes, such as the emphasis on family loyalty, good food, and hard work. For Susan and Annie, family is central, and they hope to pass down these values alongside Italian recipes and traditions, ensuring that their heritage and the importance of family remain strong in future generations.
The interviews with Alexandria Chiaberta, Carmine DiLonardo, and Susan and Annie Settevendemie reveal shared themes of Italian heritage, family values, and the importance of preserving cultural traditions. All three families originally immigrated to Ohio for stable job opportunities, highlighting a common motivation of to build better lives through hard work, attributed to their Italian heritage. Food traditions were deeply rooted in each family’s Italian identity, with every interviewee emphasizing the role of homemade dishes in maintaining cultural connections and bringing loved ones together. Each person also experienced pressures to assimilate; for instance, Italian was not spoken much in Alexandria and Carmine’s households, and Susan and Annie’s family prioritized being American. Despite this, family gatherings centered around Italian traditions remained central for all, showing the enduring significance of these customs. Furthermore, each interviewee encountered stereotypes, either in society or through media representations, that influenced their views on Italian identity. They all expressed a desire to pass on the positive aspects of their heritage, like family loyalty, hospitality, and food as an expression of love. Overall, these interviews underscore a shared commitment among Italian Americans to preserve their cultural roots, adapt to American life, and carry their traditions forward for future generations.
The importance of Food:
Italy is renowned, for good reason, for their delicious food. Food is not just food in Italy though, food is a way to gather family and to have a good time with community. This is This part of the article is dedicated to not only talking about the importance of food to the Italian culture, but also meant for inspecting some of the foods discussed in the interviews. We will investigate at least one food from each article, pancetta from Alexandria Chiaberta, sausage for Carmine, and then ricotta pie from the last interview. All of these Italian Americans held a tradition of making some sort of meat with their family as well, either being prosciutto, sausage, or another kind of meat and another common theme of an item being made in these interviews was wine. Ironically, a lot of food considered Italian food is not even original to Italy, so I would like to try and figure out if there are roots to the foods discussed in these interviews or not. However, this is not to try and disprove that the food discussed wasn’t important to these Italian Americans heritage, but I just want to see if these foods were considered original to Italy or not to either prove or disprove that claim. Also, this is meant to quell my curiosity towards these foods as well, so I hope you learn as much as I do from this!
Pancetta:
Pancetta was the Italian food discussed in the first interview with Alexandria. As you can see from the picture, pancetta looks very similar to bacon, but it is in fact different. Bacon is also a type of cured pork, but it is also smoked and cannot be eaten raw. That’s right, pancetta can be eaten raw, and it also takes about three whole weeks to cure. Similar to bacon, it is also made from pork belly. Pancetta is commonly eaten in carbonara, a noodle dish typically cooked with egg yolk and other ingredients. According to allrecipes.com pancetta is an Italian specialty, so it is fitting that Alexandria’s family considers making this apart of their Italian heritage. Pancetta is also a very fatty meat, so it is very flavorful (Sedghi).
Salsiccia (Italian Sausage):
The second food we will be looking into is sausage, which was talked about in Carmie DiLonardo’s interview with Dr. Fioretti. Sausage seems like a very common meat, certainly more well known than Italian cuisines like pancetta or prosciutto. Now, Italian sausage sets itself apart from the normal sausages we usually have in mind when thinking about sausage in general. Authentic Italian sausage is made up of ground pork, and it is typically flavored with fennel seed and garlic. This type of sausage is very popular to put on tip of pizza as chunks as well. Wine is also sometimes used in the making of this type of sugar as well, which is fitting as we learned that many of the Italian Americans in the interviews made wine with their families. To make this kind of sausage, you can grind the meat up yourself using a meat grinder if you want it to be very homemade. Then you put a hog casing around a sausage filler and stuff it. It is very interesting because I never knew how the meat came to be shaped like that but it makes sense that it is in somewhat of a casing (Chef Billy Parisi). As the name entails, Italian sausage is authentic.
Torta di ricotta (Ricotta Pie)
The last food that will be discussed is ricotta pie. This food is from the last interview as well. Ricotta pie is a traditional Italian food that continues to be made by Susan and Annie Settevendemie. This type of pie is traditionally served at easter. Ricotta pie is a sweet dessert and an easy way to imagine what it is like is that it is a mix between a cheesecake and pie. The pie is filled with ricotta cheese and is flavored with a bit of lemon for some zing (Angelakallison ). According to Angelakallison, this dessert is indeed a traditional Italian recipe.
All the different foods from the interviews were found to be authentic Italian foods, and they are all a bit distinct from each other. These types of foods and many other traditional Italian foods will be made for family gatherings to spread the love and warmth surrounding the traditions made by these foods.
Works Cited
Angelakallison. “Ricotta Pie (Italian Sweet Ricotta Pie Recipe).” This Italian Kitchen, 25 Jan. 2024, thisitaliankitchen.com/ricotta-pie/.
Chef Billy Parisi. “Homemade Italian Sausage Recipe.” Chef Billy Parisi, 19 Oct. 2023, www.billyparisi.com/homemade-italian-sausage-recipe/.
Fiortetti, Daniele. “Interview with Annie and Susan Settevendemie.” YouTube, YouTube, 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=twj-e0nVo5k.
Fioretti, Daniele. “Interview with Alexandria Chiaberta.” YouTube, YouTube, 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYYjptQUyd4.
Fioretti, Daniele. “Interview with Carmine DiLonardo.” YouTube, YouTube, Oct. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXKh-NWU5m8.
Sedghi, Sarra. “What Is Pancetta?” Allrecipes, Allrecipes, 30 Mar. 2022, www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-pancetta/.