Being Italian

What does it mean to be "Italian?"  I'd have thought this would be most debated by Italians themselves.  But it was also a question considered by an Italian journalist in the course of interviewing Italians living in New York City.  Maurizio Molinari, the U.S. correspondent for La Stampa, has written what looks like a interesting book.  I haven't read it yet, but I went to hear him talk about it last night at Georgetown University.  According to his overview, The Italians of New York, (available here) is based on interviews with three groups of Italians in the city: the descendents of immigrants arriving around the end of the 19th century; those who came after World War II; and those who have been coming since about the mid-1980s, who've come not as immigrants, but to work or go to school.  

Broadly speaking, he said, for the first group being Italian means holding on to food traditions; for the second it means trying to hold on to the language; and for the third, although he didn't put it quite this way, it seems to mean reconciling their experiences abroad with institutions in what is still their home country.  Interestingly, apart from the differences among the three groups, he suggested that all of them, with their hard work and success, indicate what Italians can do when freed from the constraints of living in Italy.  Maybe not entirely fair, but there it is.