Anna Clara Ionta

Anna Clara has taught at Loyola University Chicago since 1994, first as a part-time instructor and later as a full-time lecturer, and serves as the adviser for the Italian Club. She teach Italian at the Scuola Italiana of Middlebury College every summer and lectures at colleges and universities and gives presentations at teachers conferences across the country. She has spearheaded myriad cultural and linguistic events at Casa Italia, where she offers an ongoing Italian language class. She received the National Italian Honor Society Award and the Medal of Merit from the Sicilian American Cultural Association of Chicago, and was twice nominated for the Loyola University Sujack Award for Teaching Excellence and Loyola University Award for Best Advisor.

The culture we belong to

In my mother’s hometown in Italy, people don’t ask, “What is your name?” Rather, they ask, “To whom do you belong?” You answer with the family name, actually most of the time with the nickname by which your family is known in town. The importance of belonging to a family, to a community, comes before one’s own individuality. The community shares the same values, customs, traditions and dialect, as well as hopes, beliefs and expectations. Italians who left Italy and came to this country have maintained many of those values and traditions. The fourth- and fifth-generations Italian-Americans of today are …

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