My Turn

Yesterday I read about an Italian-American neighborhood that was the original Little Italy in New York City. No, not Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan but East Harlem above 96th Street. Today, both those areas are “Italian” by the skin of their teeth. Mulberry Street is enveloped by Chinatown. East Harlem is better called Spanish Harlem (nicknamed El Barrio) for the massive influx of Puerto Rican and Dominican residents after World War II. What I was reading was an article in Atlantica Magazine from July 1934. No food or fashion, Atlantica was probably the first intellectual periodical in our community. The …

  As I began to traverse the moss-covered rocks submerged in the shallows, king salmon and brown trout darted between my feet like slalom skiers shredding through gates. The cold, rushing water compressed my waders as I cautiously crossed the river. In the distance, I saw my dad’s cast spiraling gracefully through the air, the colorful line painting brushstrokes across the sky. I waded on, looking for a good spot of my own, then stopped. Upstream, I spotted a king salmon lying in wait for any food drifting along with the current. I carefully began to release the line, then …

In a bittersweet turn of events, a monument to St. Frances Cabrini will occupy the pedestal in Arrigo Park where Christopher Columbus once stood. I say “bittersweet” because the goal all along for the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans was to restore Columbus to his original place of honor in the park. But after a grueling 4-and-a-half-year legal battle, it became abundantly clear that it wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. Despite the herculean efforts of lead counsel Enrico Mirabelli and his legal team of Frank Sommario and Anthony Onesto, the city of Chicago under two mayoral administrations has steadfastly …

Contrary to Ken Burns’ recent documentary on the American Revolution, it was a band of Italians, the ancient Romans — not the Iroquois — who served as the model for our fledgling republic. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams also studied the Greek style of governance. However, America’s Founders believed that Athenian democracy insufficiently embraced the legal underpinnings of a truly egalitarian polity. As Roger Vigneron and Jean-Francois Gerkens note in “The Emancipation of Women in Ancient Rome”: “Of course, the Romans lived in a world with many inequalities: there were slaves, peregrines and barbaric peoples. But inside the …

During the past year, the Italian government severely tightened its citizenship laws to the detriment of many Italian Americans. Now U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno has thrust himself into the center of this growing dual citizenship controversy by introducing a bill that would require any American who holds citizenship in another country to either renounce that foreign citizenship or risk losing their U.S. citizenship. Moreno’s bill, filed on Dec. 1 and known as the Exclusive Citizenship Act, has sparked strong criticism from our Italian American organizations. On behalf of both the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations (COPOMIAO), and …

  My debut novel, “Secrets of the Jeweled Flask,” got a mention in the October issue of Fra Noi. Coverage in your magazine is an honor of epic proportions because it’s connected to my paternal grandmother, Camille Severino, whom I am named after. I am the only Camille many people know. Many suspect I am the only Camille Severino that existed. But there was another. And she was the original. She was big Camille. I was little Camille. Those monikers stuck even when I towered over her 5-foot figure. Grandma Camille read Fra Noi religiously. I can see her, sitting …

Sept. 21 marked the 70th anniversary of the Rocky Marciano-Archie Moore fight of 1955. It was Marciano’s last bout and final knockout of an opponent. He retired the following year with a 49-0 record, 43 of which were knockouts. He’s the only boxer to retire undefeated. Sadly, he died in a plane crash at age 46 in 1969. Such a career should be ripe for the silver screen, but Marciano’s back story was too humdrum for Hollywood. However, the champ’s short life did make it to television in 1979 starring Tony Lo Bianco and again in 1999 starring Jon Favreau. …

It all began with a journey. Not in the rhetorical sense of the term, but with real steps, into emptying villages, along silent streets, alongside faces filled with expectation and questions. It was the summer of 2015, and I had an urgent need: to tell the story of Basilicata not as a remote place, but as a space of possibility. Thus was born #IdealPlace — more than a project, a gentle obsession. A way of saying that even in territories considered peripheral, new words are being generated, visions capable of touching the heart of Italy’s transformations. Not just beauty, but …

At the 10:30 a.m. Mass with my parents at St. Mary Star of the Sea in Narragansett, Rhode Island, in August, I noticed the empty pew where Judge Frank Caprio had long sat with his family. Knowing his deep Catholic faith and his battle with pancreatic cancer, I feared the worst. On Aug. 20, his family announced his passing at age 88. I interviewed Judge Caprio in the summer of 2023. It wasn’t our first meeting, but it was the first time I was welcomed into his home. I was nervous to enter the world of a man who was …

In 2020, the graffiti-marred statue of Christopher Columbus in Arrigo Park was unceremoniously yanked from its pedestal and stored on its back in a Chicago Park District warehouse. After a protracted legal battle, the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans was finally able to win its release earlier this year, but only on the condition that it be showcased indoors in a museum that’s currently being created on Taylor Street. So, who will now occupy the position of honor that Columbus once held in that storied public park just a stone’s throw away from the Shrine of Our Lady of …