Last week I published a Meema story about Italian food in the 1950’s. The main idea of the story is that prior to WWII, Italian-American food was only really known in immigrant communities. But after the war all that changed: what had been exclusively ethnic food became shared, ethnic American food. I figured that such profound changes might inspire meaningful conversation in general, within our own family specifically, and perhaps even some stories about our own Anthony, my cousin.
Sure enough, it proved to be a great topic for engagement for me. But before I get to some of our own family stories, let’s consider a little more thoroughly the experience of ethnic food which we share as Americans. Hopefully, it’ll inspire conversation in your families as well.
I wrote:
Before World War II, American food was pretty basic: a lot of meat and potatoes.
For sure, Italian-American communities were not unusual. In fact, they were just like Jewish, Greek, Eastern European, Japanese and Chinese immigrants in the 1950’s: their tables and the food on it were authentic, distinct, and relatively unknown by those on the outside.
Italian-American women in Boston's North End circa 1960
The classic Italian table.
The story continues:
After the war, however, many of them began to move into the suburbs and integrate with their neighbors.
[African-American migration from the rural South to urban neighborhoods in the urban Northeast and West after the war was in fact the largest and arguably the most significant migration in the history of the United States. It is a unique and no less important phenomenon with importance well beyond that of cuisine. But we’ll write about that at another time.]
In the post-war expansion, American business found an opportunity. Italian food was authentic, delicious, affordable and most importantly, new and exciting to everyone else.
With the help of some pretty great advertising and merchandising, Americans of all sorts started to learn about Italian food. And in the course of a decade, spaghetti and meatballs [for example] became a favorite in every American neighborhood.
Here are some of the interaction prompts I tried to engage my own family members in conversation:
- I can’t even imagine what it would have been like not having spaghetti and meatballs growing up.
- I wonder what it was like going to school with food that was different from all the other children.
- It makes me remember being embarrassed or concerned about how my family was different from our neighbors. Now I can be proud of it though.
- I noticed that what passed for Italian food in restaurants, supermarkets and school cafeterias didn’t actually taste or look anything like what my grandmother prepared.
One commercial from the Boston-based Prince Spaghetti Company sums it all up. Play it for yourself; it’s worth it.
Anthony Martignietti races home for his mom’s spaghetti dinner
This is commercial storytelling at its best. Who can resist Anthony’s mother calling him home for dinner? My own parents, aunts, uncles and cousins born in the 1930’s and 40’s all experienced that call from their mothers. They all recognized their mothers’ desires to feed their families, especially their sons: it was an obligation that became a passion, obsession or even compulsion to cook and serve traditional foods in great quantities. And, naturally, they all wanted to talk about it. Perfect!
My own family members of this generation also noticed Anthony’s determination as he runs dutifully through his North End neighborhood, surrounded by Italian neighbors. They loved that adoring smile when Anthony arrives at home just in time to find his mother waiting for him in the hall. They all could recall neighborhood experiences like this one and how much our neighborhoods have changed. And every one of them remembered specific individuals in the family who loved to receive that maternal attention, not to mention the food. These are great topics for inter-generational conversation.
Here is a good example: after watching the story and video, my father Ralph remembered his own cousin, also named Anthony. Apparently, he was always very skinny as a child, no matter how much he ate. His sister, Rozalind, confirmed this, adding that he could consume a pound of pasta at one sitting, and often did.
Our Anthony, his sister, Roz, and their mother, Carrie
Ralph recalled how Anthony’s mother, Carrie, would carefully prepare a large lunch for him every day. But Anthony would eat it by mid-morning, leaving himself with nothing at lunch time. Ralph explained how Carrie worried that neighbors and relatives would judge her harshly, having such a skinny child and sending him to school without a lunch. Ralph speculated that maybe the lunches became larger over time.
But memory and history are not the same thing. Anthony’s sister, Roz, on the other hand, remembered her brother’s lunch story differently. She said that he actually sold his sandwiches! She wrote, “He got good money for those egg and pepper sandwiches on Italian bread.” It’s no wonder. I’ll bet they were pretty delicious. (Later Ralph also remembered Anthony selling his mother’s lunches and wondered what he did with the proceeds).
Finally Roz added the most remarkable thing, grist for the family story mill: “I remember complaining about ‘having to eat’ Italian food.” Ralph experienced it differently: he wrote, “looking around I noticed that no one was eating what we were.” He thought that Anthony may have purchased more traditional American fare in the school cafeteria, noting that his mother would have been horrified. But both Roz and Ralph agreed on one thing: their friends who were not Italian all appreciated how great that cooking was.
You can’t make this stuff up. It’s great having materials like this to inspire family conversation.
And for those of you who weren’t fortunate enough to have an Italian mother or grandmother, well, you can talk about that too!
