Italian Roots and Genealogy
Traversing the Landscape of Italian-Canadian Culture with Antonio D'Alfonso
As Antonio D'Alfonso and I, Bob Sorrentino, traverse the intricate landscapes of Italian-Canadian identity, we invite you to join our heartfelt conversation. We share our own family stories of immigration, illuminating the unique cultural experiences that shape Italian Canadians. We journey through Montreal and Toronto, exploring the representation of different Italian regions, and delve into the often complex relationship between language and identity.
Embarking on a deeper exploration, we question the very nature of Italian identity, a complex tapestry woven with threads of history, war, and contemporary perceptions of beauty. We discuss the challenges of a nation without a common language or religion, and share personal stories of self-discovery and cultural understanding. Join us as we challenge the traditional views of identity, and embrace the fluidity of Italian-Canadian and Italian-American experiences.
In the final leg of our journey, we delve into the fascinating concept of an "Italic" identity, a cross-border cultural phenomenon that challenges traditional concepts of nationality and heritage. Despite the harsh realities of racism and intolerance, we remain hopeful for a future where these will be mere echoes of the past. Highlighting Antonio D'Alfonso's autobiographical writing, we uncover a lesser-known aspect of Canadian history and emphasize the importance of preserving diverse cultural identities. Settle in for a thought-provoking exploration of identity and culture in the modern world.
Poet, novelist, essayist, translator, Antonio D’Alfonso has published more than 40 titles and has made three feature films. He is the founder of Guernica Editions which he managed for thirty-three years before passing it on to new owners in 2010. For his writings, he won the Trillium Award, the Bressani Award, and the New York Independent Film Award for his film, Bruco.He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. In 2016, he received a Honorary Doctorate from Athabasca University.
https://antoniodalfonso.com/
An adaptation of Sophocles' masterpiece Antigone by Antonio D'Alfonso's
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
As Antonio D'Alfonso and I, Bob Sorrentino, traverse the intricate landscapes of Italian-Canadian identity, we invite you to join our heartfelt conversation. We share our own family stories of immigration, illuminating the unique cultural experiences that shape Italian Canadians. We journey through Montreal and Toronto, exploring the representation of different Italian regions, and delve into the often complex relationship between language and identity.
Embarking on a deeper exploration, we question the very nature of Italian identity, a complex tapestry woven with threads of history, war, and contemporary perceptions of beauty. We discuss the challenges of a nation without a common language or religion, and share personal stories of self-discovery and cultural understanding. Join us as we challenge the traditional views of identity, and embrace the fluidity of Italian-Canadian and Italian-American experiences.
In the final leg of our journey, we delve into the fascinating concept of an "Italic" identity, a cross-border cultural phenomenon that challenges traditional concepts of nationality and heritage. Despite the harsh realities of racism and intolerance, we remain hopeful for a future where these will be mere echoes of the past. Highlighting Antonio D'Alfonso's autobiographical writing, we uncover a lesser-known aspect of Canadian history and emphasize the importance of preserving diverse cultural identities. Settle in for a thought-provoking exploration of identity and culture in the modern world.
Poet, novelist, essayist, translator, Antonio D’Alfonso has published more than 40 titles and has made three feature films. He is the founder of Guernica Editions which he managed for thirty-three years before passing it on to new owners in 2010. For his writings, he won the Trillium Award, the Bressani Award, and the New York Independent Film Award for his film, Bruco.He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. In 2016, he received a Honorary Doctorate from Athabasca University.
https://antoniodalfonso.com/
An adaptation of Sophocles' masterpiece Antigone by Antonio D'Alfonso's
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
This is Bob Sorrentino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy, and be sure to check us out on our blog and YouTube and Facebook page. And great sponsors, your Doce Vita, italy Rooting and Abiettivo Casa. And today we have, I think, only my second guest from Canada, antonio D'Alfonso. So welcome, antonio. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Hi, it's D'Alfonso D'Alfonso yeah, see, my Italian is horrible. No, no, no, it's D'Alfonso, it's normal, but I always wonder why they call it D'Alfonso you're not the first one D'Alfonso.
Speaker 1:It's probably a New York thing.
Speaker 2:No, I hear it all the time, but I don't understand. It's an apostrophe, not a period.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, you know what's interesting. You know, when we were in Italy here, I say my name, sorrentino, right, but in Italy, you know, they do the role they are as a Sorrentino, you know so, hey, coach, this is. Sorrentino. That's funny. So you know, I know you've written a couple of books and I want to talk about that, but before we do, when did your family arrive in Canada?
Speaker 2:So it's week. My father came in 52. However, his grandfather lived in the States. It must have been, because I have a picture taken in the States. It must have been in the 1870s, 1880s. Yeah, and on my mother's side, my grandfather came here in 1913 with $25, but he left. They had to go back for the war, right For the Italian war, because they would have been considered draft dodgers. So they either became citizens or became enemies. So they left and went to do war. I went to destroy each other, and so they came. My father came in 52 and then, after his military service, and then he invited his girlfriend, my mother and 50. No, he came 51. She came in 52. And then I was yeah.
Speaker 1:And so what's interesting about that is that my, my uncle, when my grandparents came, he was left behind as a as a child, as a young child, four or five years old, with his grandparents, and so he didn't come. He had a, you know, like you said, he had to be in the service over there and then he got caught up in World War II, so he didn't come until he left Italy in 1949 by himself and he went to Toronto.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because he couldn't come to America. That's right, you couldn't. Yeah, I mean he can.
Speaker 1:Well, he, he didn't. He was able to apply. He came by himself. He worked on a mushroom farm someplace near Toronto, I don't know exactly where, but he eventually sent for his, his family, and they came and they spent it was, I think, close to five years, oh, and they were in Canada before they could come, even though his four brothers all served in the US Army. It didn't matter, he still had to wait with his family to come across. But my cousin, his oldest daughter, came when she was 18 to Canada and my uncle, my mother's brother-in-law, smuggled her in over the bridge under the seat of the car Amazing.
Speaker 1:And then she met her husband in America and they had to smuggle her back so she could come back legally and marry him.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Yeah, yeah, this is yeah, I imagine, because you were not allowed to go in. Yes, so now.
Speaker 1:So so now your family you said one part of your family originally came to the States. That was very, very early on for Italian American, for Italians, to come to this thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't, I don't know why they well, I know that this must be about Ponsorship, right? I mean I know that they were a Brutzesi, right? We're from the Abruzzi region, so those people located, we got located there's a city just outside of Philadelphia, so that's a big center of Abruzzesi and Montreal. So they came to Montreal. I moved into Toronto later on in 1990, because Toronto is Calabrese, it's not Abruzzesi, so I imagine people really just went where other people like them live, you know, and so he probably ended up going to work in the States somewhere and then he went back. That I know that he went back because, yes, conch, shark, cons, whole shocking, oh okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard it. Yeah, I don't know what you mean.
Speaker 2:But Swedenland and La Fayed Hill, villanova. So that is a. I was told it's a big center of Abruzzesi people.
Speaker 1:You see now my family, my mom's family, was Badesi and there was a lot of Badesi in around Toronto and my uncle went back there. I guess it must have been in the late 60s, early 70s. He went with my aunt and he was treated like royalty because my grandmother, unbeknownst to him, was sending money to Italy to bring people over to Canada and they didn't. It's not like they had a lot of money.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, Whatever she could send, she would send. That's right. Yes, absolutely yes.
Speaker 1:So now, you know, I've been to Montreal, I've been to Toronto, drove through Toronto, actually, but we don't, at least, you know, most Italian Americans. We don't associate Montreal with Italians, we associate it with French.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, you're right. Yeah, yeah, you see, I write about this in this book. Italian, canadian.
Speaker 2:American writer, italian, canadian writer, and I talk about that, that issue. It's a big issue because my generation, post-war the baby boomers we went to English schools Catholic English school so we became Anglophone and those who went to French schools, like my cousins, they speak French, they don't identify at all with the English side and they don't even really identify with the Italian side. In many ways it was. I definitely had a say in this. I don't mean to be pretentious, but in the 70s when I started publishing and writing, because I started a press in Montreal to help Italians in Montreal, and so I was part of that awakening which became a problem because in Quebec Montreal it is at the same time they were becoming very conscious of who they wanted to be and separate from the rest of Canada, which you know, and that created a problem with the Italian English community.
Speaker 2:But that reality is dead now and because of the laws they are I'm what I'm talking about no longer exists. But I would with my generation, and so that's one of the reasons why I left for Toronto, because I, you know, you either embrace that reality of becoming French or you don't. I mean, it's a political. It doesn't matter what I think or we might be against it or not against it, that's a different issue. But if you don't embrace it, then there's no reason to stay because it's not part of the future. And all of a sudden you end up being really secluded and there is no really there's no, there's no outlet for people like me anymore in Quebec, and that's that's so foreign to us Americans.
Speaker 1:You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, I understand it's foreign to American reality, because there is no, no ethnic group, if I may say that, that that declares that they control the territory. Right, right, and that's what French Canadians of Quebec are saying, that this belongs to us and we don't want you here. That's very, a very tough idea and, like I said, whether you want embraces or not, that's another issue. So what do you do with that? Right?
Speaker 1:I mean. So I have to ask you now. You said you had cousins that went to French schools and learn French. How did they wind up? Was it just their parents decided, well, they wanted to be part, and they, they went to the French schools?
Speaker 2:or no, on the contrary, what you're saying is a very important question, because In 1950, there was a extreme right wing prime minister who actually said we don't want Italians to come to the Catholic French school board. Really, they actually prevented this from going. I don't know how my cousins ended up going. It's basically out of laziness because there was a school right there and they said we want to go there and they fought for it. I said we want to go there because I got on my kid to go to five kilometers to go study at elementary and that's what I did Every morning. I would take the bus by myself and I was to pay six cents in bus fare and go downtown Montreal. And yeah, I was the only anglophone of my family.
Speaker 2:In many ways it is a later immigration. In the 60s, Immigration into Quebec ends in 68, 69, italian immigration. From then on it becomes primarily Francophone. So anybody who wants to come into Quebec, you have to have French as a viable idiom or else you don't make it in. So we're really the last of a bastion and it was through the Catholic schools that we were able to create this buffer zone.
Speaker 2:But we're very unique. Like I said, it's a very limited in time phenomenon. I mean, it's a lot, it's 70 years, but still it'll never happen again. It never happened before, it won't happen again. It's just, we're very unique, you know, because normally an anglophone English speaking person would go to a Protestant school board. That is where the Greeks went, the Portuguese, the Jewish people. If they didn't go to their own schools, right, they would go to a Protestant school board, whereas we went to a Catholic. Primarily. Our schools were 99% Italians, wow, english, and in Latin. They would teach us Italian, you know, illegally. Teach us Italian, or we'd go, we'd go on Saturday classes. So that's how we speak, we, that's what we speak. That's another phenomena. We who went to English schools speak Italian.
Speaker 1:That's great, I wish.
Speaker 2:I wish they taught me you know, but here in Toronto you have the same phenomena, where those who went to public schools Don't speak Italian, those who went to Catholic schools to speak Italian. I don't know why this Catholicism became a source of Italian language Because we didn't speak Italian. We spoke our dialects, our different languages, right, and these dialects are not badly spoken Tuscan. We're totally different, like that.
Speaker 2:It's a language right, it's Greek, right it's. You know, it's heavily influenced by Greek and where we come from, it's heavily influenced by Albanian and Serbo-Croat, which are official languages where I came from, the Abruci region. So we grew up multi-lingual In my family. I mean, I heard at least seven languages on a daily basis, like four or five Italian languages, French and English.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I have a friend, a good friend, who he's Armenian. He grew up in Beirut and because of that he speaks French because they had taught it in school. He had to speak Arabic because that's what the stores were. He speaks Armenian because that's what his parents spoke and it's just so great that he's able to, you know, converse in all of these different languages and, of course, English, because he moved here when he was 18. But you know, that's the one thing that I say here. You know, as Italians from my generation or our children and children's children, and so on, they don't hear the Italian language anymore. You know, like I did growing up, yes, I had to learn it.
Speaker 2:I mean it's. I mean my parents. It was forbidden to speak Italian at home. We had to speak our dialect. My father, my father, was really adamant. I mean, he was very anti nationalist and very anti fascist and he did not want Italian to be spoken. And when he would speak with his friends he would speak his dialect and he learned the dialects about Sicilians. He would learn the dialects. He wanted to hear that voice, those voices which were not from the official Italian voice. Right, so that's how I had to learn. At the age of 32, I went to the Institute and learned the language not the proper, that's wrong the Tuscan language.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Tuscan language, but I still, when I speak Italian, I am not shy of introducing my dialect. I will not bow away from it. I don't feel it being an embarrassment if I speak, if I say sure instead of C. You know that S with that sound which is so beautiful. I mean it, you know, especially when you listen to love songs in the Neapolitan. Why would you lose that language? You see, I mean the generation like Dean Martin and Louis Prima, luigi Prima. You know, those people heard dialect at home, right, and so, even though they didn't think properly Italian, but it was like you heard, they heard it. They knew something was going on with that language, you know, and in the States, you don't have to identify. You don't have to identify to the language, right, you created another reality.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, you know, growing up I heard about ASA, mostly because we were my mom's family, my father's, from Naples, but I thought that was Italian, because no, it is Italian.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, it's probably pure Italian, right. But it was only later on that I said wait a second, this is a different language. And we were just there in September. Our driver was when we went to my mom's hometown in Torrito. He was saying you know, he would say something in Italian, then he would tell me in Barrese. And it was completely different, not even close.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, it's a different language.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, completely, completely. So now have you gone back to the hometowns at all?
Speaker 2:Yes, of course I went back until COVID. I would go at least once a year to not to the region because my father fell in love with Udine, which is the northern part near Venice. That's where he went to do his military service and, strangely enough, how life is goes first look, or goes full circle. All, most of the teachers, most of the universities that are interested by my work are at the Udine University. So I go there and I love it up there. You know, you have Venice, you have Trieste. I mean, this is middle Europe, right, this is where all the great minds come from. And you feel there's this an amazing feeling of variety of cultures. I really like that.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't mean to speak badly about the village where my parents were born, but the truth of the matter is they were immigrants as well. I did DNA testing and we didn't. First of all, my grandparents don't come from that village they come from and they don't come from there. They always move. You see, that's another thing we've seen to forget. Italians always moved because if there were serves I'm using that word purposely- working on land.
Speaker 2:They had to. Every time the land, they would have this acreage silent for a season, they would move to the next acreage and that's how they moved across the country. You know, they were not silly people, they were people working vegetables and fruit. They were not a family of animal shepherds. You know, we were basically olive growers, figs. You know, my mother's family name was Salvatore Tanna, but they were known as the gardeners. You know they literally that's how they were known all the way to Vasto. So I never felt. I mean, I wrote a lot about them. They became a source of inspiration, the village Guglionezi, which is near Termoli. But I identify them with the experience of immigration.
Speaker 2:I believe I like the idea of people moving and not being fixed. I like that fluidity, fluidity, something that I could say this now, I wasn't aware of this as I became Italic, right, I mean, when becomes this? It's not something that you have to learn. Identity is something you learn. You're not born with it, no, you're yourself. You're from Naples. So in body, you have two different realities. Sure, there's a Greek link, because it's part of Magna Graecia, but it's still very. One is the Adriatic and the other one's the other. It's completely different. I mean different right, completely different.
Speaker 1:So you have.
Speaker 2:You're a synthesis, right? You're a synthesis of two different realities. You had to re-identify. You had to find an identity, right? I mean, it's complex. It's not that you know, language is just a tool. Dealing with identity is so complex that it doesn't matter what language I speak, I still going to have to deal with this. You know these two realities and I think that's what the Italians makes. I think this is the element that it makes Italians interesting as a people outside of Italy, Because they raise issues that have never been really raised before. You know, how do we identify ourselves, how to identify us? We're very different from the Jewish people, who have the Torah. We don't have anything that unites us. We don't have a common language. If you spoke Baraeza and I spoke my Dalek, we wouldn't understand each other, right?
Speaker 1:My parents used to fight all the time on who was speaking the proper language.
Speaker 2:So language is not a common thing, religion isn't, territory isn't.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, and it's a young country, I mean really.
Speaker 2:Yeah 67. 1867. It's very young and they're having a lot of problems. It's no different than the Balkan state Yugoslavia. It's the same thing in Italy. I think that land ownership was a major element in that creating this country. Yeah, and that all kind of fell apart.
Speaker 1:I mean, my dad's mom comes from two noble families and so you know, when I see their records, some of them the birth records says you know the father was a rich person, that was his occupation, and some say property owner. To your point I said, yeah, and you know they and I didn't know this until recently that in southern Italy the nobles all lived in Naples. They only went to the towns or their lands maybe once, maybe twice a year, and that was it the rest of the time they spent in Naples.
Speaker 1:So you know I have roots in Molise and Calabria and you know a bunch of different regions because of where they own this land.
Speaker 2:Yes, molise, that's where what we are called. But Molise is a recent invention, in 1964. Yes, right, I call it a Brutso because I don't see why they divided it. They divided it because it was an enormous territory with no money.
Speaker 1:I say what I meant a lot of taxes.
Speaker 2:So they said forget it, let's divide this stuff, you know. But it's a pity because we're Molisani, but my parents were Brutzi. They came from Vasto Lanzano, they came from Pascara.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I have one of the families where the Dukes of Capricotta, which is, you know, tuscay Resort now, but what a beautiful place. And you know people don't understand where their hometowns. The churches are beautiful, the streets are clean, the people are just. You know, I see pictures of them every year. I guess they have a. It's not really a feast, it looks like almost like a block party, but it's the whole frigging town, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know, I would ask my. They lived 15 kilometers from the Adriatic. I would ask my parents would you go to the beach?
Speaker 1:Well, we never went.
Speaker 2:We didn't have time, we had to work the land, they would say. So the idea of Italy being a beautiful place is a recent phenomena. I think it's a post boom 70s, 80s, I think it's the 80s from then on, because Italy was destroyed by the war. I mean, I remember when I went for the first time in 73, it still smelled war, the buildings that were bombarded. You know it was really destroyed, it was not very lively.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I just interviewed down the candelora who grew up. He's a little bit older than us and you know he published a book right. Yes, yes. And he said, you know, he remembers the family sending their old shoes and old clothes to Italy because it was war-torn. That's what the war, you know? And he said he couldn't relate to it, you know, no we can't.
Speaker 2:And now you know you asked me about, you know, going to Italy. I feel, you know, italy is such an aristocratic country. It's like France. I mean these are countries where one wonders how did my parents live there, honestly, I mean, it is so expensive it is. I mean, in America we have the middle class. There is no such thing as a middle class in Italy. You really feel poverty and richness and it is amazing. And then you have the idea of rural versus urban realities.
Speaker 1:But you know that. But the people are happy. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I cannot say that.
Speaker 1:I felt that they don't want to move.
Speaker 2:Excuse me.
Speaker 1:No, I said I felt that way that the people are happy, but maybe they were just happy to see somebody from America, yeah, maybe, but you know to your point it's, you know, much different than here. But I'll be honest with you, one of the things that I feel I've traveled a lot because I worked for a bank People think that we have everything here and that's not necessarily true. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree with you, I like America. I mean when I say North and South America, I mean what we call these two continents. America has something that is very unique, which has nothing which Europe does not have. Europe is really territorial, you know, we began, but is a abruzzo, naples, udine, like you were there. These city states, america has no city states. Forget about Quebec, and Quebec is the exception. So that idea of not coming from that place is so liberating.
Speaker 2:You know, you asked me about the village. I felt claustrophobic. I mean, I loved it. It's beautiful, you know, sure, I mean the food is, I taste it.
Speaker 2:I hear less and less my dialect. You know the dialect I grew up with. But I remember when, when I would go there and I hear the dialect, I was, oh, it's paradise, right, there was something about it, very maternal about it. And another level I was scared of walking the street because they all said there is the son of this guy, you know. And now there's no son of anybody.
Speaker 2:Who's this? What's he doing here? Who is he? Why is he coming here? You know, he's from the government, right, it's too small, it's claustrophobic, and you can't, you can't. You know, it's a small village, it's a small town, right, and these small towns are emptying. I know, right, I mean it is. So. Italy has become again city state minded. You know, rome, milano, genoa. You have these big cities and inside you have these beautiful country homes that are being bought by people from the city Like you were saying, naples and they would go to the village, get the money from the reserves. And I think that's what's really happening when you meet people who have vineyards you know, there are people from the old time Like I met in France.
Speaker 2:I met this man who was a vineyard and his family had it since 1700. Revolution, french Revolution, which is amazing. You know, he had never moved Since 1700, he had never moved from the place. I mean it's I find that very strange in many ways. I mean I find that very strange to not want to move out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, you know what. What kind of bothers is the right word. But you know, we know so much about the history of France and you know England and Germany and the royal families there are noble families there and how they live. Very little of that is published about Italy, you know, at least not in English. Anyway, I totally agree.
Speaker 2:No no, I totally agree with you. You know, I was thinking about this interview and I have to say this I just discovered ancestry, so I went there and I tried and but you can't find anything in Italy. It's because it's against the law. Dna In France it's against the law, dna is legal. So there's a. There's a film on Netflix. I don't want to do promotion, but it's. This is why I learned I had heard about this before.
Speaker 2:So the police caught a serial killer. They had his DNA. They could not use DNA to convict him. I couldn't believe it. I mean, they let him go and he's killing. So the idea of not revealing DNA says a lot about a society. They have something to hide. I think that's why we can't find anything about Italy. And I discovered through DNA that, oh, I'm not from what I, I'm not who I thought I was. You know, you asked me I'm Italian. I discovered I'm more Italian than my parents were. My parents are not Italian. They were from other regions. They're Bulgarian, they're from Greece, they're from Scotland. My father has Scottish and Welsh blood. I never knew that. You know, they don't want us to know what happened a hundred years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, it's funny to say that, because I I every once in a while I see somebody who's like I'm not doing DNA because I'm a hundred percent Italian and I say this no such thing as a hundred percent Italian. It doesn't exist, and your culture and your genetics are two different things.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. This is very important, bob, what you're saying. It is fundamental, you know. So, going back to what you were saying about our kids don't want to learn Italian, they'll learn. I mean, my daughter learned I would speak to her and my dialect. She learned a couple of dialects and she speaks it. She would learn it right away with if she went out with an Italian guy. You know, it's just she prefers speaking I don't know Spanish or whatever Because her boyfriend is Spanish. Right, I mean Spanish speaking.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the other thing. I mean you learn the other language. That will be useful for you, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly, Exactly. So I want to talk about the book, the one that you held up with the Italian Canadian. I wasn't sure if it was Canadian, Italian, Italian, Canadian.
Speaker 2:Yes, because I'm afraid it was.
Speaker 1:But I mean, what's the, what's the premise behind the? What is an Italian, Canadian writer?
Speaker 2:So in fact, this was commissioned by an American, italian, anthony Tambuti, who commissioned this from New York, and they said we have to do it in Italian. So I wrote this in Italian. So when I wrote it in Italian, it was interesting because it was, with the Italian point of view, all right. So the question is what is an Italian American? What is an Italian Canadian? Does it really exist? I mean, that's right, what is an Italian? So I had to ask every question so that we didn't fall into what you just said genetics equals culture. I had to break that, and so what I did is an overview of when it began writing. What is a writer? First of all, that was a stupid question, but I mean a lot of people. If you look at Kafka, a lot of writers, rainbow, they were, they never published in a lifetime, right, they became famous post-mortem. And so I have to say there's probably, there are probably major writers right now who are not publishing, who will probably change our definition of what it means to be Italian Canadian, and so I had to raise that issue. So whatever I come up with as a definition, it has to be temporary, and I think there are about five definitions. One would be an Italian person who's still Italian, who's legally still Italian, who writes in Italian or English, but he still considers himself Italian. I mean, the fact that he is living abroad is nothing, his tradition goes back to Italy. Then you have the Italian French, the French Canadian. He doesn't care about being Italian Canadian, so he will become French Francophone and the Italian will become a distant element, a detail. On the English side, you have a big presence of people who write in English, who don't care about that ethnic thing, they don't care about the Italian thing at all. They are, they, they embrace the British or the American Anglo-Saxon reality. They are writing in English and they, they go towards that, they want to be part of that reality. Then you have the same type of writer, but only the Italian thing is important. Now, in that importance of Italian, there are two roads, maybe three roads. The ones that come to mind is nostalgia, the idea of something that was beautiful or not beautiful doesn't matter, or something that has to be defined. And that's where I got in.
Speaker 2:I wanted to talk about that new identity, which I call the italic, which is not defined by the past, it's not defined by territory, not defined by language, it's not defined by by politics. In many ways it's a cultural. I mean when I, when I was a student, the people who taught me Italian culture were not even Italian. I mean they spoke better than my parents ever spoke Italian. I mean, why would they not be Italian, right? So I mean they knew the culture inside out. I mean they knew all the great writers, they they could recite Dante, they could recite Pasolini. I mean they were German. So I always say well, I come. I want to include these people in my definition of being italic. So italic would be this cross-border reality of a culture, like a spacecraft in fact, and I think that is basically what I mean, what I discovered when doing this book that we want to be part of the spacecraft called italic and that you want to make this conscious step towards it.
Speaker 2:It is a new phenomena which I think other other ethics will go through as well as as because what is going back to America, what will happen in the future, is we will receive more and more immigrants. Whether it's political or not, we're going to be receiving these new cultures and they're not going to want to identify to British culture or to France. They might want to identify to Indonesia. You know they don't. They might not need any desire to to, they want to be part of the city, but they have no desire to totally lose themselves. No, they do it for religion. We can do it for religion. Why can't we do it for culture? We do it for money. Money doesn't. Money is trans, cultural, trans, natural, right. I mean, nobody says I don't want that money, we, it doesn't matter where it comes from, right? I think that's what culture will be in the future. So that's what I discovered, I, that the Italian immigrant, our generation, those born abroad, who asks that person, who asks these questions, will not disappear. They're going to be more and more of us.
Speaker 2:And it is important to say what, to repeat what you said, bob, your, it is not genetic. Culture is not genetic. It's. It might have been, but it's. It must not be that. It must not also be territorial, because look at yourself, but as a Neapolitan, and yet you are someone, what you are, your parents were not and you have to define.
Speaker 2:In that definition you're passing on to your friends, your children, your loved ones. I mean, you are offering this new identity which has no name, right? Sure, I'm from New Jersey, but that is an accident. You know, tomorrow you might go to California, tomorrow you might go to Paris. You're not going to change. In the old days they had to because they had laws against them. They had these incredible racist laws against Italians in France, you know, and across the world, across the states, they had the laws, you know, against Italians, hopefully, hopefully, racism that's an awful in total cultural intolerance or religious intolerance, or whatever they call skin intolerance. I don't understand. I don't understand the word race, so, but that reality will hopefully disappear. You know, unfortunately, we're, we're, we're back into it. You know the world is just collapsed with this territorial yeah, you know, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's just human nature and great.
Speaker 2:I don't think it is human nature. You have to be optimistic. I don't think it is human. I think we've been brainwashed to believe that I am genetically a Catholic. What do you mean? What is that supposed to mean, right? Right, you know, I remember the first time I met an Italian Jewish person, I would really hear you're Italian, yeah, I'm from Calabria, or I was married to a Calvinist Italian from Calabria. I mean, I had no idea. I mean, as an older man, I mean I was in my 20s, 30s and all of a sudden, really, so you, I'm totally stupid, I'm ignorant, right.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I interviewed a Jewish guy from Italy and you know he's I think he's only about he's early 30s now he didn't know he was Jewish until he was in his 20s. I didn't tell him. You know, and that's. That's sad, but you don't go back to what you said about where you're from, and I forget who it was. That gave the example of if somebody actually where you from? Do I say I'm from New Jersey Because I'm here now? I was born in New York Do I say I'm from New York? Do I say I'm from Italy? You know, so it's. It's a subjective thing, I guess, as to when somebody asked you that question, how you answer that.
Speaker 2:I answered once for the government. I wrote the time Canadian and they wrote back it doesn't exist. You see, that's where this came from, when a government told me that I did not exist. Wow, that was a shock.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, growing up if somebody asked me what I was, I would instinctively Italian yes, you know, we're talking the 50s, early 60s, italian, you know. And then you know. Then it gets to Italian, american. And they asked me. They asked me in Italy, how do you, how do you feel about, do you feel Italian, right? And I said when I'm here, yes, until somebody asked me a question, an Italian, and I can't answer. And they got a big kick out of that. I said then I'm American, somebody does that.
Speaker 2:That's the matter, because if they spoke English, you would, you wouldn't be able to express yourself right.
Speaker 1:But you know, you get by we point it a lot. Of course, you get through everything.
Speaker 2:But it's true. In the 50s I remember when we'd go to. We drive down every weekend to Wildwood and Atlantic City.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm not, far from there, I know, and we would go swim and he had this incredible beach that we would go there and I would meet. I mean, my dream was to meet an Italian American woman. Right, we're kids, right, 12, 13 years old, and I would meet these girls and it was like, yeah, we're Italian, I'm from near Jersey, great. It was like, oh cool, I didn't understand what a Mendo, I just felt there's a link that was established when they would say they're Italian, clearly we're both not Italian, we were from America and Canada or whatever it is. And that time that link existed when I met Italian German as an intellectual, or Italian Argentinian, when the people would say I'm from Australia but I'm Italian, my mother's Italian but my father has this Scottish name, but I'm Italian, and that was another discovery.
Speaker 2:So all of this coming out I call it this coming out is a very new process. It's a post 80, I think. I think the World Cup in football and soccer really awakened something for the first time with the Italian peoples. There was something that that occurred which is very. I think that is a turning point. It was a turning point for me as a young man in 82. I mean, none of us brought our Italian flags. But we went and walked. We were coming out, right, it was exactly like coming out as a gay man. I was shy, walking on the streets saying I'm a WAP, I'm Italian, I'm a Dego that was what I was saying Just because I'm Italian and in French it's Italian. Wow, it was like a very radical moment for all of us, and I realized that we found this in other cities and other places across the world.
Speaker 2:So we had to define this emotion, and one of the first thing you had to do was go back. What you're saying genetics does not equal culture. I don't have to be a nationalist to be Italian. I don't have to be. I could be whatever I want. I'll define it.
Speaker 2:Let me take my time and define it, and I think all the writers that I publish of Italian background or origin or whatever you want to call these italic writers I published in the past 50 years they're all asking the same question. They're asking questions. They're, they're coming up with songs, with feelings that express a sentiment that has not a clear definition. But there's something, a happiness, there, you know. I think Dean Martin expressed it very well. I love Dean Martin. Dean Martin was my favorite singer at home. You know he was a good says so my father was able to catch the dial, like you know, when he would say that some more. My father said he sees American but there's something else going on, and you know, but he that, that, that pride, that proud feeling that you know, not a pure.
Speaker 2:Not a pureness, it's just a good feeling. You know it's a good someone who likes something else. Right, it's very complex because you can't really define it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, I know what you mean. I know what you mean, yeah very complex, I mean.
Speaker 2:So that's what I try to do with this book and I could say, like these are two books I publish. This is my diary in 1980. It's called Outside, looking In, published by Ektasis. Both of them they're part of my, my autobiography, and this in this book, I don't feel at all Italian. So from here to here, that's 50 years apart, something happened. I don't know what it is, something happened. I met a lot of people like you who are asking questions. We're talking about it and it's important to say let's not go here. You know certain things we must not identify and clearly embrace because it's dangerous. We have history behind us that teaches us don't go there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think too. For me, it's also finding out about Italy at least my family there in some ways helps me define myself. I can't explain it, but that's the way I feel, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And you're from aristocracy, which is cool. Do you have any links with them?
Speaker 1:Oh, tons, tons Really. Whenever anybody asks if you could talk to anybody in the past or would it be I was like my grandmother. I want to talk to my grandmother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know who. I would want to talk to Great grandparents just before, yeah, great great grandparents. Yeah, just before the World Wars right, I mean the World Wars destroyed so much.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes we'll watch these period movies. They're remaking the Leopard in Sicily, by the way, oh really. Oh yeah, I think it's Netflix. I can't wait. That's going to be fabulous. But you know, we'll watch these period movies and my wife will say wouldn't it be nice to be able to just drop into that period and look down and see how people really live and what went through their minds and things like that. You know, we get a little bit of a sense of it, but you know you can't really see the whole reality. It's like visiting a place or living there. We lived in England for two years completely different than visiting, right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, you know. I mean you have to go pay your taxes, you have to wait in line.
Speaker 1:You get your television license.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, yeah, paying the electricity bill. It's really complex.
Speaker 1:You know, when I opened up the bank account in England, they said to me do you want crossed or uncrossed checks? And I was like I haven't what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, what does that?
Speaker 1:mean.
Speaker 2:What does it mean?
Speaker 1:And they explained that and they get two little slashes through where you wrote the name and it meant that, if I remember correctly, it either meant that only that person could cash the check, or something like that. You know, you couldn't, you couldn't, like, I guess, cosign it over to somebody else, or something like that. I don't remember exactly. But the you know, like I said, it's a completely different experience when you, when you have to live someplace else.
Speaker 2:Did you meet Italians when you were in England?
Speaker 1:I met only you know only a couple. Now I have a good friend that I work with in New York and his mom was an Italian war war bride in England. His father was a British soldier and he met his, his, his wife in Italy and eventually brought her over to England. And you know Italians in England. They have a long history going back to before the war and a lot of them, for some strange reason, were in the ice cream industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:Like the Barae thing in New York or Iceman, for some strange reason, don't know why, don't know why. So, so, antonio, anybody who wants to find your book or you know, get in touch with you. How would they do that?
Speaker 2:Well, you can write to me, antonio D'Alfonso, at sympathicoca. One word. Or else the books, amazon. This is ecstasy, ecstasy editions. They're in Victoria.
Speaker 2:We had a launching yesterday. In fact, we had 10 books that I edited and yeah, yeah, please, it would be interesting to get feedback. See, writing, I mean writing poetry is one thing. These are essays. You want feedback, you know, and not just good feedback, I mean, if you have to criticize, but feedback that makes the conversation advance, the ideas advance.
Speaker 2:I think it's important and I'm getting on and I wanted to leave something. I mean I'm writing basically only my. I'm decided to write the autobiographical stuff right now because, like I said, I represent a time in history in Canada and history which is going to be dead, because I want you all that reality I was explaining at the beginning. So I want to keep a record of it so that people like me don't get forgotten, because we're very unique and it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world where we were a triangulation of cultures. You know, it's very unique and out of fluke, this happened and I want to talk about it and I think whatever the italic is can be found in that uniqueness of these triangulation, of these meeting of cultures, things that happened at the same time that diverged.
Speaker 2:There's something there that that reminds me of Trieste, in fact of the middle Europe, right, there was something at the end of the Austrian Empire Austrian Hungarian Empire that was could have been great. Unfortunately it became awful, it became World War right. But I'm hope we don't have to repeat that, you know, I think I think we don't need to. You know, the last century was full of full of that hatred, you know, of territorial mindedness.
Speaker 1:So sad you know, yeah, yeah, no, I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you. Well, this has been fascinating. I appreciate you taking the time. I learned a lot more about Canadian history than I knew before. Thank, you, I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
