The Humble and the Heroic: Wartime Italian Americans (Hardcover) ...

I was too young to be aware of such inclinations in 1936; however, other than his presumed wealth, even when I became more mature by the early 1940s, I can truly say neither I nor other contemporaries recall any intimation about his purported association with Fascism. Rather his strong voice on behalf of Italy reflected the prevailing view of upholding Italy primarily on nationalistic grounds.

The Block

The block was the place, the spatial entity that virtually encompassed the community and served as the catalyst for a mindset regarding second generation Italian Americans in the pre-World War II era in the nation’s big eastern cities. The block, encompassed a rectangular expanse of soil with houses that “were like boxes stuck together, and we ourselves, the tenants called them ‘railroad flats’ because the rooms were lined up, one behind the other.”²⁵ On my block, these railroad rooms were what we called home—dwellings for approximately 1,000 souls—that in some respect, mirrored the small villages from which most of the Italians came, and represented the circumscribed but amicable vantage from which one viewed and judged world events.

Himrod St., in Ridgewood / Bushwick, Brooklyn, USA, between Irving and Knickerbocker Avenues was the place where I became especially conscious that my parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors shared a common nationality. Even more pronounced was the Sicilian connection. Within a few minutes walk from our house, we children trailed our mother as we visited close or distant relatives or a variety of paisani from Pioppo, her home village in Sicily. While we were proud of our American identity, we also strongly identified with our Italian legacy, perhaps in part to bolster our self-respect. The street in which one lived held a special meaning; it became our unvarying compass, one that provided readily recognizable credentials, one that was the basis upon which to differentiate among other blocks in the immediate vicinity and it constituted a necessary foundation with which to interact with the wider world. It was difficult to conceive of meaning without the block as a reference point.