Familial Memories and Ethnic Identity Constructions: Three Generations of Descendants of Southern Italian Immigrants to the United States, 1913–2009

In this paper I outline the memories and identity constructions of three generations of descendants of a migrant couple: Elvira and Giovanni Soloperto emigrated in 1913 from Apulia and settled in east Worcester, Massachusetts. I interviewed 13 people from three generations that descended from that migrant couple. For the purpose of the analysis of the interviews, I created two categories: Family Line A and Family Line B. One line, Family A, left Worcester in the second generation in the 1930’s and moved to rural areas of New Hampshire. Members of the third and fourth generations today live scattered across the United States. Members of the other line, Family B, remained in Worcester and today live there in their fifth generation. The members of A moved up the socio-economic ladder higher and earlier than members of B. Each family forms its own distinct group and familial memory. The questions I will reflect on in the presentation are: How do the 13 individuals construct their ethnic identity based on their memories? How do these memories relate to the collective memories of their family? What memories get passed down through the generations? What does that tell us about the families’ (ethnic) identities? Specifically, I am looking at what familial tales of migration tell us about Italianness and Americanness. In A, women of the second and third generations started to reconstruct a new Italianness in the 1960’s - a time when the key institutions of U.S.-American life started to celebrate an “ethnic revival”. Less concerned about recapturing their Italian roots were the interviewees of B who still today reside in Worcester. This phenomenon can be explained by A’s loss of Italian traditions because of their moving out of the ethnic neighborhood of Worcester and this phenomenon can still be observed into the fourth generation.