Lindsay Marie Morris

Among the many Facebook Groups dedicated to Sicilian heritage, you'll find only one Sicilian-American Women's Club. With more than 3,600 online followers and about 60 active club members, the Akron, Ohio-based organization was founded in 1934 by a group of Sicilian immigrant women to preserve their cultural heritage and provide a community for those of Sicilian descent. Its motto—fraternity, charity, elevation, and discipline—is embodied by what President Vita Signorino Moore calls "strong-willed and dynamic women." 

Moore, who is Sicilian on both sides, with a mother who came to the U.S. as a child from Partanna and a father who arrived as an adult from Marsala, shared more about the club and its activities. She also spoke about how the organization aims to reach younger generations while carrying on traditions. And she expressed her hope for what members will take away.

What were your reasons for joining the club?

It gives me satisfaction to hold on to memories. There's a lady there, and every time I see her, I get tears because she has my grandmother's eyes. She's so sweet, and I look at her, and I'm like, "This is my nonna!"

It's like, why not hang out with a group of ladies who remind you of your relatives? And they act like them. It's comical in a way because they'll say something familiar, or there'll be a hand gesture or something.

I want to preserve that tradition and history there. And why not have that? Everyone asks, "If you could bring someone back…" This is my way of reviving my childhood and memories by attending the meetings and experiencing the culture, people, and their dynamics. 

What I enjoy, too, is that when people come, they're always made to feel welcome. We usually introduce them and have them share where they're from. And there's always someone in the group—no matter what—who says, "Yes, I know someone from that area" or "I know exactly where it is." 

Some of them have never been to Sicily. It also gives them the gift of, "Oh, this is someone who actually may know or can tell me about my town that you're not going to get from looking online or from a Facebook post or whatever." You're hearing it directly from someone.

The club is passing its recipes and stories onto the next generation.

What are some of your signature events and activities?

On March 12, we had our St. Joseph's dinner. We celebrated St. Joseph Day, which is a big event in Italy. Starting last year, we switched it up a little bit. We all bring in a covered dish, but we also make a donation.

If you look at the authentic St. Joseph's table, it's a presentation of foods that you provide. But we bring canned goods and non-perishable items. One of the ladies is heavily involved with an area organization called Good Neighbors, so we filled a vehicle this year and last with canned food. We donate food to the local communities with our St. Joseph table.

Each month, we'll have a theme depending on what's happening. But the biggest event we all participate in is the Summit County Italian-American Festival, which is generally held in July in downtown Akron. We are known for our cookies. People come from everywhere, and they want our cookies. I would say each member donates anywhere from six to twenty dozen cookies. So we sell quite a few cookies and do pizza fritti and cannoli.

We always have a Christmas party, we have a picnic, and we go on excursions. We've attended several events at the Italian American Museum of Cleveland.

We've brought in speakers, an opera singer, a lady who sold chocolate—whatever interests someone. 

The Sicilian-American Women's Club brings cookies to the Summit County Italian-American Festival.

Tell us about your famous cookbooks.

When COVID was happening, I saw a Facebook post from someone who went to my high school with a picture of a cookbook. It was all beaten up. And he said, "The publisher is no longer publishing this. Is there anyone who knows anything about this group? I would love to have another copy."

Well, it just so happened that he graduated the year behind me. I contacted him and said, "You're talking to the president. And yes, we're aware of this cookbook."

It came out right when I was in college. There was a copy in my parents' basement.

He said, "I have some downtime. What if I reorganized it, and we print it?"

So, during COVID, he did this, which is very gracious of him. He added an index showing the people who contributed to this cookbook, most of whom are now deceased. There are 300 to 400 recipes.

It has been great for us because, during the pandemic, everyone else was stagnant for a year. We didn't meet in person, but we were making money because we printed a thousand cookbooks, and they disappeared in a heartbeat. Everybody was buying them. We had porch pickups and everything else.

We ordered another thousand and still have about 300 left. It was a great money-maker for us when everyone else was losing. It's just the original recipes, but we beefed them up a bit and organized them better. 

The legendary club's cookbook

How are you reaching younger generations?

I've succeeded in bringing my daughter on board, and she is now the recording secretary.

At Christmas time, we have a party and invite guests and everything, but at the end, we do this bambina song; we're singing a song and a rosary to Jesus. I remember the very first time she came there. I remember looking at her and seeing how that was something new for her. It's bringing on those histories and things you wouldn't necessarily know.

The other thing is when we use the cookbook and make the cookies. My daughter looked in the cookbook and found one that made 13 dozen cookies. It would be the easiest recipe to make because then we wouldn't have to make two or three batches. Between the two of us, we were trying to put this together (and these are recipes written years ago), and we're trying to figure it out.

It has been very rewarding to experience it with my daughter, instill it, and pass it on. I believe for a lot of the members, having the younger generation along with the older ones… They're enjoying that. And they like that because—believe me—a lot of advice is provided in these group meetings! There's a lot of openness and a lot of caring for the group. And I think the younger generation sees this. 

Each event is a celebration of Sicilian sisterhood.

What do you hope members gain from their experience?

I hope they continue to understand the group and further understand the culture, the reasons these people made the food, and the traditions they passed on. 

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An estimated 4 million Italians emigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920, most seeking economic opportunities. About 25,000 of those people settled within seven neighborhoods of Cleveland. Many were scalpellini (stone carvers). Their hands and tools shaped many local buildings and structures, including the iconic Guardians of Traffic (the namesake of the city’s baseball team) on the Hope Memorial Bridge.

Setting stories of Cleveland’s Italian heritage in stone is mission-critical for the Italian American Museum of Cleveland (IAMCLE). Museum Director Pamela Dorazio Dean leads the charge, serving as both the Director and Curator of Italian American History at the Western Reserve Historical Society.

With a focus on "Faith, Family, and Ambition" in the Italian American experience, Pamela and her team showcase exhibits and offer events and educational programming, including Italian language and culture classes, as well as walking tours of Cleveland’s Little Italy, where the museum is located.

In addition to sharing the stories of Cleveland’s Italian immigrants and the IAMCLE’s founding, Pamela provided further details about the museum’s history, events, offerings, and goals.

What is the history of Italian immigration to Cleveland?

Cleveland has a pretty sizable Italian community. We're in the top 10 in terms of the number of people who still identify as having Italian heritage in Northeast Ohio.

They came mostly from Southern Italy (south of Rome) and Sicily. And for Cleveland, a lot of them came from the regions of Abruzzo and Molise, which used to be one region until the 1960s, when Molise broke off. So a lot of the older Italians still say they're from Abruzzo, but that's only because the regions used to be one. Many of them were stone carvers or sculptors—scalpellini, as they call them in Italian. And a lot of them were general laborers looking for work because none was available in Italy. They could not improve their station in life. It was a hopeless situation. So, they left Italy and came to the United States.

Some of them made money in the U.S. and then returned to Italy or sent money home, but the large majority stayed. In Cleveland, they initially settled in a neighborhood known as Big Italy. It was where the city center was, where the market district was located, where all the produce came through. It had been a Jewish community before the Italians moved in.

As the Italians were coming in the 1880s, they found inexpensive housing near places where they could find work, and the Big Italy neighborhood provided those things. It wasn’t until around 1885 that the Little Italy community started to form.

The area where Little Italy is now located was owned by the Cozad family, whose house is still standing just on the outskirts of Little Italy. They used the land for fruit orchards. They began selling off the land in the mid-1880s, and people began settling there. It became known as the East End of Cleveland. Then, when the Italians started coming in the late 1880s, it became known as the East End Italian Settlement. Eventually, it became known as Little Italy.

Cleveland's Little Italy

Tell us the story of the Italian Museum of Cleveland’s founding and its role in the Italian community.

The first museum in Little Italy was founded by a group of volunteers who lived in the neighborhood. They ran it from 1985 to 2007. It was all-volunteer, people concerned about preserving the history of the neighborhood, especially at a time when it was changing. A lot of the original Italian families had moved away. University Hospital and Case Western Reserve University are nearby and were buying up properties in the neighborhood.

This museum was a way to keep the museum and the neighborhood grounded in the past. It provided a home for many of the families that used to live in the neighborhood. When they would return to the neighborhood, they could go there and see various photos of the neighborhood’s past, First Communion class photos, old buildings, and old friends.

The two ladies who were running that museum, Lauretta Nardolillo and Eva Maesta, whom I met in 2007, were in their early eighties and said they needed to step away from the museum. No one wanted to pick up where they had left off. So, they donated all of the museum’s collection to the Western Reserve Historical Society, where I worked and am still working as a curator of Italian American history.

I cataloged and organized all of the materials. When that museum closed, I realized there was a hole left in the neighborhood. People know it's a historic neighborhood, and they know it's an Italian neighborhood. But there was really nowhere for them to explore and understand what the neighborhood was about, who the people were who made it, and all the contributions they made to not only that neighborhood but to Northeast Ohio.

I had been talking about it within the Italian community for a while, and I finally got funding from the Italian Sons and Daughters of America. Basil Russo, who lives here in Cleveland, is the national president of that organization. He agreed with me and thought my vision for a museum was exactly what the neighborhood needed, what the Italian-American community needed, and what the city of Cleveland needed to understand our contributions.

Often, in our community, people fall back on the mafia stories. And while that is a part of our culture and part of who we are, it's a very small percentage; less than 1% were involved in the mafia, but it gets 110% of the attention. So we wanted to emphasize the more positive aspects. The museum received funding in 2020. We didn't open right away because of the pandemic, so we ended up having our grand opening in October of 2021.

The Italian American Museum of Cleveland focuses on "Faith, Family, and Ambition."

What kind of exhibits can visitors expect to see at IAMCLE?

We're very small. We only have about 900 square feet of exhibit space. It's basically one long rectangle in an old building built in 1902 in the Little Italy neighborhood. It was a bank, and then it was home to Presti's Bakery, which is still very popular in the neighborhood.

Right now, we have an overview of Italians in Cleveland. It's called “Faith, Family, and Ambition,” and it defines the values of Italian culture that helped the immigrants be successful and settle in the United States, specifically in Cleveland. We have photographs and some objects on display.

We tell the story of the stone carvers, which is very important not only for settling the Little Italy neighborhood but because the Guardians of Traffic, who our baseball team is now named for, were carved in Little Italy by immigrant stone carvers from a town called Oratino, Italy, which is in the Molise region. A lot of people are unaware of that and that's a great story., People are more interested in learning the history of those statues because our baseball team changed its name to the Guardians.

Next month, we will be opening a national traveling exhibit on Louis Prima, the Sicilian singer who was born and raised in New Orleans and became very popular in the 1940s and 1950s. He was just an amazing musician, but quite a character. He helped popularize not only jazz in general, but also Italian music, because he often sang in Italian. That exhibit started in New Orleans. It was also at the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles and the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City. It will come to Cleveland and be here through the end of the year.

IAMCLE visitors trace Cleveland's Italian American history from emigration to Big Italy and Little Italy.

What events and programming does the museum offer?

We want the museum to be a community gathering space instead of just a place where people come and look at exhibits. We want to bring the community together and teach them about Italian and Italian American culture.

One of our popular offerings is our Italian language classes. We partner with Dr. Paola Basile, who is a professor and head of the Italian Studies Program at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, and a native of Rome, Italy. She is an excellent teacher, and those classes always fill up. People are very interested in learning the Italian language.

We also offer classes where we explore the different regions of Italy, again taught by Dr. Basile. There are 20 distinct regions in Italy, each with its own traditions, foods, and interesting UNESCO sites. Dr. Basile reviews all of the interesting information about the region. Then, at the end of class, we taste food and wine from the region, which is very popular. People love having some wine and a little taste of Italy after class.

Another of our offerings is walking tours of the Little Italy neighborhood in the summer months, in partnership with an organization called Take a Hike. They offer historic tours throughout the city of Cleveland.

What's really cool about the Take a Hike tours is that they have actors playing characters from the neighborhood during the tour. For this year’s tour, we will have stone carver Domenicantonio Mastrangelo, who helped carve the Guardians of Traffic, and Rocky Colavito, an Italian-American baseball player who played for the Cleveland Indians in the 1950s. It’s going to be a really fun tour.

We offer other events that pop up along the way. Sometimes, authors will contact me, somebody who has written a book about Italy or their Italian family history, and we'll have author talks, meet-and-greets, and those kinds of things.

What do you ultimately hope to share?

I hope the museum will help people understand that our culture is more than food and the mafia. We've made significant contributions, as shown here in the city of Cleveland and the region of Northeast Ohio. I especially want people to learn about the impact that the stone carvers made in our city and region. That's one story that has kind of gotten lost in history.

Little Italy is adjacent to Lake View Cemetery, a beautiful park-like cemetery founded in the 1870s. Many of the monuments and headstones there were carved by Italian and Italian American stone carvers.

Italians have also contributed to buildings in downtown Cleveland. So, there's the artistic aspect of the Italian immigrants that a lot of people don't think about immediately. They think about the greats like Michelangelo, but these ordinary Italians also had many artistic skills that they learned while they were in Italy and brought over with them.

Italians have been influential in business and politics, the arts, and the construction industry. We want to bring that story of who we are and how Italians helped make Northeast Ohio a great region through our contributions to the forefront, and we do that at IAMCLE.

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Today, I celebrate 19 years of marriage to Matt Sirolly, my greatest champion, critique partner, and friend. Without Matt, The Last Letter from Sicily might never have been completed. I might never have received the two-book publishing deal that also brought Beneath the Sicilian Stars into the world.

I started writing what would become my debut novel in a creative writing class, inspired by my grandparents' story of being separated during World War II. After writing several thousand words, I shared with Matt that it might have the potential to become a novel. He agreed and encouraged me to keep going.

I wrote on and off, but eventually, I set it aside. Who was I to think I could finish a novel, let alone publish one?

Later, over our anniversary dinner, Matt asked, "How's the novel coming along?" I shook my head. In my mind, there was no longer a novel. But he told me not to give up, and I didn't want to let him down.

So I picked it back up and returned to it in earnest. When I reached the part set in Cagliari, Sardinia—where my grandfather had been stationed—I struggled. I had never been there, and the scenes felt hard to bring to life. Matt suggested we travel to Sardinia and rent an apartment for a month. That trip turned out to be exactly what I needed. I finished the novel in a Marina District apartment, and we even toured World War II bunkers with a professor from the University of Cagliari.

Of course, finishing a novel is only part of the journey. Publishing is another challenge. I queried a few dozen agents and received rejections because, as one agent put it, "No one's buying World War II fiction." I felt discouraged. Matt suggested we create our own press and publish it ourselves. I loved the idea.

But then I discovered Storm Publishing, a UK-based traditional publisher that had just signed Lelita Baldock for her heartwarming World War II novel, The Baker's Secret. I decided to pitch them.

Within a week, I was able to share their enthusiastic reply with Matt. The commissioning editor loved the story's angle, the Sicilian setting, and the fact that it was inspired by my grandparents.

I had only one name in mind when I wrote the novel's dedication.

So today I raise a glass to Matt, on this special day and always. Everyone deserves someone like him. I just happened to be lucky enough that he chose me. I look forward to all the chapters ahead, knowing we are in this together.

Matt and Lindsay on their wedding day in Temescal Gateway Park, Pacific Palisades, California

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The narrative surrounding Renaissance Italy has long been centered in the north, thanks to the influence of the Medici family, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Botticelli. Culturally rich Southern Italy and Sicily, however, have been left out of the conversation, and for far too long, argues Anne Maltempi, an assistant professor of history at the University of Mount Union and founder of Instagram's @The_Sicilian_School. Through her teachings in the classroom and via social media reels, she invites students to appreciate the ways Renaissance Sicily stands apart, shaped by its Greek, Arab, Norman, and Spanish influences on the arts, sciences, and humanities.

Sicily is a strong part of Dr. Maltempi's identity as a daughter of Sicilian immigrants from Oliveri, within the Province of Messina. She grew up speaking Sicilian thanks to her closeness with her paternal grandparents, who had moved to the United States, and her maternal grandparents, with whom she often spent summers. But as she shared with me, it wasn't initially part of her planned career path. 

We discussed how the stars ultimately aligned, how and why she has embraced social media, her favorite chapters and heroes from Sicilian history, why Sicily has been overlooked, her latest project, and where she hopes to shed light.

What inspired your career path?

When I started graduate school, I wanted to study English literature because I was a big Shakespeare fan. So, my first master's degree is in Shakespearean literature.

I realized that through that program, I was called more to history. As a scholar, I liked the historical aspects of Shakespeare's world almost more than I liked the literature itself, so I decided to pursue history.

Since I was studying Shakespeare, the next logical step seemed to be to study Tudor-Stuart Britain and see what the kings and queens were doing.

That field was saturated, and I was struggling to be inspired. So I said, "I know about the Renaissance, but I never hear anything about Sicily in the Renaissance. I'm Sicilian, and I wonder what was going on."

I found that nobody studies 15th and 16th-century Sicily much. There's a lot of stuff about the Middle Ages and later in the modern period. So, I would say I was led to that partly because of how I grew up, having been to Sicily so many times and not really understanding its history or becoming familiar with it other than my own family history and linguistic ability.

I grew up speaking Sicilian and later acquired Italian. That was a big bonus because it allowed me to further research that field. Sicilian scholars during the Renaissance did not speak Tuscan, like Dante in the Middle Ages; they spoke their own vernacular—a version of Sicilian. Picking up a 16th-century Sicilian document was really cool. Having language as a tool has been the bedrock that allowed me to continue on this career path.

Tell us about the Sicilian School you've created on social media.

I started the Sicilian School last July. I had been thinking about starting a social media page for a couple of years, partly because the job market for academics is not very great. I thought this would be an opportunity to teach my passion. I figured I may not have a classroom in the university, but maybe I can get one online and just build it myself.

I talked to my husband, and he said, "Look, you really love your work. Why don't you stop talking about a social media page and just do it? Maybe that'll be a good creative outlet for you."

So I did my first reel at some point last July, which was a comparison of Michelangelo's David to the genius of Palermo. I was expecting to get, I don't know, five views. I wasn't going into this with high hopes. Overnight, I got 500 views, and a bunch of people were commenting pretty positively. And that was all really validating.

My husband was right. It did become a really fun, creative outlet for me because then I got to think about other reels I wanted to do and series I wanted to start, and it just kind of snowballed from there. 

Which chapter of Sicilian history fascinates you most and why

I will say my period, the 15th and 16th centuries, though it's really a toss-up. The history of the Middle Ages is great, too, because it's multicultural. There are pockets of Greek speakers, Arab speakers, and Jewish communities; of course, you have the Normans and the monarchs. You constantly have people coming in and out, so it's really interesting from that aspect. 

The Middle Ages period is also fascinating from a political and governance aspect because Roger II and Frederick II proposed progressive documents from our perspective. They had constitutional-style documents, and they were administratively trying to make a cohesive connection within their kingdoms. 

We mistakenly think that women didn't have much power in that system, but the power that they actually had is pretty impressive. So, I love the Middle Ages from that perspective.

I also love my period, because I think it really serves as the other half of the narrative of the Renaissance. After all, there are still a lot of writers, artists, and culturally elevated people in society. But the process is developing in a slightly different way because Sicily's not a city-state like Florence. It's actually part of the Habsburg Empire in my period. And there's some influence from Spain. It is decidedly less multicultural in that period because the Spanish essentially kicked out everybody who was not Catholic or forced them to convert.

But what I like politically about my period is that you see the contention between the noble Sicilians and Imperial Spanish representatives. I like looking at that because for so many years in modern history, the idea that's put forward is that Sicilians were this economically destitute, not very well educated, kind of people who were doomed to failure. When you look at the exchange between

these political figures, you see that Sicilians had a lot more power and agency than we tend to think of in that period.

We tend to think Florence was the big center of Renaissance culture, and that's why it's important and why we study it. But the truth is, the Renaissance was a big movement happening in different ways in different places, and Sicily offers one of those new perspectives into how Renaissance culture and thought developed in that period, which is not necessarily so centered on Florence.

The Cathedral of Cefalù in Sicily is a renowned example of the Norman-Arab-Byzantine architectural style.

Why has Sicilian history been overlooked?

That's the million-dollar question right there. And there are a lot of reasons. To start, linguistically, it's hard. Because you're going to the ancient period, where you can actively find documents in Latin, Greek, and Arabic, and in the Middle Ages, you're getting into early types of Italian vernacular, but really more so, early types of Sicilian vernacular. 

I grew up speaking Sicilian dialect, but I grew up speaking a form of Sicilian dialect from the forties and fifties when my grandparents came. When I opened a 16th-century Sicilian book for the first time, I was like, "What am I looking at here? It's like a modern English speaker reading Shakespeare for the first time or reading Chaucer for the first time.

So linguistically, it's a complicated area of the world. It's also a complicated area of the world simply because of its history. It's one of the most dominated islands in human history. So you're going in relatively quick succession from the Greeks to the Romans, to the Arabs, to the Normans, to the Spanish. I mean, a bunch of people are there, and this is not to mention little groups like the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, Vandals, Berbers, and everybody else showing up there. So that's complicated.

I also think there are historiographic tendencies. Scholars of history, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, paid a lot of attention to Western Europe. And by Western Europe, I really mean North-Central Western Europe, places that were culturally mixed because of these proposed difficulties that I outlined previously, get ignored.

Sicily, particularly in the scope of Italian history, is one of the only areas in Italy that was under Arabic rule for a significant amount of time. And I do think there is a racial aspect to it. A certain marginalization comes with studying the history of a place that may be considered uncivilized.

I also think the Reformation played its part because there was a lot of Reformation propaganda against very Catholic spaces, particularly Spanish Catholic spaces, and Sicily was a Spanish territory. Sicily became this place where it's hard to study, while having some topics that may be a bit controversial to study. So, for those reasons, I think Sicily gets marginalized.

View within the Cathedral of Cefalù

You are writing a book. What can you tell us about it?

It's a work in progress. It is a historical text based on my dissertation. I'm basically looking at the work of five Sicilian intellectuals who were alive in the 15th and 16th centuries. I am reading their works and analyzing them to see how they defined themselves as Sicilian. Do they see themselves as Sicilian, or do they see themselves as Spanish because they're part of the Spanish Empire? Or do they still see themselves as descendants of Normans, Romans, or Greeks? How do they define themselves?

I think the process of identity formation highlights a lot of those missing spots in history that can be filled because you have to look at how they conceptualize their own history and what they feel is artistic and culturally viable, including island culture. How do they feel about living on an island? Do they define themselves by the fact that they're living on an island?

All of those things go into it. So, that's what my book is about. Each chapter is going to be a different intellectual with their work, analyzing it specifically for those purposes, looking at whether they see themselves as Sicilian. And what, if so, did being Sicilian mean in the 15th and 16th centuries?

Queen Constance, the mother of Frederick II, is a favorite.

You've featured several women who stand out in Sicilian history. Who do you particularly admire?

There are two that I really love, and one might be glaringly obvious. I love Queen Constance. I think I have four or five reels on her. She's the mother of Frederick II, and she is one of the baddest ass women, I think, in medieval history. I just love her. I don't know if half the stories about her are true. I hope to God that they are, I mean, maybe it'd be nice if she weren't an assassin and killed her husband. I don't know if she actually did. I'm pretty sure that's just a conspiracy theory.

I think the coolest thing about her, aside from the story that she had a baby at 40 in the middle of a town square, is that she was Sicilian. She loved Sicily and retained rulership of Sicily even after marrying the Holy Roman Emperor.

Now granted, her husband didn't really care so much about ruling Sicily. He just wanted the benefits of being married to the Queen of Sicily. But who cares about that? She said, "I'm going to make the laws here, and you just sign off on them." And that's what happened.

It also kept her constituents happy because the Holy Roman Emperor had created some contention by marrying her. A lot of people in Sicily were concerned that they would lose their rights to the Holy Roman Empire. Her maintaining rulership of Sicily actually quelled quite a few rebellions because they said, "OK, so our queen is still our queen, and she's still going to do stuff for us." And that made a big difference.

She knew she wasn't stupid, and he knew that, too. He wasn't stupid either. It was also politically beneficial for him, but I still think that's pretty cool.

Adelaide del Vasto, mother of Roger II
 

One of the other women I really like is Adelaide del Vasto. She was the mother of Roger II. And we don't know as much about her as Constance because she was illiterate. So, the sources we have from her are dictated. But she was a Lombard, originally the Lombard Princess, but really fell in love with Sicily and ended up staying there the last few years of her life. She actually left most of her wealth to a monastery in Sicily, where she ended up spending her last few years.

I'd like to learn a little bit more about her. I feel like there's something more there that I just haven't been able to find yet. So that's kind of my secondary project. After I finish my first book, I want to look more into her. She's just really intriguing and fascinating to me. So I'm going to see what I can find.

What do you hope to share with your students and audience?

Minimally, I hope they enjoy what they're seeing, and through my work, recognize that there are a lot of places in the world and that all of those places have a culture, a significant contribution to make to broader society.

I want them to see that different people had different things to say, that all of those things are important, and that they provide something relevant to the world we live in now.

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The first week of December 1941 brought fear and uncertainty for Italian immigrants in the United States. Nearly 600,000 were labeled "enemy aliens," kicking off a period of restrictions: forced registration, curfews, home searches, travel bans, and even internment. While Beneath the Sicilian Stars portrays one family's struggle in California, fishermen on the East Coast faced similarly devastating disruptions, many of which remain untold.

Maria "Mia" Millefoglie discovered this darker chapter of American World War II history while delving into family history for her manuscript, and as a contributing author to Our People Our Stories, a collection of over 80 stories, poems, vignettes, and photos celebrating Gloucester, Massachusetts' history and the resilient individuals who call Gloucester home.

Mia's mother had recounted life in war-town Sicily, the bombs, the poverty, and how she was forced to beg for bread. Her grandfathers were banned from fishing commercially on Gloucester's shores and could no longer send money back to their families. Other relatives recounted stories of families selling mattresses and jewelry for food. These stories prompted Mia to understand why. 

That quest for knowledge led her down what she calls a rabbit hole, eventually culminating in Branded: Enemy Aliens in Gloucester, a three-part storytelling series partly funded by Awesome Gloucester and hosted by Down the Fort: A Documentary and Archive Project.

Through her research, Mia learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Proclamation No. 2527 branded her Sicilian grandfathers, Filippo Millefoglie and Pietro Favazza, as "enemy aliens." What's more, Roosevelt's Executive Order 8970 established several Defensive Sea Areas off the coasts of the continental U.S., including areas in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and California. Fishermen found themselves barred from key fishing zones and coastal ports, designated as restricted areas for national security. Fishermen who were declared enemy aliens were barred from fishing and banned from the waterfront.

The federal government also requisitioned (or, in some cases, confiscated) fishing boats, either retrofitting them for military use or prohibiting their operation entirely. These restrictions effectively stripped many Italian immigrant fishermen of their livelihoods. Curfews and other limitations made it even more difficult for families to find alternative employment, exacerbating their financial hardships.

Mia shared more about her project, its inspiration and goals, the challenges she has faced, and the community response.

What inspired Branded as "Enemy Aliens"?

Both of my grandfathers were branded enemy aliens during World War II. They were Sicilian immigrant fishermen who were caught in the political turmoil. Having no knowledge of this proclamation, I never asked about their experiences. One day, I remember telling my grandfather Filippo that I was going out to California. His eyes twinkled, and he said, "Ah, California, I want you to go to San Francisco."

He named the street and said, "I used to have a fruit cart, and I used to shine the apples for pretty ladies."

I was in my twenties then, and just thought, "OK. My grandfather liked pretty ladies," and I dismissed it. 

Later, I tracked the impact of the Proclamation and realized that after he couldn't fish in Gloucester, he went to California, where he sold fruit from a vendor's cart. So there was your pretty lady story.

I started piecing things together. The mystery of what my grandfathers did was intriguing to me. How did they make a living when they were banned from the waterfront? And they were banned from travel.

I haven't figured out how my grandfather arrived in California yet, nor how he managed to find work. But he managed, and during that time, my family, including their children, my father, my mother, and the grandmothers, were in Sicily during World War II. So the families were separated, straddling two homelands.

It was really tough to survive. They had been barely surviving on fishermen's salaries, and now couldn't send money over to Sicily. So, it was a personal connection, and exploring just how they survived made me realize their resilience.

Jennie & Lucia in Harbor Cove, Gloucester, MA, 1937. The fishing boat was requisitioned during World War II.
Photograph by John C. Adams. Courtesy of the Cape Ann Museum Library & Archives, Gloucester, MA.

Describe the project.

This will be a three-part series. I have just completed part two, and we'll be working on part three. The work involves interviewing family members who have recollections of family stories of World War II in Gloucester, researching archives, and collecting photographs.

I hope to illuminate the impact of the Enemy Aliens Act on the families of fishermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and in Terrasini, Sicily. Today, I'm interviewing the grandchildren, who share their memories of their grandparents. Time is of the essence because there aren't many of those people left. I'm delving deeply into these family histories.

What am I trying to illuminate? One, it's very timely today. There are lessons to be learned when we apply these types of restrictions, if you will, on a selected group of people. Today, the words "Enemy Alien" have been resurrected in our administration as part of our national immigrant policy. Debates continue on due process and what constitutes a national risk.

During World War II, it is arguable whether there was due process or a registration process, but it was certainly a trying time. People were certainly interned, isolated, prosecuted, and unfairly restricted.

There was also loyalty and allegiance. Some of these immigrant families had children fighting in the service. So I'm also trying to shed light on what it was like for a mother who had one son labeled as an enemy alien, and another was serving the country. What conflicts did this cause among families? In essence, I want to capture the stories of conflict, loyalty, and allegiance in this relatively undiscovered history.

What challenges have you faced?

The challenge is really finding people who have recollections. And I feel an urgency to this work because I'm relying primarily on grandchildren. I actually do have two fishermen that I'm talking to who were closer to the source. Finding people who have experienced this period is the biggest challenge, along with navigating archives and records.

Through the U.S. Navy administration, I'm attempting to locate the list of all the boats that were requisitioned, their retrofitted details, and the dates and methods of their return. So that's a challenge. I have tracked down several boats, and their owners are featured in the stories.

In many ways, the vessels become characters. In families of fishermen, the boat is a loved family member.

I'm also investigating what happened in the harbors. We had U-boats in the harbor, and I just learned from family members that U-boats destroyed two fishing boats in Gloucester. 

Have you encountered any surprises or particularly moving discoveries?

I was surprised and relieved to learn that the U-boats that destroyed the two Gloucester fishing boats out at sea allowed the men to get on dories. 

Perhaps, the U-boat captains believed they had issued a death sentence, underestimating the strength of these men. They were out at fishing grounds, and their livelihood was destroyed. And then they were at the mercy of the sea in a dory, where they rowed to safety all the way to Maine. The men rowed for 36 hours in an attempt to survive and find shelter.  

I'm thinking, "Look at the resilience and the courage of some of these people." I found that to be truly moving.

I am reading excerpts from newspapers about the role of women. They supported the war through fundraisers, purchasing Navy bonds, and forming societies for peace. These stories genuinely touch me. 

What has been the response thus far?

The first response was, "Oh my goodness, Alien Enemies Act. That's exactly what is happening today."

When I wrote the first series, the Enemy Alien Act was not in our vocabulary. Then, the news brings out instances of searches, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants. We begin learning about this Act, which had previously been used by presidents only in times of war. For this series, I don't intend to enter into the political arena, but I felt it necessary to acknowledge the Act for our readers.

I have particularly enjoyed readers sending me photographs of fishing boats, family members, wedding photographs, and more!  It felt as if they were going through their family archives, saying, "Oh, this was my grandmother and grandfather during the war. And here they lived in the fort, and here they were restricted." They were delving back into their own family histories and archives, sharing little snippets. I loved all of this. 

I think it's awakened people. We're trying to say, "Listen, this is important history. We're trying to let you know what your stories are; send us pictures, etc."

There has been a positive response. It's been just gratifying for me to hear people come forward. That's been great.

Looking back, I'm more in awe of my family and all the immigrants who came to this country as I explore this history, and this is just another piece that builds on it. It is an incredible story of resilience, isn't it?

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Known for its now-defunct sardine canneries that inspired John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, Monterey, California, has a rich history as a fishing community. Communities have fished the area for thousands of years, with contributions spanning from indigenous communities to Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Italian (primarily Sicilian) fishermen. The latter of whom are celebrated by the Italian Heritage Society of the Monterey Peninsula.

Founded in 1975 and currently led by President AnnaMarie Della Sala Stanton, the organization aims to honor and preserve the stories, traditions, and culture of Italian families who immigrated to the Monterey Peninsula and Central Coast of California more than a century ago.

The Italian Heritage Society has published three books celebrating local Italian American history, culture, and community contributions: Italian Fishing Families of Monterey, Italian Fishing Families of Monterey (second edition), and Italian Americans—We Don't Just Fish! 

Since 2002, the organization has recognized notable individuals connected to Monterey's Italian Community at its annual Honoree Dinner fundraiser. In the past four years, the group has awarded $25,000 in scholarships.
 

Recognizing the city's deep connection with the Sicilian community of Isola delle Femmine, from which many early Italian Monterey residents emigrated, Italian Heritage Society members Gasper Cardinale, Peter Coniglio, Peter Davi, and Sal Ferrante were instrumental in establishing a sister-city relationship between the two locales in 2017.

In December 2023, the organization launched a joint effort with the Monterey History and Art Association to present a display titled "Bounty of the Sea" at the city's Stanton Center. The exhibit presents stories, photographs, and fishing paraphernalia gathered from various groups that have fished in Monterey Bay throughout its history. 

I had a chance to speak with Mike Ventimiglia, the organization's vice president and webmaster, who shared more about Monterey's past and Italian contributions.

How and why did the organization start?

The idea behind it was, and still is today, to preserve the local history of the fishing industry in Monterey. We have written three books about the history, capturing the fishing industry and the people who fished in the fishing industry; we went beyond that with the last book we published, We Just Don't Fish! It's taking the people whose parents had ties to the fishing industry that, as the fishing industry became depleted, had ventured off into different professional organizations that still help the Italian community, the largest community in Monterey then.

The Italians realized they had to get involved in the community if they were to make changes. They felt it was very important to get involved with politics and change the course, which they did and changed for the better.

The Italian community's predominance in Monterey went from the early 1900s to probably the 1960s and early 1970s. And then it started changing. Different people got elected to office. The Italians weren't on the city council, so it just started diminishing. We don't want to lose the history behind what the Italian community did for the city of Monterey.

The Italian Heritage Society at the three-day Monterey Fisherman's Festival.

Tell us about Monterey's connection to Isola delle Femmine.

My great-grandfather came from there, and then they left because of the hardships there at that point in time. While doing my genealogy, I realized I had six uncles who came here, and I found out more about them. But I also had two aunts back there who never came. Their father migrated to Martinez, where other Sicilians came at that time. They used to fish the Martinez Straits in the Sacramento River, and many of them came into what they called Black Diamond (Pittsburg, California, today) at New York Landing.

Before the Sicilians, the only people who really fished in Monterey were the Chinese and the Japanese. They mostly did shellfish, and salmon was a big thing then. But salmon gave way to learning about fishing for sardines. 

In about 1905, they started fishing sardines in Monterey. Frank E. Booth was the main cannery owner at the time, and he called on a man named Pietro Ferrante for his expertise in fishing. Pietro realized they were using the wrong fishing nets. They weren't using a lampara net, which is a close-fitted net. And so he recommended and brought forth what was a really small net compared to the gill net they were using. And they started getting more of an abundance of fish. Booth transitioned from doing salmon to canning sardines, which started the escalation of "How do we get more people here?"

So, Pietro Ferrante called his friends in Martinez and Pittsburg and told them they needed fishing in Monterey. People in that area were used to fishing off the coast of Africa.

Word got out that there was an abundance in Monterey, and people started migrating here. They'd send notes back to their family members and friends in Sicily. And they started migrating because they had an opportunity here.
 

They felt quite at home when they came to Monterey because it reminded them of their old country. It just continued to prosper and went through generations of different types of boats they used and canneries.

Reading the history of women working at the canneries in Carol Lynn McKibben's Beyond Cannery Row, Sicilian Women Immigration, and Community in Monterey 1915-1999 was quite an eye-opener for me. Many of my aunts worked on that, and she interviewed many of them, allowing me to see some things that I never knew about.

Women were the backbone of the Italian fishing industry because they were the ones running the households while the men were out fishing. They were the ones that basically, in the future years, were making investments in property as canneries closed and the fish industry started depleting. So they were not only doing the canning but also taking care of the household because the husbands were gone all the time.
 

How can the community get involved?

We're always looking for members and community support. We get a lot of that during our fundraisers and when the community comes out to honor the four individuals we nominate to attend the annual dinner.

The support of the Italian community has fallen to a certain degree. We used to have a lot of community involvement when we were involved with the city and its politics, including the mayors and city council members, as well as many individuals serving on various city boards. That has given way to the modernization and the different needs of people in various sectors living here on the peninsula.

There are people who can't afford to live here, but they want to. So the direction has gone towards other things, like the tourist industry. Monterey's tourism is one of the biggest fundraisers they have. And then the events that have come into play here. A lot of city direction is geared towards that, but we always look for their support. 

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While researching my first novel, The Last Letter from Sicily, I stumbled on the book Una Storia Segreta by Lawrence DiStasi, from which I learned about government restrictions and actions during World War II that targeted some 600,000 Italians, so-called enemy aliens who were not yet American citizens. Many were placed under curfew, and some were banned from their workplaces. But what I found most jarring was the fact that about 10,000 Italian people were evacuated from their homes in California alone, and hundreds of Italian men were rounded up nationwide and placed in internment camps.

Those stark statistics inspired my second novel, Beneath the Sicilian Stars. I fell down a research rabbit hole, where I discovered the documentary film Potentially Dangerous, produced by Noah Readhead, Zach Baliva, and Naomi Baliva, which sheds light on this hidden history through interviews with historians and individuals with families directly affected by evacuation and internment experiences. 

I spoke with Zach, who also served as the director, about the film. He shared how the documentary started with an entry to the Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum, an annual fellowship opportunity sponsored by The Italian Sons and Daughters of America, AGBO, and The National Italian American Foundation, which supports projects that tell original Italian American stories. 

The film would win the 2021 award, among other prizes and distinctions. And actor John Turturro signed on as executive producer. You can catch Potentially Dangerous on PBS. (Check your local listings for PBS member stations.) It's also available on DVD and streaming. 

What inspired the making of Potentially Dangerous?

I learned about the Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum shortly before the deadline in 2020. I wanted to enter something because I've worked mainly in narrative filmmaking, but I've also worked as a journalist and a freelance writer. So, documentary is kind of a natural space for that combination. The problem was I didn't have a topic, and the deadline for the film forum was approaching. I thought, "I'll fill out an application, and through the process, I'll get to know the people involved. They'll reject my application this year, but next year, I'll be prepared."

I needed a story, so I Googled "unknown Italian American story" or something. When you do that, the first search results are Larry DiStasi's work on this topic because one of his books (Una Storia Segreta) translates to an unknown story or a secret history.

I went through dual citizenship, and my family is Italian American. I had never heard of any of this before. And so, really quickly, I got interested in it. 

Oftentimes, you find a story, and it's already been done, or there's already a novel, or there's already a documentary, or whatever. So, usually, when I contact people, they're like, "Oh, somebody tried to do this already, and it didn't work." And with this, it was the opposite.

When I contacted Larry, he said, "This has been my life's work, and I would kill for somebody to make a documentary about this. Please do; I'll turn over all my research and connect you with all the people."

I would have had nothing if Larry had not been involved or receptive or hadn't primed the pump by doing all his research. But I just contacted him at the right time. And so he was very, very receptive. 

As I was going through the research with him, I started to realize this was something I had to be involved in. And primarily when I realized that there were people detained and held within Ellis Island, that was kind of the clincher for me because I remember going to New York as a young child, and you hear, "This is where our family came through." And just to realize that not many years later, these same people who saw this as a beacon of hope and freedom were held against their will in the same facility, to me was just this fascinating juxtaposition.

As I started doing more work, people were super receptive to being involved, and it took on a life of its own. We ended up winning the Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum and got funded.

It was just being in the right place at the right time. And lots of credit to Larry, who is really the champion of this cause. And if it wasn't for him doing a lot of the work over the years… He put people in a position where they were more receptive to speaking to me.

I know that when he first started interviewing people, many didn't want to participate. And so 15 years later, when I came along, they were like, "Alright, we've started to tell this story, and now we want to see how far we can take it."

Zach interviewed several individuals about their family's experiences during World War II.

How did you approach the sensitivities of the story?

Larry had done a lot of hard work on that, but it was a weird combination of dynamics. I had to move quickly because we had a deadline. And if you didn't hit that deadline, which was five months during COVID with an $8,000 grant, you had to pay that money back. So I was moving very quickly, but one of the most important things to do was to build trust and get to know these people, so they want to tell you these very traumatic things that happened to them 80 years ago. You can't just fly in there and say, "Alright, the camera's on. Talk."

There was one very elderly woman whom I spoke to first. She was, I think, in her upper nineties, and she's the only person who refused to participate. She said she didn't want to appear on camera because she was insecure about her appearance. That was a little bit of an excuse. She had this really compelling story. I think she lived in a house near Pittsburg, California, with all these other people and was the one to help teach them English.

I worked with her two or three different times to try to convince her, saying, "We won't even put you on camera; it'll just be audio-only for research purposes." She was the only person who wouldn't do it, and it was very discouraging because she was the first person I approached, and I feared her reaction might be a sign of what was to come. 

For everyone else, it was just moving as slowly as we could to make sure they were comfortable. And then it was also word of mouth. That helped because when I contacted people, I would say, "So-and-so sent me to you," or "Your cousin told me that you had an amazing story, and it would be sad if we missed it." 

A lot of the work that I do as a journalist is interview-based, so I've done, in my freelance career, two or three thousand interview-based articles. You develop this natural ability to sit with people and learn how to make them feel comfortable and how to elicit the best responses. I didn't just set up the camera and right away say, "So what was it like when your father was ripped from your home?"

A lot of these people are elderly and have kids and grandkids who are a little protective of them, so there were some small hurdles, but overall, most people really wanted to get the story out there, especially because they realized—not to be morbid—this is their last chance. 

Still from Potentially Dangerous, dramatizing an FBI raid of an Italian family's home.

Why do you think this aspect of history has remained hidden?

I think part of it is that they were so ashamed, but also afraid of speaking out. We featured Tony Rosati from the other Pittsburgh, whose father was detained twice. He shared that his mother was paranoid for the rest of her life. For decades later, every time the phone rang, she would worry about who was on the other end, like, "Are they listening to our conversations? Can I trust law enforcement?" 

When you think of all those dynamics, you realize these are the reasons why this story hasn't been told. These people are so reluctant to tell their stories because they're worried about what might happen to them and that something like this could happen again.

Your executive producer is John Turturro. How did that come to be?

My main goal with the project after it was done was to just get it to the widest possible audience. In the world of film, especially today when it comes to distribution, it's sort of like a used car salesman or loan shark world where everybody wants a piece of the money, and everybody gets it except for the person who creates the content. So you get all these offers from people. But unless you are a really big name, usually what happens is you get a very little amount of money. They put it on the shelf, and it'll be available for five bucks on iTunes or whatever, but nobody's really going to rent it because there's no marketing or whatever.

The trade-off for me was that if we could get it to public television, there might still be little money involved, but millions of people would see it. That quickly became the goal, and then I realized I would have a greater chance of reaching that goal if somebody like John was involved. 

John comes from a military family. His family is from the parts of Italy from which several of the story's families came. And I had seen that he had worked with some notable Italian directors, and I just felt like, "OK. Out of all the people I could approach, he has to be at the top of the list." And he was super receptive. He said, "I'm really busy, but anything I can do, even if it's just lending my name to this project, anything I can do to help, I would love to."

Without him, I don't think we would've gotten to PBS, for example. He really helped us open those doors.

What other projects do you have in the pipeline?

Funding is always the wild card, and it's heartbreaking to me because, even within the Italian community, there are many causes and initiatives that these organizations already support. They all want to screen Potentially Dangerous, but there's no money to fund another project.

I was working on one for a while that ended up going away. It was going to be called The Last Goldbeater in Venice. I found this guy who's like 75 years old, and he's literally the last artisan in Europe who makes gold foil and gold leaf by hand.

Every day of his life for the last 50 years, he's gone into this closet-sized studio and beat a bar of gold—I forget the exact number—like 30,000 times with a 13-pound hammer to make one leaf of gold foil. They use this on the most important monuments in the world, and if they use machine-made materials, it's not the same as all this stuff. 

So the story was that if he doesn't find an apprentice by the time he retires, this very important cultural art form will go extinct, like mask-making, glass blowing, lace, and other Italian traditions. It mirrors the plight of the city of Venice, which is over-tourism and climate change. 

We had a major hospitality brand on board to fund half of the budget, and then, at the last minute, they withdrew their support because they had other priorities for their marketing dollars in 2024. I couldn't ever replace them. Then the guy retired, and the story went away. In the documentary space, this happens a lot.

Now, I have another story. I found a group of West African refugees who have all fled terrorism and war and ended up in Italy, and they've formed a soccer team to sort of assimilate and give them hope and purpose as they rebuild their lives in this new country.

The cool part about it is that the Italian government sponsors them as an anti-racism movement. They placed them in the lowest tier of the official Italian soccer league, and against all odds (as this underdog story), they won the Cup in their first year and moved up from the ninth to the eighth level of the Italian soccer league.

One of their players signed a contract with a Serie-A team and scored a game-winning goal in his first game, and it kind of put them on the map. And so now, a lot of Italians know that this team exists. 

Unless we find a sports brand, team, or somebody to co-fund this with us and produce it, then I'm afraid the same thing will happen. But that's the project now: to figure out if there's a way to fund this story before it also goes away. 

There are lots of stories to tell, but limited time, resources, and money to do it. And for me, it's heartbreaking when a story that one really believes in just vanishes because of money.

Hundreds of Italian "enemy aliens" were imprisoned in internment camps across the nation.

How do you hope Potentially Dangerous will contribute to a greater understanding of Italian American history?

It's something I think about a lot, and not everyone agrees with me. I really do believe that because these events happened, they stopped publishing Italian-language newspapers in some places, and people started hiding that part of their personalities and that part of their identities. And that sort of contributed to my own experience in the Midwest of how my family is like, "OK. We're Italian, we're Italian American." But it doesn't really mean a whole lot to us, unfortunately. And these events had a big role to play in that. My argument is that because of what happened, we've been left with this caricature of what it means to be an Italian or an Italian American.

We have the mafia stereotype, and we have this very shallow understanding of the Italian American expression in the United States. My argument is that if this hadn't happened, there would be a more robust and deep expression of Italian Americanism because they wouldn't have had to hide certain parts of their culture to be accepted. Therefore, that expression would've been fuller and more complete for generations. And now you have all these organizations like the Italian American Future Leaders of America, and people of my age and younger who are trying to recapture that. But these events really played a part in that. 

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December 7 is a date which will live in infamy. It was the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, but that night, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also began arresting "potentially dangerous" Japanese, Germans, and Italians. And they did so before the United States was officially at war.

This response was far from last-minute. Since 1939, the FBI had been compiling lists of suspicious and allegedly subversive persons they decided required surveillance and, in the event of war, internment. Among the hundreds targeted and later interned were journalists, Italian Consulate employees, and veterans of World War I (when Italy and America were allies). Opera star Ezio Pinzo was arrested for allegedly altering his singing tempo to send coded messages to Benito Mussolini.

Internees were sent to military camps in states including Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Maryland, and Texas, where many spent years imprisoned. How could the government do this? Title 50 of the U.S. Code, based on the 1798 Alien & Sedition Acts, gave them the power to detain "enemy aliens" in emergencies.

The government effectively declared war on much of its immigrant population, imposing restrictions on about 600,000 Italian residents without U.S. citizenship who, on Dec. 8, had been designated enemy aliens by presidential proclamation. These "enemy aliens" were required to re-register as such; FBI agents raided homes and confiscated weapons, radios, cameras, and even flashlights. Non-citizens on the West Coast were placed under a strict curfew, required to carry "alien enemy" ID booklets, and told they would need a permit to travel more than five miles. Those who did not comply were subject to arrest and detention.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the military to designate areas of vulnerability and relocate individuals deemed a threat to national security. More than 120,000 Japanese people, including American citizens, were forcibly displaced. What's lesser-known: By the month's end, the government ordered the evacuation of at least 10,000 Italian Americans from their homes in California alone. People had just days to relocate. 

Why isn't this in most history books? The question bothered San Francisco Bay Area historian and author Lawrence DiStasi, whose father came to the U.S. from Italy. He began digging through records and archives, collecting testimonials, and eventually created a traveling exhibition called Una Storia Segreta, Italian for secret story and hidden history.

His efforts and compiled testimonies induced President Bill Clinton to pass the "Wartime Violations of Italian American Civil Liberties Act," which was signed into Public Law 106-451 in November 2000. While no reparations were distributed, the act acknowledged injustices suffered by Italian Americans during the war.

DiStasi compiled a collection of essays and accounts about Italian wartime restrictions and internment in Una Storia Segreta in 2001. He wrote a deeper analysis in Branded: How Italian Immigrants Became 'Enemies,' published in 2016.

I discovered these works in June 2020 while researching my World War II-era historical novels. Later, I encountered the original Una Storia Segreta exhibit at the Pittsburg Historical Museum in Pittsburg, California, where the federal government evacuated about a third of the population in 1942. The website, unastoriasegreta.com, reproduces the exhibit.

I was delighted to have the chance to speak with DeStasi about his important work and its legacy.

Share the story behind Una Storia Segreta with us.

I had never heard a thing about these events when I was growing up in Connecticut. When I came to California in the late 1960s, I started to hear about this real turmoil in the Italian American community, specifically in San Francisco and Pittsburg, up on the Delta. I thought this was really an important story, but everybody said no one would talk about it because they were embarrassed and ashamed. There was also animosity in the community because some people had informed on others.

Eventually, we in the American-Italian Historical Association's Western Chapter decided to hold a conference in 1993 at the University of San Francisco. And it was a sensation. Somebody at that conference said, "Why not do an exhibit?"

We had never done an exhibit before, but four of us decided that we could, in fact, do this. So, with Rose Scherini as our chief researcher, and I as the project director, and with Adele Negro then president of the AIHA Western Chapter, and a designer we found named Elahe Shahideh, who had done a previous exhibit at the Museo Americano in San Francisco, we set out to make it happen. We had panels nailed to the wall, and we managed to gather some artifacts. A friend of ours, an Italian teacher, suggested the title Una Storia Segreta, which means both "a secret story" and "a secret history."

Opening night was an absolute smash sensation. People from all over the Bay Area wept in front of the panels. We got more publicity for that than any other effort we had ever made. It was featured on the front page of the Style section of the San Francisco Chronicle.

That started us off, and Bill Cerruti from Sacramento, with the help of Connie Ilacqua Foran, whose father had been interned and whose husband was a senator, got approval for the exhibit to come to the Capitol in Sacramento, and that was huge. The governor signed a proclamation. We had a banner in front of the Capitol that said "Italian American Exhibit." Bill spent about seven thousand dollars to make our panels, which were displayed around the rotunda of the Capitol.

It was a beautiful exhibit, and that gave us more publicity. We started getting requests from all over California from Italian-American organizations who wanted to host the exhibit. When it went down to Monterey, where many fishermen were affected, our friend Hugo Bianchini, an architect, decided to make frames for each panel. We got the exhibit framed and put it in two traveling crates.

Hugo said, "This exhibit will be traveling for five years." We thought he was crazy. It turns out that Una Storia Segreta ended up traveling for more than twenty years.

Una Storia Segreta panels on display at the Rayburn House Office Building

How did the exhibit inspire the passage of legislation?

People would request that I come with the exhibit to give a talk, so I went all around the country. We had it at several state houses as well, all without soliciting any organizations. It just traveled by word of mouth.

The highlight was when we displayed it in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. John Calvelli, the chief of staff to Elliot Engel at that time, saw the exhibit in the Rayburn and said, "We can pass legislation about this." So, he took the lead in getting the legislation drawn up and got us Judiciary Committee hearings, at which I and several community leaders spoke. We managed to get Ezio Pinza's wife to come and testify at our hearings. She gave a very moving testimony. We also persuaded baseball great Dom DiMaggio to testify.

We also had several people from the Bay Area testify in Washington, D.C. Afterward, John Calvelli said, "We hit a home run. We're going to get this legislation passed."

After two tries, the Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act was passed and signed into law by President Clinton in 2000. That was a real success.

Attending Judiciary Committee hearings in Washington, D.C.

Was your own Italian family affected by these wartime events?

I would go around the country saying, "Can you imagine there are people whose own families were affected and didn't even know about it?"

Well, I turned out to be one of those people. Because my father and my uncle were both classified "enemy aliens" during the war, and nobody ever talked about it until our exhibit went back east.

My sister asked my cousin, "Did you know about any of this? Can you imagine?" And my cousin Rosemary said, "Well, yes, my father was an 'enemy alien.' They came and took our radio."

Then my daughter was looking into Italian citizenship, and I asked a friend in Washington if she could send me my father's records. That's when I learned that my father was actually an "enemy alien" himself. He never said a word about it. We have none of his papers or anything like that, but that was the story. That just knocked me off my feet; I couldn't believe that that was the case, but that was why we called it Una Storia Segreta. Secret story, secret history.

A young Costanza Ilacqua Foran stands between her parents.

Which stories featured in Una Storia Segreta and Branded stand out most?

Connie Ilacqua Foran's father in San Francisco was interned. They interned him because he worked with the Italian Consulate a little bit.

Rose Scudero became one of our star informants because her family was evacuated and had to move out of Pittsburg. Her father could stay, but she left Pittsburg with her mother. When the restrictions were lifted, she said she was a little bit like Paul Revere, running back to Pittsburg through the streets, shouting, "You can go home now; you can go home now!" That was really moving. 

 
Notice to evacuate from U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle

What message or lesson do you hope to share with your work?

During wartime, anything can be justified. You never know what the powers that be can make the case for.

I just want readers to know that this happened despite all the denials and attempts to hide it. History is never quite complete, and you can always find out something new.

I'm very proud of the work we did. We put this thing on the map, and it'll never again be forgotten or hidden because over 600,000 Italian Americans were affected by this one event. It's one of the biggest things that's ever happened in the Italian American community.

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Frank Bruno grew up in Pittsburg, California, hearing his grandmother's memories of Isola delle Femmine, a fishing village outside Palermo, Sicily. But he knew very little about the place and didn't think much about it. That was until 1992, when his friend, Vince DiMaggio, shared that he'd returned from his godparents' wedding vow renewal in the same town. Vince had spoken with Isola delle Femmine's then-Mayor Vincenzo DiMaggio about possibly having a Sister City relationship with Pittsburg.

Frank and Vince weren't alone in their ties to Isola delle Femmine; most of Pittsburg's Italian American population shared that connection. As President of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, Frank was in a good position to take action. He asked Pittsburg's mayor, who agreed to the proposal, and then he reached out to officials in Sicily.

When Isola delle Femmine's mayor came to Pittsburg, he saw its iconic fisherman statue, sculpted by local artist Frank Vitale, whose grandparents came from Isola delle Femmine. He wanted one for his town, so Pittsburg community members raised funds to make it happen.

The sculptor still had the mold he used to build a replica that the Americans sent to Sicily. Today, you can find that statue at Isola delle Femmine's Piazza di Pittsburg, named for the town's original sister city.

That would have been the end of the story: a lasting connection made in honor of shared heritage. Frank moved to Novato, California, in 1997 and lost track of many of the people who were involved until 2017, the 25th anniversary of the Isola delle Femmine-Pittsburg delegation's first visit.

Frank and Vince returned to the fold, and a group from Isola delle Femmine joined the community for a reception. Two years later, Frank, Vince, and Vice President Mary Coniglio co-founded Friends of Isola delle Femmine with a mission statement to preserve, protect, and promote Sicilian-American heritage within Isola delle Femmine's California sister cities, which today number three after the 2017 and 2019 respective additions of Monterey and Martinez.

Frank, who serves as Friends of Isola delle Femmine's President, shared more about how and why Isolani emigrated to the U.S. and first landed in Pittsburg. We also discussed the organization's events, outreach, and evolution, as well as its challenges for the future.

Friends of Isola delle Femmine 1994 trip - Sal Caccaroni, John Buffo, Vince DiMaggio, Sculptor Frank Vitale, Frank Bruno, Mary Coniglio, Rocco Battaglia, and Vince Coniglio

How and why did Isola delle Femmine residents find their way to Pittsburg?

Back in the 1860s, when Garibaldi unified Italy, it did little to help the people in Sicily. They were still starving, and there was no work. One story was that they were so hungry they resorted to eating wheat plaster from the walls.

In 1862, two brothers from Isola delle Femmine with the last name Aiello came to New Orleans, where a big influx of Sicilians lived in the French Quarter.

They were trying to make a living fishing and cooking. After a Yellow Fever outbreak, they left Louisiana for Oregon, where they fished for salmon before seeing an advertisement from California. The state was looking for fishermen to come and help fish the delta to feed the people who came in for the Gold Rush. So the Aiellos got on a train and ended up in what is now called Pittsburg, California, on the Sacramento River. They started fishing and called for their family, saying, "Here in Pittsburg, the weather is like home. The fishing is abundant, and we're making money."

A lot of people started to come, and many of them worked and stayed here. Then, a lot of them went back home. Pittsburg was the fishing area, but there was seasonal fishing. So when the seasonal fishing went to the wayside, they went to Martinez and Monterey, and many of them stayed there while others went back to Pittsburg. So that was the influx, which is why we have three Sister Cities with Isola in our organization.

Describe your cultural exchange and promotion efforts.

Back in 1994, we started a student exchange program. We only did it twice. We sent high schoolers back there, and they went to school. Isola delle Feminine sent college students here, which became a vacation for them. And I said that's not what we really wanted to do as a student exchange program.

My idea, and we're trying to start this now, is to have something similar to what I'm involved in with the Rotary Club: a group study exchange. There would be dentists or any occupation that is here that wants to go. We would supplement, coordinate their stay over there, and have a little bit of money to help them there. But they would pay for their trip. They would go over to Isola and the Palermo area and vice versa.

We can do it with contractors, dentists, doctors, and many professional business people who would come back and forth. As for the cultural heritage stuff, we're working on doing what I call an ancestral fair, having an area where folk music and heritage stuff are going on, and then having booths. 

How have you connected with younger generations?

We're giving scholarships to our members' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are going to college. We give out six; two years ago, we gave out 10. They would have to qualify normally by having a grade point average acceptable for college and writing a statement about what it was like growing up Italian. Then we have a picnic and give out our scholarships.

One of our roadblocks is passing on our cultural heritage to the younger generations. It's very difficult. They're proud to be Italian American, but that's where it ends. Now, all of us old-timers look at this as memories. Growing up in Pittsburg was one of the greatest childhoods anybody could have. I mean, it was just full of family everywhere.

We have functions, but not many younger people have come. Instead of trying to decide how to capture the younger generation and have them tell us what they're looking for, we're going to have a discussion and invite a number of our younger members who are 40 or 50 years old to ask them.

If we're going to succeed as a cultural heritage organization, we need to replace these people. I can't do this forever.

Scenes from Friends of Isola delle Femmine picnics

Tell us about your events.

We've had some fundraisers to fund administration, scholarships, and anything else we want to do. We've done pretty well. 

We started with a program back in 2019 called That's Italian. We had some opera singers, and we sang show tunes at a place called the Colombo Club in Oakland. About 565 people could sit down for dinner, and then upstairs, there is a banquet hall, bar, and stage. We had 200 people, and they went downstairs and had a nice Italian dinner. And then they came up, and we had this big show and a live auction.

After the pandemic, when the British Queen passed away, one of our members said, "Why don't we have a High Tea but Italian style?" We had one in Monterey and one in Pittsburg. We're finishing up our third one, which will be the last, and we're going in another direction.

Our summer picnic was designed to be something we used to do as kids and families. Here in Northern California, we have Mount Diablo, where we had Camp Curry and Marsh Creek, and we could swim and play baseball as a family. We wanted to do something similar and said, "Why don't we just give our scholarships out then?"

We are getting about 250 people, and we can showcase what we do and get new members out of that. We have an Italian who lives in Martinez and owns a catering company. He comes and does the pasta and salads, and then we cook sausage. The mayor of Martinez and the city council people come out, and they do the serving. 

What do you ultimately want to share with your community?

There are Italians and Sicilians from Isola here in Pittsburg, California, but not many. They've branched out to the other areas. What I want to accomplish for the community is to bring back our pride and heritage and continue to have that. We all want to remember what our nonnas and nonnos did for us when we were growing up. We're trying to put together a cookbook per se with all these recipes in our newsletter. But we want to do more cultural stuff to remember our grandparents and great-grandparents; hopefully, the next generation will be appreciative.

Frank Bruno with family at the celebration and unveiling of the Fisherman Statue and sister city in 1994

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From a young age, Brooklynite Paige Lipari yearned for a space where she could bring together her passions for food, books, and the arts. As she grew older, she realized she also wanted to share what she loved with her community.

Following a trip to her family's home in Alcamo, Sicily, Paige decided that the space would be a bookstore catering to gourmands by selling Sicilian and Italian specialty goods alongside cookbooks and serving as an event space for foodies and neighbors in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And so began Archestratus Books + Foods in 2015.

I recently sat down with Paige, who shared more about Archestratus's start, her deep connection to Sicily, the challenges and rewards of running a niche business, how she has engaged the community, and more.

Tell us about your connection to Sicily.

I'm Sicilian on both sides. My father was born in Sicily, and my mother is second-generation American. I have a very strong connection with my Sicilian heritage. We go to Sicily every few years and visit my family in Alcamo.

My family has a city house and a country house because it was four hours to Trapani by donkey, but now it's seven minutes. They're in the city house in the winter, and then they go to the country house for the warmer months, where they have vineyards. They grow grapes, and they sell mosto to winemakers. 

I actually didn't go to Sicily until I was 19, which felt very late. And then we started going more and more, but my nonna always brought the Old World Italian. I never really related to this sort of gold chain/ white shirt Italian American—that just wasn't in my family. I grew up with a nonna who always had some wine on the table with some fruit and cheese. We always ate raw fennel after every meal.

She was very much into agriculture and would grow things all year long. The food was unique compared to other Italian American restaurants we visited. And she was my first anchor in that culture.

Archestratus specializes in vintage and new cookbooks.

What inspired you to open Archestratus, and what led to the naming of the bookstore?

When I was really young, I loved books, and there was this closet where I would sit and read by myself. And I was a latchkey kid with two working parents, so I started cooking for myself really early.

I kind of knew in the back of my mind that I wanted a bookstore. I also love design and making spaces feel warm and cozy. And then I love the arts, so the idea of having people perform in this space, doing conversations and talks, and keeping that intellectual stimulation.

It wasn't until I went to Sicily for the first time, when I was 19, and met my family, that I completely broke open this obsession with Sicilian food and, of course, Sicilian cookbooks. I fell in love with them, and it changed my life. 

When I came back, it was kind of my way of connecting with them and also preserving my heritage because my nonna was starting to have dementia. The recipes were all in her head.

When I learned about Sicilian cuisine, my creative juices just flowed so hard in that direction. I could never really put my finger on why it was different or what it was about until I went there.

Sicily's so beautiful and unique, and it's amazing to me that now it's getting its flowers as far as how it is its own place. But 20 years ago, when I started out making this food and getting really passionate about it, nobody knew. No one was talking about how it's influenced by Spain and North Africa, and there are a lot of Middle Eastern flavors, and there's the Couscous Festival and all that stuff.

I was passionate about spreading the word.

Where did the name Archestratus come from?

I read Pomp and Sustenance by Mary Taylor Simeti and read about Archestratus, and I immediately felt a connection with him. He was kind of wild in what he wrote, and he was deeply mysterious; we don't know much about him.

I named the store first, and then all these answers revealed themselves later. He was a poet who was more interested in places and simplicity, enjoying himself and having a good time. Food was all about that and gathering.

Cookbooks are documents of places, times, and people. I'm interested in how food is a way of seeing the world and bringing people together.

How do you select the books for your collection, and do you have any personal favorites?

I go to book sales. I love books where it feels like there's a real voice. I know there's a place for more prescriptive things that fill a niche. I just make sure that they're really of good quality and were done with intention. 

Some of my favorite books are Pomp and Sustenance and Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray.

Patience Gray's husband was a sculptor, and they would travel around the Greek and Italian islands in the Mediterranean, chasing marble for him. So she would spend time in these places. While he was doing the work, she would go out and sniff the windows of the homes, figure out what the women were making, and write about them in a strange, esoteric, funny way.
 

Can you share some highlights of the community spirit at your bookstore?

We started the Archestratus Cookbook Club in 2015, and it has always been successful. We pick a book every month, and then everyone shows up with one portion of a dish. Then we all just have this feast, take a little bit of everything, and try other dishes from the book to see if you want to buy it.

Our bake sales are probably the most incredible. We held a bake sale for the L.A. fires and raised $9,000 in three hours, which was matched by a corporate sponsor. We also held a bake sale for Joe Biden, one for Planned Parenthood, one for Ukraine, and one for Palestine. 

We usually have around 80 bakers, and then it gets people to come. It's such a great model. You spend $20, but then if it's a big sale, that $20 can turn into $200.

What's been your biggest business challenge?

The pandemic was a challenge, but it wasn't my biggest challenge. In a bizarre way, I almost felt like I was ready. I already wanted to expand and had been researching more food vendors.

During the pandemic, we were a bookstore cafe, and I was already starting to think we were outgrowing this space. So, I was already researching vendors for fresh milk and eggs and trying different things. And so I had set up all these connections, and then the pandemic hit, and I was like, well, I could do a grocery pickup.

On March 19, 2020, we did a grocery pickup, which was one of the first weekends. By April, we had one day when we had to pick up for 220 people. They would come up on the street with their order, and then I would fulfill it. So I had this bizarre flow happen with the pandemic, and we were O.K.

My biggest challenge after the pandemic was when we expanded, and then I realized, "I don't like this. I don't want to do this. I don't like having a bigger staff, and I don't like dealing with this landlord."

I thought I would love it, that this was what we needed. But then I realized we needed to be smaller, more flexible, and lighter on our feet.

I did this big thing, saying, "We're doing this." Then, I had to pull back and make that hard decision to contract.

Every decision I make is pretty public, but I was not doing the thing that I know I love. I love making food, and I love cooking, but it was not making me happy anymore at that level. Facing that and just financially getting through that and out of it has been extremely challenging, and I'm still dealing with the effects. 

What are your upcoming plans?

I know that people want recipes, and I want to share them. And so, figuring that out is going to be 2025, and starting to do that. I know there will be a newsletter, so I'm going to start writing one and sharing some of these recipes.

Another more community-driven thing I want to do this year is create a community zine and start making a cookbook with everybody, especially coming out of these bake sales. We have such a network of people who love to develop recipes, cook, and have family recipes. We started doing that before the pandemic, but it never got off the ground. And this is the year I want to make time.

What do you hope people take away from a visit to Archestratus?

I hope that they get inspired to be more of themselves. I hope that they see that we're operating on a frequency of not giving a shit, and I hope that they go off and they do whatever they want to do. 

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With up to 500,000 residents of Italian origin, Toronto has one of the largest Italian populations of any city outside of Italy. Most immigrants came in the years following the second World War, adding to the significant sum who had already settled within the city's three Little Italies. 

As this large influx began to age, community members sought a way to address their changing needs. In 1971, a group of Italian-Canadian Torontans formed the Italian Canadian Benevolent Corporation. Five years later, they opened Villa Colombo Toronto, a long-term care facility for seniors.

Today known as Villa Charities, the organization has expanded its mission to fund, develop, administer, and coordinate health, social, cultural, and educational projects. The group honors both Italian and Italian-Canadian culture, recognizing that the two have evolved in parallel over time. In addition to its Columbus Centre amenities, the organization hosts a wide range of events and activities, including classes for toddlers, book launches, art exhibitions, concerts, and dance programs. 

I spoke with Villa Charities Executive Director of Cultural Programming Giulio Recchioni, who shared more about the organization, its offerings, and its aims. 

What inspired the founding of Villa Charities, and how has its mission evolved over the years?

It was founded by a group of community leaders who put together their willingness to leave a mark in town and have a structure where Italians could gather and be at home away from home. The first structure that was born was Villa Colombo, which is currently a nursing home for seniors.

In the beginning, when the bulk of the migrants were here and aging like everybody else, there was this idea: What do you do once you reach an age when you're not independent anymore? Are you going to be dispersed through the English-speaking nursing homes throughout Ontario? 

They decided to create something that was not there before, a structure that could be the reference point for the entire Italian community here in Toronto. And 50 years later, this is still what we do. Today, the Columbus Centre is the largest Italian cultural center in Canada, and we're still quite well respected within the community. We are still the center of what happens to the Italian-Canadian community.

Villa Charities hosts a Summer Sagra event outside of its Columbus Centre.

What makes Villa Charities unique in what it offers?

Several organizations work with Italian culture in Toronto. Some of them are government-owned. But what really makes us different from everybody else is that we deal not only with Italian culture but also Italian-Canadian culture.

We not only recognize Italian culture but also try to bring modern, contemporary Italian culture to the public's attention while also catering to Italian Canadians and representing their culture and values. It's a culture that crystallized in the fifties and then evolved on its own, far away from the culture of Italy.

Progress in technology allows us to be close to Italian culture nowadays, but up to 30 years ago, what we see today to watch Italian television, take a phone, and speak to our people in Italy was kind of unusual, if not unthinkable or very expensive. So, the Italian-Canadian culture grew and became something different—looking at Italy but from far away.

Members roast speducci at a Summer Solstice event.

Tell us more about your events and activities.

We have a wide range of events, as we have to cater to the biggest number of people possible. We truly have an approach from cradle to rocking chair. We have events for toddlers; we have Italian classes for toddlers where the teacher sings so that the toddlers get used to the Italian language. We have book launches, and we manage an art gallery, so we have art exhibitions. We work with musicians to do concerts. We have a dance school.

We offer quite a wide variety of programs. The Columbus Centre has a gym and swimming pool with a variety of activities typical of a community center.

During summertime, we have large events outside. They're inspired by the idea of the sagra in Italy. So we have chosen in the past an aspect of Italian cuisine. For example, in July, we have what in Canada is called speducci [grilled meat skewers], originally in Abruzzo, they're called arrosticini, so we celebrate those in July. Then, in August, we celebrate Ferragosto with a very large outdoor party.

We make tomato sauce with our seniors in September and distribute it to the public. We also offer a plate of pasta to complement the tomato sauce. Then, in October and November, we have events that speak to the art of wine making. So we press grapes in October together with a local Italian-Canadian winery. And then, in April, we have a little taste of the wine we made ourselves.

We echo some of the most popular Italian holidays and make them our own. For example, we have a Sagra della Castagna in November, when in Italy it's a tradition to have vino novello e castagne [new wine and chestnuts], because that's when you bottle the first wine to see how it is and you get to taste it. We can't quite do the same because Canada's alcohol laws differ from Italy's. But we did keep the part of the castagne. So we cook castagne and distribute them for free to the community during the event.

Food really attracts people more than anything else, so we have these events as a community-building exercise. They're quite fun to attend, so it's a pleasure to keep presenting them and offering them to the community.

Members celebrate the preparation of their own wine.

What do you hope to share with members and the community?

Italian culture in Toronto is quite lively. A wealth of Italian activities and organizations are bubbling up. It's wonderful when people see what's happening and attend.

As a person who organizes events, it's nice when you spend so much time and energy creating something and you see a lot of people recognizing the event coming and having a good time. At the end of the day, Italian culture is all about changing life for the better, and that's what I would invite them to do. Just come out and participate in what's happening in the city. There is a lot of Italian stuff going on. 

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When Southern California native Christina Cavallaro landed in Portland, Oregon, one of the first things she did was seek out an Italian American organization. Remaining rooted to her family's heritage with connections to Adelfia in Bari, Italy, and Cesaro, in the province of Messina, Sicily, was important to her. (That history even inspired two cookbooks.)

She found a group, but when it went defunct, she teamed up with another Italian-American Portlander, Tonya Russo Hamilton, a fellow author, who was in the early stages of laying the groundwork for what would become Italian Portland in 2015.

"We try to present the history and culture of Italians because we know from experience as Italians that traditions are falling apart and food and recipes aren't being passed down from generation to generation," Christina says. "And when people come to our social group, they're hungry for that. They say that's what they miss the most. People share, 'Nonna used to cook this,' and 'We want to learn to do that,' or 'Nobody speaks Italian anymore,' and 'We want to learn the Italian language,' or '"We are interested in traveling to Italy. What suggestions or steps do we take to make this trip a reality?'"

Italian Portland strives to provide solutions for Italian American Portlanders with various events and programs, including monthly social meetings, Italian language classes, a book club, and cultural activities like cooking classes and limoncello tastings. They've helped feed the homeless at a nearby church and partnered with experts to help people navigate dual citizenship and research genealogy. Members have shared their experiences of visiting Italy to provide valuable insights for individuals planning their own trips. That firsthand knowledge and tips can help travelers make the most of their time in Italy. The organization also aims to be inclusive, publishing a monthly newsletter with events from all local Italian organizations. 

Christina shared more about Italian Portland's offerings, upcoming initiatives, youth outreach, and goals.

Italian Portland's limoncello-tasting event
 

What activities and events does Italian Portland host?

We have quite a bit to offer the Italian community and the public. So many people love Italians, the culture, and the food. We even have people who aren't Italian at all who join us!

We have a book club and a monthly social club. We also offer an Italian conversation group and two Italian language classes online and in person. 

We enjoy brainstorming innovative topics and speakers that appeal to the group. For example, the Italian consulate from Portland talked to our social group. We've had cooking classes, and a Portland State professor talked about Americans in Italy during the war. Our programs continue to interest people in the social club and the general public.

The biggest event we have coming up, that we've never done before, is a vendemmia. In Italy, it's the big celebration at the end of the harvest, with dinner in the vineyard. We're going to have tables down the rows of the vines, and we're providing an Italian dinner, Italian Opera singers, and an auction.

We are hosting this event in early August instead of the usual September or October timeframe due to the fact that wineries and vineyards in the area will be busy picking and crushing grapes for wine during those months.

This event is a fundraiser. Its goal is to raise funds through donations and an auction to support the Italian community, including the Portland State Opera and Scuola Italiana di Portland. The talented students from Portland State Opera will perform at the Vendemmia event.

We're excited about this event and hope it all comes together well. 

Tell us more about your book club.

Our book club meetings are held via Zoom to ensure that everyone located close by or far away can participate. The member who recommends the book leads the discussion. After the discussion, we rate the book on a scale of one to five cannoli. The last book received a rating of three and a half cannoli. Our meetings are enjoyable and provide an hour of cultural enrichment.

Guests enjoy "My Big Fat Italian Wedding."

How are you reaching younger generations?

A couple of years ago, we had an event called "My Big Fat Italian Wedding." We put it on just like the movie. We hired a hall and had a lasagna dinner, music, and dancing. At every table, we had little confetti.

We were fortunate to have two generations in attendance at that event. We featured two couples: a young pair embarking on the journey of marriage and a couple celebrating their impressive 45th wedding anniversary.

We taught the young people traditions like the tarantella, dancing all around the parking lot. And they loved it.

Many young individuals are attending our social club to explore various activities and interests. We frequently engage in tombola games, offering opportunities for participants to play Italian bingo and win prizes. Our club strives to incorporate programs that cater to the interests of young and old. By aligning our offerings with their preferences, we aim to attract a larger audience of young individuals.

What are your goals?

When we first embarked on this journey, we faced significant obstacles. We lacked the necessary resources—both financial and human capital. 

Establishing a board of directors and forming a nonprofit organization proved challenging, particularly given our lack of legal expertise. As a result, we enlisted the help of an attorney to guide us through the process.

Despite these challenges, our perseverance paid off. We successfully obtained nonprofit status, allowing us to further our mission and attract support from donors and sponsors. As a result of our efforts, our organization has grown, necessitating a move to a larger meeting space to accommodate our expanding audience.

Through dedication and strategic planning, we have transformed our initial struggles into triumphs, positioning our organization for continued success and impact in the community.

Italian Portland Social Club 

What do you hope to share?

We want to share our love and passion for bringing Italians and people who enjoy Italian culture together while enriching, cultivating, and educating. If someone wanted to start an organization like this somewhere, we would tell them to appeal to the interests of the community. Number one: Don't give up and ask for help. Number two: If you build it, they will come. 

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Chris R. Vaccaro sits in front of a wall of plaques and a display case, where you'll find his nine Murrow awards, two Emmy statues, his high school letter, and a collection of bobbleheads. The Long Island, New York-based media executive, professor, and author is just as proud of his Italian heritage, which includes ties to Palermo and Giuliana, Sicily, and Turin in Northern Italy.

He's found a way to combine his passions for storytelling, sports, and promoting Italian culture in his daily work and community leadership. He founded the Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island and serves as the Executive Trustee of the Italian American Baseball Foundation and U.S. Press Officer for the Federation of Italian Baseball and Softball. He's also the Director of Graduate Journalism at Hofstra University's Lawrence Herbert School of Communication and Vice President/President-Elect of the Society of Professional Journalists. He's doing all that and more as he pursues a doctorate in leadership studies at Louisiana State University. 

Chris took time to share more about his involvement, journey, and what he hopes to contribute to his community.

How and why did you found the Italian Heritage Society of Long Island?

There were these kinds of come-to-Jesus, lightbulb moments, like, "There are a lot of Italian organizations out there. Not all of them are working together."

Many of them are not focused on regional advocacy. Long Island is big—118 miles long and 26 miles wide, with millions of people. If it were a state, it would be the 12th biggest state in terms of population. So a lot is going on here, including one of the most heavily dense populations of Italian-Americans. I never felt that any single organization was rallying from a regional perspective.

I'm already very involved with the Italian-American Baseball Foundation and write for the National Italian American Foundation as their sports columnist. I felt inspired to create a regionally focused organization while respecting the Sons of Italy, the Knights of Columbus, and the lodges and smaller chapters that exist through other organizations.

I don't want to be some outsider coming in and working my way up the ladder. I don't need to do that at this point in my life and career. I'm already established. I am a leader. I have a vision. I know how to form nonprofits. I know how to advocate, educate, and build community. So I said, "Let me do it with my own organization."

That process started in 2023 and came to fruition in 2024 with some partnership agreements and the first inaugural Italian celebration. Now, we have so much more planned for this year and beyond. So it's been a lot of fun and a privilege to do it on behalf of our ancestors and millions of Italian Americans on Long Island.

Share some of the Italian Heritage Society of Long Island activities with us.

The biggest thing we've done is build the organization through partnerships—partnering with the Long Island Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Italian and the Center for Italian Studies at Stony Brook University. Those are very important strategic steps to let people know we exist, do it with people in education and advocacy, and promote their language, heritage, and culture. That was a big part of 2024.

I immensely respect teachers. I have been a professor for many years at Hofstra. I've worked very closely with many school districts and school systems from a communications perspective. I felt that if I could connect with the teachers who teach about culture, heritage, and language, that would be a really important step. So, we did that from both the public school and higher education perspectives.

We hosted our first big Long Island Italian Celebration, where hundreds of people came out and had some incredible honorees. We celebrated who we are as a heritage group. We did it in October for Italian Heritage Month. We also hosted a bocce get-together last year from a fun social perspective. And I organized Italian Heritage Night with the New York Islanders.

This year, we're looking at specific social outings to bring together different businesses and partnerships. We're looking at doing the second annual Italian Celebration again in October.

We're looking at having events at a local vineyard, specifically with the American Association of Teachers of Italian. I hope to launch or form a bocce tournament for a Long Island championship this year.

Regionally speaking, we want to be the connective tissue of all Long Island groups here. I want people to come to us to see what else is going on everywhere. This year, we will launch a directory and database where you can find all of that. We're in the process of putting it all together. And believe it or not, a lot of stuff goes on, including data mining, calendar mining, and relationship management, to help make that happen.

You also co-host the Renaissance Minds podcast. Tell us about that.

The idea came from Silvia Davi, an Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island executive board member and somebody I admire greatly. She is a woman who cares deeply about her heritage and her family. We have so many ideals and values that align.

She reached out on LinkedIn about 18 months ago with similar thoughts and wanted to get involved. And I said, first of all, "We'd love to have you on board." Shortly after, she told me about the Renaissance Minds blog she has kept for many years and uses as a cross-pollinator of content. I said, "Hey, we should turn that into something with a podcast." She had the idea as well.

And I said, "I am a professor at Hofstra. I think I can get us on 88.7 FM, and we can probably film it and record it in a studio there."

It didn't take long for that to come to life. So now we have half a dozen episodes out there and another half a dozen or so in the can that will be published over the coming weeks and months.

It's a wonderful platform to educate people about Italian heritage and culture, but through complex thinkers and doers who have done things differently than others in the world—business people, doctors, lawyers, professors, writers, media folks, and entrepreneurs. We don't have one specific type of person. The person we speak to is Italian or Italian American. They're passionate. They're doing something unique and something that, again, we could educate our audience on.

It's been a lot of fun. Every time we have one of these conversations, we learn something, and then we know they're good people we'd like to tie to our brand. And Renaissance Minds is sponsored and underwritten by the Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island.

IABF at Fenway Italian Night

Share more about the Italian American Baseball Foundation, for which you serve as Executive Trustee.

IABF was founded by Joseph Quagliano and Carmine Gangone, friends of mine who have worked hard to make their vision come true. Five years ago, they brought me into that vision. Since then, I've helped them grow it, telling the story, managing the marketing and communications, creating many relationships, building Italian Heritage games across the country, and amplifying what we do with our annual gala.

It's a lot of fun because we love being Italian, obviously, but we also love baseball. Many people in Italy feel the same way, and we're trying to amplify their message and their need for resources. The ability to bring those Italians to America to play is really special. We partnered with Francisco Cervelli and the folks in Grosseto, Italy, to launch the Francisco Cervelli-Italian American Baseball Foundation Academy. We do camps and clinics, ensuring the youth hear from incredible coaches and have a beautiful experience. We're getting just as much out of it as they are because it's a profound moment for us to be able to stand on a baseball field in Italy. The history is such that American servicemen brought the game to Italy during World War II. They played it there when they had time, and after the war, the game has stayed, and the memory of those servicemen lives on because baseball is America's pastime.

So there's a really fun full circle. Every time we're there, we see the history and how we're building for a brighter future that impacts Italian kids, which is what it's all about. Could our ancestors have ever imagined we would be traveling back to their native land to teach and coach and build relationships? They could have never imagined that. I can't even put into words how special it is when we're there on that soil. And we do that because of all the work we put in for fundraising, the events we host, and the relationships we've created here in America. 

Describe your role as the U.S. press officer for the Federation of Italian Baseball and Softball.

That came about because of my work and dedication to the Italian American Baseball Foundation. We've formed these relationships over the last several years, and based on my knowledge of the game, my connections in media and sports in America, and my pure love and devotion to all things Italian baseball, they tapped me to work with their press office.

A lot of work involves translating their Italian stories into English versions and posting them on social media, primarily through IABF. We're all connected in many ways, informing America about what's going on in Italy, whether I'm writing about it or posting about it on social media.

The role will be amplified, especially during 2026, when the World Baseball Classic happens and Team Italy comes to America to play their first-round games in Houston. I'll be a very valuable asset on the ground before, during, and after that really big international tournament, helping with media, content strategy, and total promotion of the Italian team.

Incredible players, coaches, and front-office executives are helping build that roster and will eventually facilitate playing and coaching. I will be a storyteller with them. I will be some of the glue that could help bring people together and understand what they're doing, whether working with Major League Baseball, other partners in the United States, or sponsorships and development—however I can help. 

We have a really fun stretch ahead of us. After 2026, we set our sights on the 2028 Olympics, which will be in Los Angeles. It's going to be a unique few years, for sure.

Chris R. Vaccaro throws the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game in 2023.

You threw the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game. Tell us about that experience.

That was a product of my coordinating the Italian Heritage games across Major League Baseball. Through the Italian American Baseball Foundation, one of the key endeavors I have built and executed is reaching out to every Major League club and many Minor League clubs to facilitate the Italian Heritage Games.

Those games could include several marketing and promotional activations, whether it's a giveaway item that somebody gets when they walk into the stadium, like a jersey with some sort of Italian rhetoric, markings, or logos, music played in the stadium, members of our board bringing out the lineup card, or, in my case, throwing out the first pitch.

It will forever be one of the coolest moments of my life, especially from a sporting perspective. And I've done a lot of unique things in sports. I threw a strike right down the plate; no pressure at all! I was practicing the week before with my son and my brother in my backyard. And the really special aspect of it was after I threw the strike, after everyone's cheering, I walked off the mound doing the Italian hand gesture and smiling. It was a really, really fun moment. 

The bigger connection there for us is that the general manager of the Washington Nationals is Mike Rizzo, a proud Italian American whom we have honored as our executive of the year with IABF at our annual gala. He has helped roll out the red carpet, but we've also sold thousands of tickets to those games. A percentage of the sales for the Italian Heritage Games goes towards the IABF Scholarship Fund, which helps get Italian Americans to play college baseball or softball.

It's a full circle, a cycle of doing good, making an impact, enhancing the cultural experience for people who want to come here, and educating Americans about what is going on in Italy through baseball and softball. It always revolves back to the bigger picture. 

Chris R. Vaccaro was married on the Sachem High School football field.

Sports play a large role in your personal life and relationships. You were married on the Sachem High football field. Share that experience.

We were married on the football field. My wife, Theresa, and I are very involved in our community on Long Island. Sachem is the second-largest school district in New York State. It's also not just a town. Several towns were centralized from an educational perspective in 1955 to form Sachem. It is a massive school district—2000-plus employees, 13,000-plus students, two high schools, 10 other buildings, and many elementary schools.

I'm a product of it. I grew up there, and I went there. We live here, and we raise our children here. They attend the same schools I attended. I am the district historian. I am the president and founder of our alumni association and our education foundation. I run our Hall of Fame. I founded and run our Hall of Honor. I provide speakers. I speak on certain topics; we bring alumni back.

We're talking 11 years ago (12 years ago in October). My wife said, "Hey, wouldn't it be unique if we got married on the field?"

She brought it up. I always like to make that very clear. It wasn't my idea, but, of course, I jumped at it, and we made it happen. And we are the first and only people to marry at Fred Fusaro Alumni Stadium.

It was tremendous. We had seats on the turf at the 50-yard line (it's a turf field), and we walked out of the Native American headdress that the team ran out of. We ran out with smoke machines and AC-DC's "Thunderstruck" playing as I walked down the aisle.

We had mini football giveaway items for attendees. We created a game day program modeled after the same design as when they dedicated the field's name to our legendary head coach. There is a lot of connectivity between our history, community culture, and what we did that day. It was a special moment for my wife and me and the community. 

Which recognition has been the most meaningful to you personally among your many honors and awards, and why?

The Emmy Awards are very special because there's tremendous significance in winning those in broadcast and the Murrow Awards, which I've also won. They're all team awards based on my leadership and the teams I oversaw at News 12, a New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut broadcast outlet. Those are really important. The awards I've gotten from the Italian American community, the Dante Award from the Italian American Teachers Association, and the Leadership Award from the Italian Language Foundation are special because they are about way more than just me. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my ancestors who came here not knowing what they were getting into when they got on those ships and came to America. I always talk about how I am a product of what they sought. I am living the American dream. 

While those are really important, the Beacon Award I received from the Ellis Island Honors Society is tremendously important and meaningful. It speaks to the foundation that was set up in honor of the place where my ancestors went. They went to Ellis Island, got off the ships there, and were registered there. To have received recognition for my work in culture and heritage is profound.

I'm in the Long Island Journalism Hall of Fame, and IABF was inducted into the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame as an organization. I'm also in the Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame for contributing to our community. All of those things are so important.

It's almost difficult to put into words, but the ones related to my heritage define my blood, my existence, and my overall being.

I'm lucky. I put in the work and am happy to get honored, but when I'm honored, it's really about the people I do the work for. It's really about my children, leaving them a legacy that they should look up to, aspire toward themselves, and be proud of our name. That's what it's all about. 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito with Chris R. Vaccaro

How do you hope to influence future generations in media, education, and cultural preservation?

The most important thing is ensuring we don't forget who we were or are as a heritage group, a community, or an industry. In everything I do and all the hats I wear, I'm huge on honoring the past and inspiring the future. I mean that. I try so hard to make sure we paint a vivid picture of our history and ensure that the current generation and future generations concurrently understand where they came from.

There's a story to be told. They need to understand it. It's not just what's happening to them right now. We got here for a reason. Let's understand that, learn from it, embrace it in almost all cases, and grow from there. I firmly believe we can't get to where we're going until we understand where we were. 

That's my personal thesis. That's how I build my organizations and run nonprofits. There's a connective tissue there. It's also being very clear about what we're trying to do. It's having a story and making sure everyone understands it. That's where my background in media comes into play. We can tell stories differently, have a strategy, and educate on social media with video, words, long-form storytelling, long-form features, and audio.

My background in media—both in production and leadership—allows me to tell the stories of the people and places I'm associated with. And I do that. I put all those pieces together, and I am constantly promoting what I'm doing, not to promote myself but to promote the stories and the reason why we're doing it.

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One of Boston's oldest neighborhoods, the North End, began attracting Italian immigrants in the late 19th century and eventually became known as Little Italy. Today, you'll find I AM Books among its iconic restaurants, bakeries, and specialty food shops.

Opened in 2015 by former Italian journalist Nicola Orichuia, originally from Rome, the store is known for its exclusive selection of literature by Italian and Italian-American authors and books related to Italy or Italian-American culture.

I spoke with Nicola about how the store started, his curation methods, emerging trends, ways he collaborates with authors and organizations, business challenges, and what he hopes to share.

How and why did you decide to open I AM Books?

I moved to the U.S. in 2008. I was a journalist before, and then I stumbled into this world of books. I have been a reader since I was a kid, but I had never thought about opening a bookstore until a space opened up in the North End, which is basically Boston's Little Italy.

I wanted to do something culturally relevant at the time. It was 2015, and opening a bookstore felt like the only economically viable way to do something culturally relevant in the realm of doing something Italian.

I had been working for an Italian-American publication for a long time and had started my own. I was very drawn to the world of what it meant to be Italian-American.

I wanted to bridge that divide I often saw between those who perceive themselves as Italians and those who perceive themselves as American Italians. And I always thought there was much more in common than people would see or talk about.

The bookstore was established at the end of 2015, and we were in one location for five years. COVID came, and we closed the original location. This was a blessing in disguise because several months later, we found a much bigger space with much better traffic, still in the same neighborhood. We wouldn't be able to be in any other neighborhood. It would not make any sense.

We're still carrying forth this mission of promoting Italian and Italian-American literature, mostly in English, but we also have books in Italian.  

Sometimes, people think we're an Italian bookstore. We're not an Italian bookstore. I like to say we are an Italian-American bookstore.

I Am Books' inventory includes The Last Letter from Sicily.

How do you curate your inventory?

There are usually a few rules of thumb. Anything written by an Italian author and translated into English will find its way to our bookstore. We usually try to have anything written by an Italian-American author. And most books that are either set in Italy or have something to do with Italian-American culture.

For example, our travel section basically only includes travel books on Italy. Our art section mostly deals with books on Italian art, but we have, for example, an entire section dedicated to Italian-American cultural studies. Some of these may be more academic. We have a huge portion of cookbooks, Italian cookbooks, and a growing section of Italian-American cookbooks.

We also have to keep an eye on the book market's demand, so we're very careful about that. We try to be a place that can be a home for book lovers.

What trends are you seeing in Italian-American literature?

There's definitely more investment in translation. I think the phenomenon of Elena Ferrante and the My Brilliant Friend books has really sort of opened the gates to more Italian contemporary literature, as well as the rediscovery of authors of the past who have been retranslated.

Other trends are tied more to the general book market. There's a lot of historical fiction. There's also a lot of romance, although we tend not to have a lot of romance in our store. There's a big category called Romantasy now, which is a mix of fantasy and romance that is very popular.

We try to have just the titles that everyone wants. We are big on fiction and classics. People still gravitate to classics and evergreen titles.

How do you collaborate with authors and organizations?

We have ties to many cultural organizations. For example, we offer discounts to members of the Dante Alighieri Society. They have members all across the country and the world.

We have special discounts and promotions with book clubs. Again, these could be book clubs anywhere in the country.

We try to do our best with authors, such as authors who self-publish. However, it's not always easy because we sometimes have to turn down self-published authors—not because of the quality of the work. It's just because space is limited, and sometimes it's very hard to give them the right visibility.  

I always try to guide self-published authors to find a way to get their books published. It will also help them get publicity and get the book out there. 

What challenges do you face?

Everyone in business has many challenges. With a bookstore, you always have to be aware of what you sell, what is coming out, and what people want.

The challenge I had at first, which I've overcome after 10 years, is that you have to be patient and figure things out, which takes time. I think when you are a new business, you try to do too many things. For example, when we started, we would do a lot of events—multiple events a week—and after a while, that took a toll on the staff and the bookstore, too.

At one point, we reduced the number of events and became more selective about which ones we did. That ended up being beneficial for the bookstore because even our customers and the public were more engaged and would come out more. You have to make some sacrifices, but those sacrifices are actually for the benefit of what you're trying to do. 

This year, we're celebrating our 10-year anniversary as a bookstore. I hope we can be here for the next 10 or 20 years and keep growing and establishing ourselves beyond our city limits.

We import books in Italian. That is a niche that we really know how to work with. We really know how to deal with publishers in Italy. And even though it's a smaller niche than, let's say, books in French, Spanish, or even Japanese, there's still demand.

We're trying to get our bookstore's name in libraries and schools across the country. We want to let those who might be teaching Italian or are interested in expanding a catalog of Italian titles know that we're here for them and that we can work together.

What do you hope to share?

What I really like about what we do is that we offer a space where the community feels welcome. And I know that's how they feel. They often walk away saying, "This is a nice bookstore."

We also try to offer an experience within the bookstore that leaves you with something. Our world now is very bland and homogenous.

I was on Instagram the other day, and someone was comparing what McDonald's looked like 50 years ago to what it looks like now. And 50 years ago, it was all colors, with paintings on the walls and colorful tables. And now McDonald's is this robotic experience where you walk in, there's a screen, and you don't even interact with a person. Everything is white and very ice-cold.

When people walk into a place where you have actually put in some thought and a little bit of creativity, they notice that—even if they don't buy anything. They've been inspired by something, be it the books that we carry or the types of shelves that we have (most of them are custom-made). 

We should strive to do this and keep trying. I think bookstores can do the same. Creative people, like authors, want to leave something that sticks with the reader and inspires them. Hopefully, we can achieve this or at least transmit some inspiration to our community. 

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As an Emmy-nominated international journalist, host, and producer, Eszter Vajda traveled the world to pursue stories and subjects. But it was actually a trip back home to Massachusetts, where the Hungary-native grew up, that led her to Sicily. 

"There are no coincidences," Eszter reflects. 

She had interviewed Merrimack Valley-based radio host Tom Zappala of The Sicilian Corner a few times, including for a story on Lawrence, Massachusetts' Feast of The Three Saints (patterned after Trecastagni, Sicily's Saints Alfio, Filadelfo, and Cirino Festival). 

One day, Tom called to see if Eszter could fill in as host for his show. The scheduled guest was Tom's brother, Alfred M. Zappala, a Northeastern Law School professor, who had just returned from Sicily.

"I really had no idea what Sicily was about," Eszter says. "We did an hour-long interview on the radio. I've always been very passionate about history, so it struck a chord with me."

Alfred described Sicily's important strategic location in the Mediterranean and the many peoples and cultures that passed through and influenced the island. And Eszter wanted to know more.

She invited him to appear on her TV show. The interview ended, the lights and microphone were off, and the crew was ready to go home. But Eszter and Alfred kept talking.

He invited her to lunch, and they began discussing a plan for Eszter to spend a month making a few videos in Sicily. 

Eszter arrived in Sicily in June 2014, intending to stay four weeks and produce seven videos. She ended up staying five months, and the videos took on a life of their own. The couple split time between Sicily and the U.S. while Alfred was still teaching. He retired in 2016, and they officially became island residents.

Today, you can catch Eszter and Alfred's popular video series, You, Me & Sicily!, on YouTube, sign up for one of their Sicily tours, or consult the couple for your own Sicilian vacation. Additionally, the two are deeply involved with the Sicilian Project, which raises money for academic grants to provide English-language education to students in Sicily—Alfred as Chairman of the Board and Founder, and Eszter as Public Relations & Social Media Director.

Eszter shared more about their work and what she ultimately hopes to give back.



Ortygia, Sicily

How do you approach capturing the essence of Sicily in your video series?

We literally zigzag the island. We've covered the island up and down. There are very few must-see places in Sicily that I haven't been to. And we don't mind going back. 

Festivals are a very important part of Sicilian culture. Every town has its own patron saint, and it's a big deal. It's multi-generational; the kids, parents, and grandparents go together. I went to the Three Saints festival in Lawrence before I went to the festival in Trecastagni. The religious feel, the excitement, the fireworks… It's very different here. So we do that, of course.

There's a lot of food and cooking because you've got to have that. Then maybe there's an event we'll cover, like an art show or music. We'd like to be very diversified.

Inevitably, something, like a natural disaster in Etna, happens, and we cover it. Obviously, we were doing that during COVID.

We do a lot with the history. We're very fortunate to be aligned with a lot of professors from the University of Catania, and we've had [retired professor of Italian and Chairman of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at St. John's University] Gaetano Cipolla on at least a half-dozen times. So, a lot of that, sharing the history and the culture, is really just providing what we think would be good information for the people.

For example, we published a video about the new Italian citizenship rules because Al does dual citizenship. There were 200 comments on it. Italian citizenship is trending on Google. So we're focused on that. We stay on top of these types of things.

We take people to the markets and introduce them to the people, not just the produce. We feature the vineyards, and you meet the family behind the wine. We do that a lot. We feature a lot of family-run businesses. There's even a playlist. "Family-Run Businesses." That's very important. 

Eszter in Taormina

What makes your private and group tours unique?

What makes them unique is that we live here. You'll go to places we frequent. We take you to restaurants where the owners are our friends. The owners of the hotel you're staying in are our best friends. We've vetted the vineyards and have been going there for years and years.

We have made incredible connections. We have drivers and guides and hotels all over the island. We visit vineyards, do olive oil tastings, go to the Sicilian cart museum, and ride boats. We offer a basket of experiences.

For the private tours, I work one-on-one with the families multiple times to make sure that it's what the family wants. And 99.9% of the time when a family comes, it's because they want to come to Sicily and see an ancestral home. So those are some very special tours.

We keep our group tours very small, so they're very personalized and customized.  

A colorfully decorated boat in Aci Trezza

Tell us more about the Sicilian Project, which Alfred founded.

English as a second language is a huge problem in Sicily. Alfred wrote in one of his books (and I'm not quoting him exactly), "If someone gave me a donation, I would start some kind of an English-as-a-second-language language program that would be free for Sicilian kids." Someone who read that book called and said, "I'm going to send you a check."

This man, Steve Carbone, who is still a good friend of ours, sent Al a $10,000 check. And Al said, "Oh my God, I've got to do something." So he made it a 501(c)(3).

We've had very regular classes. We had one in Brolo, we had one in Bagheria outside of Palermo, and we have them in Canicattì, Aci Trezza, and Aci Catena. We hold these classes, and they run as sort of summer camps. We play (depending on the level of the kids), we sing songs, and have conversation.

When COVID hit and we had to cancel two classes, what we started doing was handing out money to the churches. So for about two years, we did that for Easter and Christmas. Some churches had more need than others. Then, we literally restarted the Sicilian Project.

I'm so thankful we're able to have classes now. We had four classes this past fall, and we started an adult class where Sicilian professionals who want to improve their English come and do that.

We just finished a class with 15 kids and six adults, and we were able to get guys from Naval Air Station Sigonella to volunteer because they have to do a number of hours of volunteering. So we had native speakers. I did class, and Alfred taught.

When I came here, I felt like Sicily was like a blanket. And then Sicily gave me so much beauty, food, and nourishment, emotionally and physically, that I was hellbent on being a very active member of the Sicilian Project. And not just being a board member, but actively giving back. We are very, very active. 

A rainbow of umbrellas floats above a street in Catania.

What do you hope to share through your work?

First of all, we started the show to dispel stereotypes and myths about Sicilians and educate people about Sicily's deep and wide contribution—not just to Europe but to civilization.

Bringing people to their ancestral home is probably one of the most gratifying things. Hearing the oohs and ahhs of people on my tours when they're out seeing something beautiful or tasting something. When you are in Sicily, it is an experience for all the senses, right? You're emotionally overwhelmed by all the senses that are stimulated. So, that's what I hope my work does. I hope it inspires and educates more than anything.

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There are hundreds of types of pasta—perhaps even about 360, says Jacqui DeBono, who runs The Pasta Project blog from her home base outside of Verona. Originally from Britain, the former journalist and English teacher became fascinated with pasta after moving to Italy about 22 years ago with her Sicilian husband. She's chronicled her exploration of more than 100 uniquely shaped noodles, documenting their stories, recipes, and preferred sauces. One type in particular has especially captured Jacqui's fancy: Sicily's casarecce, shaped like rolled-up scrolls. The pasta's name comes from the Italian word casereccio, which translates to homemade, which Jacqui says is the best way to enjoy it.

Jacqui took the time to share more about her project and this special pasta with me.

What inspired you to start The Pasta Project?

I moved to Italy 22 years ago, although I visited many times, and prior to living in Italy, I lived in Malta. Pasta is really popular everywhere, but pasta in Italy is not the same as pasta everywhere else. And I was just really impressed with how many different types of pasta—more than 360, they say—and all the different ways the Italians prepare them. It's really so much more than what people know outside of Italy or what people are familiar with. So I decided I just wanted to share that with other people. 

I am nowhere near the 360 types of pasta. I have maybe close to a hundred that I've made, bought, or cooked. I still have a long way to go.

I try to divide the recipes between Italy's 20 different regions. The pasta you find in Sicily, you won't find here in Verona. Everybody more or less sticks to their type of pasta, except for the things that have become sort of popular throughout the country, like spaghetti.

Spaghetti was invented in Sicily, but it's eaten throughout Italy, and it's obviously eaten in many other countries. So, some types of pasta have gained popularity elsewhere. And there are types of pasta that never really got out of the region. You'll only find them there. 

Why is casarecce one of your favorite pasta types?

Apart from the fact that it's Sicilian, I like it because it's one of the prettiest traditional flour and water pastas. And it's very versatile because of the shape. It looks like a little scroll, and sauce gets stuck inside. So, it looks nice, is easy to make, and is very versatile. You can eat it with ragù, and you can eat it with pesto. 

Jacqui DeBono uses a pasta press or ferro (pictured here). 

What is the difference between homemade and commercially produced casarecce?

For homemade, you can make it two ways. You can use the traditional ferro, which is a very fine iron rod that many traditional pastas, particularly in the South, were made with. Or you can make it with a pasta press.

Commercial pasta is made in two ways: with a bronze die, which you'll find the more traditional artisan pasta makers use, or Teflon dies, which big pasta makers, like Barilla, use. They don't have the same texture as the bronze-die pasta because they tend to be smoother. 

When you make it yourself, it's not as uniform. Obviously, with commercial pasta, every piece is perfect. The word casarecce comes from casereccio, which means homemade. It's not perfect, but I think homemade pasta tastes better than commercially produced pasta. It has a nicer texture. You can taste the wheat. 

What are some tips for making casarecce?

The only real tip is to use the right kind of flour. And what I discovered quite recently is that although we tend to call it semolina flour, it's actually semola rimacinata, which is re-milled semolina flour. So, if you get semolina flour in the States, it's not going to be exactly the same as the similar semola rimacinata because that's finer. And that's the flour that all Italian dried pasta is made with. In the States, it would be called durum flour, not semolina flour, because semolina flour is coarser than durum flour. So it's important you have the right flour because otherwise, you won't get the right texture and consistency.
 

What's your favorite way to eat casarecce?

The one I really like is with caponata. Caponata with pasta is not a traditional combo. Most Sicilians eat caponata as a side dish or as a starter with some bread. But more recently, it's become quite popular to put it with pasta. And I really like that; it's all the flavors on one plate.

It's also really good with pestos. You can cook it with ragù, but I think it's so much nicer with vegetarian or vegetable sauces. 

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Rosetta Costantino's deep connection with food began in her early years in Verbicaro, a wine-producing hill town in Calabria. Her father was a master cheesemaker and winemaker, and her mother and grandmother grew vegetables, baked bread, and made pasta from scratch. Their ability to live off the land and produce simple yet delicious cuisine characteristic of the region inspired Rosetta.

That passion followed her to San Francisco, where her family emigrated when she was a teenager. It sustained her during her college years at the University of California, Berkeley, and into her career as a chemical engineer. It was always there in the background until she started teaching cooking classes after 20 years of working in Silicon Valley. 

Rosetta had a chance encounter with San Francisco Chronicle food writer Janet Fletcher, who wanted to know more about Calabria's food and culture. Once that article, "Calabria from Scratch," was published, Rosetta's phone started ringing, and she suddenly had a vibrant business offering cooking classes.

She teamed up with Janet to write a cookbook, My Calabria, which was published in 2010 by W.W. Norton and nominated for an IACP cookbook award. Three years later, she published her second cookbook, Southern Italian Desserts, with Ten Speed Press, which was also nominated for an IACP cookbook award.

Rosetta described her early experiences and how they inspired Cooking with Rosetta, her cooking classes and culinary tours of Southern Italy.

Tell us about your upbringing and how that shaped you.

I grew up in a small, agricultural town in Calabria. Both my grandparents and my parents literally lived off the land. My dad was a winemaker. He had vineyards, but he was also a master cheesemaker. They grew everything, so we really didn't buy anything when it came to food. 

I spent a lot of time with both of my grandmothers, and that's really where the love of cooking started because I wanted to be with them in the kitchen. When I was four or five years old, they would let me do simple tasks.

I was nine when I first learned how to make homemade pasta. My mom taught me, and then it was kind of more of an "I can take care of myself, I know how to cook" attitude. And it just stayed with me. 

When we moved to California, my parents brought all their seeds, and my mom even brought her bread starter in her purse. So they were very set in their ways. It was like, "This is how we're going to eat," and "We'll do whatever we have to do to find what we need," which in a way was great because if they had blended in, I probably would've lost a lot of that.

They started growing all the vegetables. My dad made all the salumi because he was also a master butcher, and my mom tried to figure out how to make ricotta here. We canned our homegrown San Marzano tomatoes from the first summer we were here. So all those things stayed. 

I always tell people in my cooking classes that California was where I learned about the rest of Italy because I only really knew about the foods of my town. I didn't even know the food outside of Calabria. It's so different from my town. We had neighbors from Northern Italy and Puglia, so I kept learning. And then I met my husband, who is from Sicily. So that got me into a totally different cuisine than I've been exposed to.

What led you to start Cooking with Rosetta?

I just kept learning on my own because I loved it, and it was my favorite hobby. But I didn't go into cooking or culinary school or anything. I went to UC Berkeley, graduated with a chemical engineering degree, and landed a job in Silicon Valley. My career was in high-tech in Silicon Valley, and I used to travel a lot. Any time I would travel, it was always about food for me.

My husband gave me Julia Child's set of French cookbooks. Again, that was foreign to me. I only knew about Italian food. I cooked through all those recipes and just kept learning on my own. 

I had two kids, traveled a lot, and worked what felt like 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I decided I would quit in 2001, but they didn't let me quit. I ended up working from home, and during that time, I said, "I want people to know about the foods that I grew up with."

Even today, in the Bay Area, in San Francisco, there's nothing that I call authentic Italian. It's more what I call California Italian. I really wanted people to know about the foods that I grew up with and about Calabria because I felt no one even knew where Calabria was. I decided to teach two cooking classes just for fun. That was 2004.

I never thought it would lead to this. Janet Fletcher, a well-known food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, heard about me and called me.

She said, "Would you mind if I interviewed you? I heard that you are from Calabria. I don't know anything about this region and its foods."

She came over and spent the day with my mom and me, and we fixed a bunch of recipes. Then she said, "I want to write an article."

I told her I would like to teach two cooking classes because no one knows about the foods I grew up with. And she said, "Oh, you should list them in the article."

I said, "I don't know if anybody will even show up because most people don't even know where Calabria is."

She said, "Do you know how many people wear Italian hats? They've never even been to Italy. They claim they're Italian chefs who cook Italian food. This is the real stuff. You should do it. This is the Bay Area. There are a lot of foodies here, and people might be really interested in learning something they've never heard of."

I said, "OK, I'm only going to do two classes. Go ahead and list them."

A day or two before it came out, she called me and said, "We're ready to go to print, but I think you should include your phone number if you want to sell those two classes."

I said, "My phone number is not listed. I really don't want to list it in the paper." She said, "Not everybody has access to the internet. " This was 2004, so I said, "OK, fine."

I still remember that first morning because I had not seen the article, and the phone rang at 7:00 a.m. I was trying to get the kids ready, and that morning, I was going in to work.

I picked up the phone, and an older gentleman was just thanking me. "It's like the first time I've ever seen an article about Calabria and its food." He started telling me about his grandparents and how they used to make this and that, and I said, "Can you call me back?"

The minute I hung up, I remember I went across the hallway to wake up the kids, and the phone was ringing. I said, "Kids don't answer the phone. The article came out, and people are calling about the classes."

I was inundated with phone calls and emails, which kept me busy for two weeks, because the article went around the country. We ended up taking in 200 people: 10 classes, 20 per class. The classes sold out right away. I kept adding and adding, then said, "OK, that's it. This is going to take me into November."

I really did not expect the response that I got from that article and the number of emails. All these people were writing to ask if I knew their relatives or if they knew what this dish was. That gave me the idea of the cookbook because there was nothing written about Calabria at all.

I said, "I need to get all these recipes down, Mom." With everything that my mom made, of course, nothing was written down; everything was just in her head, so you'd cook and taste as you go along.

Norton bought the rights in February 2005. I started teaching in September, put the proposal together, and worked on it. When the book came out, it was supposed to come out in 2008. But then, because of the financial crisis, they held it, so it was published in 2010.

I did my first culinary tour that year. Of course, we had planned it in 2009 because my students were hearing about Calabria. I would bring products back from Calabria, and they would get to taste them. And they would go, "Will you take us?" I said, "OK, I'll do one tour."

We did one and a second. Then my husband came on the third, and I said, "I'm not doing any more tours by myself."

When he came with me, and everyone got to meet him, they found out he was from Palermo, Sicily, and they went, "Oh, why don't you take us there?" So they convinced us to do the Sicily tour. 

During that time, my agent twisted my arm to do book number two, Southern Italian Desserts. In that one, we covered all five southern Italian regions.

Then, that was it. I said, "That's it—no more books." And I did quit work, and then I just focused on the culinary tours and the cooking classes.

We also ended up doing Puglia, and almost all of my guests have gone on all three tours. 

Guests sit down after a Borgo Saverona, Calabria, cooking class.

What can attendees expect from a tour?

If you were to talk to anybody who has gone with us, they would tell you that they get to see it from someone from the place. So you're not getting a lot of touristy food or following the tourist track. It features a lot of people that we know that you would never meet. So it's authentic, whether in Calabria or Sicily, as far as what people would eat. And that's what I want them to try. So I am not going to serve you a steak because we don't eat steaks. It's not part of our cuisine. They try all the specialties of the areas we visit. 

With the Calabria one, we tend to visit more wineries because I wanted people to get to know the wines, which are not very well known. For seven years, I just did a culinary tour, where we had two cooking classes, and then there were one or two wineries. Then, in 2017, I changed it to a wine tour. So we visited two wineries every day because I wanted people to get to know all the indigenous varietals. We sold out two years in a row.

By the third year, a bunch of people started writing to me, saying, "I wish there could be more cooking." So I changed it to a culinary vacation tour, removed two wineries, added cooking classes, and have sold that every year since then. 

We did the same thing in Sicily. We stay at Planeta, so they make wines. We get to taste all their different wines and visit Donnafugata, where they get to taste their high-end wines. We go to Cantina Florio in Marsala and visit Cantine Barbera, a local winery run by Marilena Barbera in Menfi. It's a woman-run winery; she makes great organic natural wine. But the tours are all based around food. 

We go to the salt pans and taste salt in Sicily. In October, we get to watch the whole process of making extra virgin olive oil and taste it. We also visit Maria Grammatico and take a cooking class with her.

I tell people it's a culinary tour. It's not just a tour to a museum or going to galleries; we do that, especially with Sicily, because there's so much to see there. Of course, we also incorporate that into it, but a lot of emphasis is on the food.

In Sicily, they get to try all the street foods of Palermo and the traditional dishes of the area. Calabria is sort of the same thing. We move throughout Calabria, and the food is very different. We go to the wine region and right to the border with Basilicata and the Pollino National Park area. Then, we go down to Tropea and Spilinga, where they make nduja. They get a feel for the entire region in Calabria, whereas Sicily has just so much to see and do that I would have to do two separate tours: the east and the west. So, we cover the western side of Sicily. 

In all my tours, we also visit a local shepherd/cheesemaking place so my guests can taste fresh, warm ricotta as soon as it's made, and of course, the other cheeses they make. This is a unique experience that nobody gets to have in the U.S., as ricotta is not made the same way in Italy.  

Cleaning anchovies in Calabria

What are your favorite dishes to introduce to your tour participants?

A lot of them are in My Calabria. They get to have the traditional Calabria pasta, which is shaped with a knitting needle. In my town, they're called fusilli. But for most people, the Italian name is maccheroni al ferretto. I take them where they make the nduja so they can see how it's made. And then we have dishes with nduja.

We eat a lot of seafood because Calabria is surrounded by the sea. Also, I have them clean fresh anchovies because most people think of preserved anchovies. Fresh anchovies and fresh sardines are totally different. So, in one of the cooking classes, they clean anchovies, and we make a dish with anchovies, which is also in my book. They're layered with flavored breadcrumbs and baked.

They have baccalà and many vegetables—peppers, eggplants, tomatoes. We do polpette melanzane, which are eggplant meatballs, but there's no meat. Another traditional dish is potatoes and peppers, which you find throughout Calabria. I also try to get them to have baby goat.

We do wild greens. We do a salad of purslane. I have octopus on the menu, too.

Depending on when we go, usually in the fall, they get to taste porcini, the wild mushroom. I base the menus on whatever is in season.

We do the same thing in Sicily. We do one night more Michelin-style just for fun, so they see you can have your traditional and you can have sort of invented dishes. We do two cooking classes with Angelo Pumilia at Planeta's La Foresteria. He is an amazing chef who can do everything from Michelin-style to traditional cooking. But we do very traditional because I want them to learn how to make those dishes. We'll do the caponata; we'll do the arancini; we'll do the cassata; we'll do the busiate pasta by hand. We do all things that are traditional in the area.

A visit to Capo Market in Palermo for seasonal ingredients

What's been the response?

People are surprised, especially by Calabria and its wineries. They don't like that they can't get a lot of the wines in the States because they would definitely buy them.

And most of the people have never been to Sicily. When they see Palermo and what it has, it just blows them away. In terms of Monreale or Palazzo dei Normanni, it's just the beauty of what's there; it's unbelievable. People don't expect that. They think that of Rome and Florence in Italy, and that's where everything is. People are surprised when they see what I say are the jewels we have in Sicily and these amazing temples that are better than those in Greece.

People just love the people and the places we visit more than anything else. Everywhere we go, there are people who are dear family friends, so it doesn't feel like you're a tourist. 

Guests finish a cooking class in Altomonte, Calabria.

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Founded in 1998 in Stone Park, Illinois, Casa Italia aims to be the home for all Italian-American organizations in the Chicago area. Through cultural enrichment activities, presentations, and exhibitions, the organization pursues a mission of preserving the past, celebrating Italian heritage, and ensuring the passage of values to future generations. 

The 501(c)3 nonprofit has embarked on a new chapter as it undergoes facility renovations. Once the upgrades are complete, its Italian Cultural Center will fully reopen to showcase museums and exhibits, including the Sicilian Heritage Museum, Italian-American Veterans Museum, and an impressive 1:100 scale hand-carved model of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Meanwhile, the community is invited to attend author events and film screenings, make Carnevale masks, dig into genealogy, play in the bocce league, and dance at Ballo Sotto le Stelle. The organization also offers language classes for adults and children. Casa Italia's Kids Camp, also known as La lingua e cultura d'Italia, is a two-week Italian culture and language immersion program where youth can engage in games, songs, sports, skits, cooking, and formal and informal language lessons.

I spoke with Casa Italia Chairman Peter Volpe about the organization. Peter grew up on the northwest side of Chicago with family from Sicily and Bari. His Sicilian family hails from Porticello, which happens to be where my family and Gaetano and Concetta of The Last Letter from Sicily are from.  

Peter shared more about Casa Italia's cultural center, the organization's offerings, and what he hopes to give back to the community. 

How and why was Casa Italia founded?

Twenty-five years ago, the Scalabrini Order was going to abandon the property. A small group of Italian business people, headed by the Turano family, said, "Don't let that happen. There's just too much history here. Rent it to us. We'll take care of the property. We're going to perpetuate our culture. We're going to bring museums, and we are going to be the home for all Italian American organizations."

That's how it all started. The Turanos, Gambinos, Stramaglias, Brunos, and others got involved in bringing Casa Italia together.

If you look at the Chicago environment for Italian Americans, we have a million organizations, but we don't work as a single power. And that's our vision: We're trying to get everybody together so we can have a unified voice and represent our community with the true power that we possess. The Italian American population is one of the largest in Chicago as far as immigration goes, and we are just too independent of each other. All our organizations have different purposes; if we just keep inside our lanes and follow our direction on what we want to accomplish, we could do so many good things together.

Casa Italia has hosted art shows in its gallery.

Where do things stand with your facility upgrades?

We had 19 acres of land and six big buildings that needed renovation. But our grounds are phenomenal, and we can hold festivals and host events.

The problem is that the buildings became so deteriorated that they were no longer up to code. We didn't have the resources to fix them. So, the village of Stone Park ended up purchasing the property, and now they're our new landlord.

While we no longer control the 19 acres, we have our two most important buildings. One is our cultural center, which houses all our museums, our library, and a nice meeting room. The other is our community center, which has a banquet hall, a kitchen, several offices on the second floor, and a gymnasium.

We got both of those properties from the village under a long-term lease, and they will do the exterior renovations of the cultural center. There will be a new roof, windows, fire escapes, and brickwork. We are charged with bringing the interior and exterior of the other property, the community center, up to code.

We are in the middle of a fundraiser, for which we've raised over $600,000 already. They've taken the sledgehammers and air hammers and are going to work on it.

There's an incredible amount of work that's going to be done. In how we envision that property, we hope to  bring the gym floor up to the main floor level. If we can accomplish this we're going to expand our banquet facilities to hold 400 people. We'll have a full-sized kitchen. And on the second floor, there will be a conference room and storage space for our clubs where they have mini offices.

We're attacking one building at a time. The community center is our focus right now because it brings in the revenue we need to sustain ourselves. We expect that to be done in late summer of this year. Once we can get that done and raise additional capital, we will switch our efforts to the cultural center.

We're looking for donors; they don't have to just be from the Chicagoland area. We invite anybody who wants to see our culture continue and propagate to look us up. 

Casa Italia Kids Camp provides language and culture immersion.

Tell us about your language offerings.

We're offering language classes at five different sites all over the city area to make it convenient. The classes range from conversational Italian (if you're going to travel) to beginner level and up. We have some great instructors who are professors of the Italian language.

With COVID, we expanded that a little bit and did a lot virtually, and that stayed with us. We're still doing both in-person and virtual.

Our summer Kids Camp is coming up. It's two weeks before the 4th of July, and it's a 10-day immersion for the children to learn everything from language to traditions to cooking to gardening and everything about who we are as Italian Americans.

Enjoy a game with Casa Italia's bocce league.

What do you hope to share with members of your community?

We want to support individual clubs and organizations by being their home. We don't charge a membership fee. Just come and be part of Casa Italia and host your meetings and events with us. We welcome you and want you there. We are not there to compete with you; we're here to work with you.

As far as the neighbors and the people in the area are concerned, "Hey, get to know us." Our facility is off the beaten path. It's not on the main street. It's in a neighborhood. It's one square block—that's how huge it is. Come on in and see it.

Everybody who comes can't believe what we have there. The richness of our library, the artifacts in all our museums, the information we share, the events we do… it blows their minds when they see what's going on, and they never knew it was there.  

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When asked about her connection to Sicily, La RosaWorks Sicily Tours and Travel Founder Karen La Rosa holds up a wooden last her Sicilian great-grandfather used for making shoes.

She keeps it on her desk as a reminder of her heritage. Her family came from the southwestern part of the island, around the areas of Castelvetrano and Santa Margherita del Belice. 

Growing up, she was always fascinated with the idea of Sicily and what she saw in the photos her family had around. But she'd never been there.

"We couldn't afford to go to Sicily on our honeymoon, and then we had kids," Karen remembers. "When I finally went, it was a real eye-opener."

That initial trip, a bike tour from Palermo to Agrigento, awakened something in her.

"I just felt like I was part of the ground," Karen says. "I felt like I belonged. I saw things I related to, and I couldn't even explain why."

She wanted to share that feeling with other people. When it came time for her to plan a trip with the New York Choral Society as membership chair, "It was sort of a no-brainer that we were going to go to Sicily."

Karen arranged a trip for 130 people that included touring and three concerts—something she calls "baptism by fire."

But while it was challenging, it started her on a new business journey. Word got out about the well-organized trip, and she started getting referrals.

Today, LaRosaWorks Sicily Tours and Travel hosts, designs, and arranges small group tours and bespoke experiences on both sides of Sicily. Karen seeks to highlight not only the wine and food but also the richness of the region's history and traditions. This led her to launch a trip to the Naples area, where guests can trace the roots of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, along with the ruins of Pompeii and the temples of Paestum. 

Visit larosaworks.com, and you'll discover a wealth of Sicily travel resources. There's a lengthy page of books to add to your TBR list, ranging from history written by scholars, including Jacqueline Alio and Louis Mendola, to historical fiction by Stefania Auci and Carlo Treviso, and classics by Leonardo Sciascia and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. She even features a primer on Sicilian grapes and pointers on driving in Sicily. And check out her list of music to build your Sicilian playlist. 

Karen clearly has a passion that she seeks to spread to the rest of the world. She shared more about how she got here, what sets her tours apart, off-the-beaten-path destinations, and what she hopes guests take away. 

What's your background, and how did it prepare you to plan and operate tours?

I majored in finance and art history and worked on Wall Street for a short period of time. The company is gone with the wind. It wasn't a battle I wanted to fight, and back then, that's what you had to do if you were a woman. As strong as I am, I just didn't want to go down that path. So, I went into the nonprofit world, where I felt more at home doing accounting and finance stuff.

When the kids were small, I left the day job and took up working on boards. I was president of an arts education board. I was on the board of a theater company for many years, and then ultimately, I joined the board of my kids' school to help them with their capital campaign to expand the school.

My kids were my priority, so doing it like that allowed me to be there for them when I needed to be. And with three boys, you need to be around!

Doing tours requires real organization. You can't be all over the place and do this. You have to be focused; you have to be committed.

We had a group of friends from my husband's college, and we started vacationing together. For 24 years, we vacationed together every year with a growing number of people. And I was the organizer because I was organized, because I was the one who was going to get it done, and get it done well. That's how I learned how to do this.

With the combination of being very organized and having some idea of how to create budgets, I think I was prepared to do this kind of work. Plus, you do need a passion.

La RosaTours itineraries include information about Sicily's symbols, like the trinacria.

What sets your tours apart from those of other companies?

Well, it's partly the hands-on stuff. Clients know I am there for them, and everything is done with my eyes and voice. I'm not interested in cutting corners. I'm also interested in sharing a broader approach to Sicily. If you're going to go, I'm going to immerse you. Here are the books you should read and the films you can watch. All my itineraries include information about what you should eat, what you should wear, what the flag means, and what that funny symbol you see all over Sicily is.

I want to give them some idea of what Sicily is about. It's special, and it's still in a stage of its tourist development that is not all manicured like Northern Italy. Almost to a person, people return to say, "I had no idea!"

Temple of Concordia in Agrigento

You emphasize that you have tours to both sides of Sicily. Why is that important?

Because they are different. The eastern side of the island favors more of the Greek history, and because it was visited more often for a longer period, it's also more tourist-ready. The west side, to me, is a gift. It's still so under-visited, it's equally beautiful, with so much to see.

I've had many clients who have come with me on the eastern side and then come back to go on the western side. Everybody remarks that it's a different atmosphere, it's a different feeling.

I'm a believer in the need to be responsible as tourist leaders. I try to go off the beaten path.

I did a tour up to Northern Sicily. We started in Catania, went across the northern part of the island, and finished in Palermo. We visited the Nebrodi. I don't know of any other tour by any other company that visits that area. At first, I thought, I hope I'm able to sell this. But, again, I had repeat clients, and they loved it because we saw new views, tasted local foods, and visited small villages that had so much to offer, including local people who wanted to share. It's just very different. The Nebrodi are different from the Madonie. They look different; they feel different; the wine is different. So you try different things. Everyone loved it.

I have a tour for September that I call the Beating Heart of Sicily Tour, which will basically go from Palermo to Catania through the middle interior. There are always highlights and important visits but I continually try to visit places where we will be immersed and apart from other tourists.

Gelato in Castelbuono

What other off-the-beaten-path experiences do you offer?

In the north, one of my favorite little towns is Castelbuono. Most people will go to Cefalù and go no further.

Castelbuono is a gem. In its 14th-century castle, it has one of the artist Serpotta's most amazing chapels. It also has a contemporary art museum that's really astonishing, inside that same castle! It has some beautifully preserved frescoes in the mother church. It's also the home of the Fiasconaro brothers, who make the famous panettone. They always have tables out for you to taste different things. The town is such a charming place to walk around, and for a small town, it's got several very good restaurants thanks to its location in the Madonie Mountains.

Learn about writer Leonardo Sciascia in Racalmuto.

Another place is a town called Racalmuto, about an hour north of Agrigento. It's where Leonardo Sciascia comes from. He was Sicily's most important 20th-century writer, political activist, and playwright.

In typical Sicilian fashion, the government does not fund the place where he lived. They get no money, and it's opened only by appointment. A private citizen keeps it, which is just astonishing. And it looks like Sciascia just left, almost as if there were still cigarette ashes in the ashtray.

It's a wonderful place to visit because, for a small town, there is a lot to see. There is one of the typical theaters of the late 19th century that were opened all over Sicily in an effort to bring culture to the masses. They are small jewel box theaters made in a fashion similar to the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, and they are beautiful to see. There is a castle that is now a museum and visitor center, and a wonderful permanent exhibit by a local artist whom I've met. They have sweets particular to this town. There are two places we go to watch them make these sweets and taste them.

The Sicani Hills near Sant'Angelo Muxaro

I do another day with another guide, which is also fabulous. He grew up in this town, Sant'Angelo Muxaro, in the Sicani Hills. He introduces us to the townspeople and takes us to see the old and the new. He sings for us—the song they sing during the procession on their big feast day. The locals open their doors for us, feed us at the old bakery in the old style, and we learn about life in a small hilltop town, remote from so much.

Sandro demonstrates making caubaita (almond nougat) in Racalmuto.

When you go with guides—and I really believe in guides—not only do they open your eyes to the historical things you're seeing, but you're with people who live in Sicily, who grew up there, and understand the place. They're all very knowledgeable and licensed, and the conversations go many places when clients ask questions. That's part of the immersive experience. I always try to include guides. They're all really special people, mostly archeologists, art historians, sommeliers, naturalists—really top-tier people that 16 years of experience have brought me to. They make the days and activities terrific.

Tell us about your Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Tour.

A client of mine who's been to Sicily three times asked me to do something different. Naples was that. I read Antoinette's Sister by Diana Giovinazzo, which I loved. Of course, Lou Mendola has written about this period a lot. And I've seen a couple of films that intrigued me. I thought it would be a very interesting thing to do. All but one person on the tour is a repeat client.

We'll spend half the time in the area around Paestum. We're going to visit a cheesemaker and a white fig producer. And we're going to the ruins. We'll do a cooking class and go to some small villages. (I always try to vary the itineraries so you see many different facets of the place.)

Then we'll go to Naples and spend two full days there doing city things. We'll go to Caserta, where the Royal Palace is, Capodimonte for the incredible art collection, and Pompeii, of course. There will be winery visits and fried pizza, a local specialty. 

A new friend in Randazzo

At the end of a tour, what do you hope participants take away?

The generosity and hospitality in Sicily are legendary, and it is a richness that I haven't found in too many other places. Whenever I'm flying home, I always stray to the same thoughts: Sicily has been coveted and conquered by everybody. Many of those people came to take things away from them, but they also left a bevy of material and immaterial things that are today part of Sicilian culture. Sicilians are a real mix of everyone who has ever come ashore. 

Maybe that's one reason they have strong family values and why they care for people. It's a nucleus of which they have control. People come first.

Walking through a small village once, an older woman saw our little group. She stopped to talk, and hearing we were visitors, she took out the bag of cookies she had just purchased and gave them to us, smiling as we enjoyed them.

I also never feel the culture and pressure of "more" that I feel in America—more cars, more computers, more money. They value the land and tradition, and taking care of what they've been given in modern ways is a main focus. They're very concerned with climate change and sustainability. The land and its fertility are so important to them. 

I could go on and on, but in short, I hope people leave Sicily having seen the history, beauty, and richness with their own eyes and having felt the generosity and hospitality of the people we meet along the way. I also hope they leave with a feeling of the real humanity in Sicily, with an appreciation for the effort and sometimes sacrifices it takes to be committed to their traditions, the land, and these values. I think there is something to learn there. And I think that's marvelous. 

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Native to Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Central Asia, pistachio trees were first introduced to Europe by the Romans in the first century AD. However, archaeological evidence indicates that the seeds have been consumed as far back as 6750 BCE. Pistachios appear in the Book of Genesis and the writings of Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder.

Today, global pistachio production is nearly 2 billion pounds, with Turkey, Iran, and the United States representing the lion's share. Far lower in quantity but prized for high quality, Italy's Pistacchio di Bronte from the Sicilian town of Bronte is DOP-protected and a popular ingredient in regional recipes ranging from sweet to savory.  

I recently corresponded with Simona and Cristina, the dynamic duo behind The Spaghetti Sisterhood, who have family involved in pistachio production. The Italian-born sisters shared more about these culinary nuts, providing insight into pistachios' role in Sicilian cuisine, sourcing tips, their signature pistachio cream (and favorite way to enjoy it), and more!

Tell us about pistachios' significance in Sicilian cuisine.

We come from a small city in Sicily very close to Bronte, the land of pistachios. A lot of people would argue that a big part of the production of Bronte's pistachio actually happens on adjacent territories, most of which are in the small city we come from. Aside from this, though, pistachios have always been such a spectacular ingredient to work with, and they are so versatile we just love them: savory and sweet alike, these are just a focal part of Sicilian cooking because of the various influences over the years from different cultures and such.

What are some traditional Sicilian dishes that feature pistachios?

From the granita to paste di pistacchio and savory dishes like arancini and pasta, these are some of the most traditional dishes you can replicate at home with pistachio. But less traditional, yet delicious stuff like the pistachio cream is what people love nowadays, so you gotta give people what they love!

Pistachios by Paul Wence

How do you source your pistachios, and what should people look for when buying them?

We are lucky enough to have family producing pistachios, so we get to buy them from them, but their production is quite a small one, and considering harvesting happens every other year, we tend to have to source from other people around our small city. We do end up buying from vendors on the street as well. When we do so, we have had the pleasure to discover most differences between, say, the Iranian pistachio and the Sicilian one: the size and color matter more than we ever expected, given that the Sicilian pistachio is smaller, chunkier, and a less bright color than the Iranian counterpart, which is slightly slimmer, longer and more bright.

Tell us about your pistachio cream recipe and how you use it.

This recipe for pistachio cream was passed on to us by our aunt, who loves cooking as much as we do. I guess you could say we have it running in the family! We have used it in different ways, including as a base in a granita, but our favorite way is as a spread over pandoro. Or even, by the spoon, straight from the jar—we gotta admit it.

Do you have tips for home cooks who want to incorporate pistachios into their cooking?

Pistachios work on so many dishes; you just have to try! From salad toppings to creams and anything else in between, you just have to add them. The flavor is delicate and will never overpower any other ingredient in your recipe in any way.

What do you hope people take away from your recipes?

We would love for people to learn something from our recipes, whether that's about a culture they just love or one they descended from. We try and make them as easy as it gets so that everyone can replicate them.

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Mike Elgan has a secret. He and his wife/business partner, Amira Elgan, are hosting their first Gastronomad Experience in Sicily. He can tell you that you'll spend a week "living as a Sicilian aristocrat." You'll enjoy authentic cuisine and wine enriched by Mount Etna's volcanic soil. But the rest is largely under wraps. 

It's part of the fun—and the highly exclusive experience. Drawing from their own gastronomist lifestyles, the pair offers behind-the-scenes access to local food, wine, and cultural experts that typical tourists cannot access in Italy's Venice and Prosecco Hills, France's Provence, Spain's Barcelona and nearby cava wine country, Tuscany, Morocco, Mexico's Oaxaca, Mexico City, El Salvador, and now Sicily.

Amira has worked as food and beverage director for hotels in Los Angeles and New York City, including Mondrian, the Bonaventure, the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel, and the Doral Hotels in Manhattan. A board-certified holistic health counselor, she is also the creator of The Spartan Diet and has written about food, nutrition, and health for decades. Meanwhile, Mike is a technology and culture journalist and the author of Gastronomad: The Art of Living Everywhere and Eating Everything.

Mike shared more about the Gastronomad Experience, why they chose to include Sicily, what makes their offerings unique, and what he hopes participants will take away.

What inspired the creation of the Sicily Gastronomad Experience?

Around 2006, Amira and I took a vacation with our kids, and I'd been reading all the stuff about digital nomad people, and this idea that you could travel while working was really great. I decided to do an experiment for a column I was working on for Computerworld.

The experiment was that I would be in remote areas of Central America, looking at ancient Mayan ruins with my family. I wasn't going to tell my editors or anyone else that I was doing this.

I went to meetings and did all this stuff. Nobody noticed that I was not in my home office. And so there was this revelation: "We're going to travel full time."

My wife was working for AT&T at the time, so we decided to take a vacation. We went to Greece and loved the life so much that my wife called and quit. We just stayed in Greece, traveling on islands for six months, and we're like, "OK, we're doing this. That's it."

Over time, we got rid of our house and put all the stuff in storage. With the exception of two years when we lived in Petaluma, Sonoma County, we've been traveling full time.

Fast-forward to 2014. I was always posting on Google Plus. My wife's a food person. She's headed food and beverage departments for high-end hotels like Mondrian. She always connects with chefs and winemakers. She goes to the farmers market, makes friends with farmers, and is fascinated by organic farming. 

We're tasting wine in winter in Provence and chilling the rosé in the snow—beautiful stuff. People were constantly saying, "Gosh, I wish I could do that. I wish I could join you and do what you guys do."

At some point, my wife said, "What if we took six months of really fun stuff that we did and did it all day in one week?"

We had all these friends in these specific places. So, in 2017, we did the Barcelona experience, which was the first one. And it was amazing. We had this really beautiful apartment in Barcelona. Nowadays, we stay in the wine country and drive into Barcelona, but back then, we stayed in the city, and it was just a cool group of people: self-selecting super foodies who love traveling and wine.

We offered the most amazing peak-life experiences three or four times a day for a week. It's an incredible concept, and it works great. So we've been doing that since then, and we do between five and 10 of these a year in a bunch of locations.

An exclusive dining experience near Oaxaca, Mexico

How do your experiences differ from other culinary travel offerings?

We are so obsessed with exclusivity that on many of these experiences, participants don't even see a tourist. For example, we do Prosecco Hills and Venice. Typically, you'd go wine tasting at a tasting room. We go to the home of the winemaker. We have very close friends there who are winemakers, and one of them is an absolutely brilliant winemaker whose home is on the top of a hill, and the whole hill is her vineyards. We spend four or five hours with her talking about wine, the history of the region, and drinking and tasting wine.

We have friends in the same area who live in a beautifully restored 400-year-old farmhouse way up in the forest. The husband in this couple happens to be a brilliant chef.

The people we bring are treated like family; they're just incredible experiences you can't buy as a tourist. We often find ourselves in situations where if you do see tourists, they're like, "Why do they get to do that thing?"

It's very common for a chef to open their restaurant just for us when the staff has the day off, and he'll serve the food himself. These are famous restaurants.

One key and interesting differentiator is that everything's a secret. So when people sign up, they don't know what we're going to do, except in the vaguest of terms: We will do food stuff.

When they get up in the morning, we tell them, "Make sure you bring your sunscreen, sunglasses, and swimwear." They don't know what we're going to do until we're there doing it.

We find that people love this aspect of it. There are no decisions to be made. It's like all the good things with travel without a single bad thing. If people have an allergy or dietary restriction, there's no fuss about it. Everything that they are exposed to is within the realm of their dietary restrictions. It's just easy, super fun, and beautiful.

We do this in the most beautiful places imaginable. I'm a professional photographer, taking pictures the whole time. And then they end up with this incredible album. They can put their phones away, forget about the world, forget about politics, forget all stuff, and just live the way they would live if everything were exactly how they wanted it.  

Gastronomad Experience takes guests to Mount Etna's wine country.

You offer experiences in several places. Why Sicily?

We selected Sicily for the same reason we selected all the other places: It's a place we love and where we know some really wonderful people. We've been going to Sicily once, twice, or three times a year for years, and the experience kind of formed itself.

We are great friends with this biodynamic winery on Etna; they love us, and we love them. We realized there were enough things that we could do there that we should have an experience.

The first one is in May. It was so popular that it just sold out instantly. Then we added another one, and that's selling out.

We travel around a bit, but the star of the show is the Etna wine country and that half arc on the eastern side. We don't go to Palermo. There are a whole bunch of places in Sicily we're not doing, and there are a whole bunch of beautiful things in Sicily that we're not doing for various reasons.

Luxurious accommodations are important for us. In the case of Sicily, they're both in vineyards. You can't find that kind of thing in Palermo or many other places. There are many beautiful places with amazing little villages, and you can find good food, but there is really not enough there to do four or five peak-life experiences a day. So we don't do that. My wife and I enjoy those places, and we will linger there. We love them, but we need a combination of incredible scenery, incredible luxury accommodations, and high-end restaurants.

For example, there are Michelin ratings in Mexico City, so we'll do the best restaurant in the Americas, the highest-end, most luxurious, highest-rated restaurant. And we'll have high-quality street food. So we do the range. We want the very top, but it amounts to home cooking.

I won't go into any details, but we do super high-end and super-real stuff. For example, in Oaxaca, Mexico, where half the population is Indigenous, there's no phony anything. We are in an Indigenous community with people who speak Zapotec in their homes. And so we do that, but then we do super high-end stuff as well.

Guests of the Sicily Gastronomad Experience enjoy haute cuisine.

What do you hope participants take away?

About 90-plus percent of our guests are Americans. We live in an industrial food system, and this is what we know very well. So, the degree to which we really understand what makes good olive oil or natural wine good and all the details not really known even to foodie-oriented people, by the end of it, they've gone through a very pleasurable but detailed masterclass in these details. When they go home, they're just throwing stuff away and starting over. And now, with the newfound knowledge and appreciation for the best things, they become snobs about that—not in a bad way, but they just have much higher standards because they have the knowledge.

Another thing is just peak-life experiences. We are on this planet for a very short period of time. If you want to experience Sicily and have one week, we want you to see the most magnificent landscapes, try the most incredible food, and get to know local Sicilians who are not in the tourism industry.

Travel is on the rise. Most people who go on vacation never speak to somebody who hasn't been paid to speak to them. The conversations they have with the people they meet are products. A tourist is a consumer who consumes the products and services of people who cater to tourists and travelers.

We live predominantly outside of that. So people spend a lot of time talking to locals who are just our friends, not in the tourist industry, and they get to know them really well.

How many Americans, for example, have had extensive conversations with Mexicans? The country's right there. We know Mexicans as migrant workers and immigrants or their children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants, and we really should know them much better.

When our guests go to Sicily, they'll meet our friends. Sometimes, the friends are cheesemakers or chefs or people like that. But we often know people we just invite to dinner. So our group is there plus one or two or three of our local friends. We just have a dinner where there's lots of conversation, and they get to know people.

You've really been Sicilian for a week. You've lived as a Sicilian aristocrat for one week. And that's quite an experience. That's not tourism; it's very different. You're not just buying goods and services from people. You go straight into the inside of the culture. It's really a life-changing experience.

Raise a glass of biodynamic wine from an Etna winery.

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