Opinion | Pummarolə

5Jun

By Gabriel PiemonteNo Comments

Opinion

The Italian Hello

A 1942 photo of Italian Americans on MacDougal Street in Lower Manhattan. Marjory Collins / Library of Congress We joke among ourselves at Pummarola about the Italian Hello. Even when we have pressing business, it takes at least 20 minutes to get past our greetings to one another. This labeling is the sort of thing that can get an ethnic group a bad reputation, but we didn’t come to it intentionally. Like so many cultural attributes, the Italian Hello found us. It’s an impulse we might bury when around certain other groups, but left to our own devices, we’d gladly spend 40 minutes saying hello on a serious call, 10 minutes discussing the actual reason for the call, and another 40 minutes saying goodbye. (And we’d start 15 minutes late, btw.) The Italian Hello is a way by which ...

28Jan

By Marci2 Comments

Opinion

Greetings from the Editorial Collective

A photo from the remarkable Shoebox Negatives collection, profiled in this issue of Pummarola. ©2022 JTRP/Shoebox Negatives Happy New Year to all and welcome to the second issue of Pummarola! We are excited to share with you some extraordinary new work from our earlier contributors, as well as from multiple new voices. From one coast to the other, Italian Americans and allied supporters are producing meaningful, creative and intriguing work that addresses a wide range of subject matter of significant value to the Italian diaspora in the U.S. and beyond. We are very pleased to share the fruits of their labors with you. So much has happened since our relaunch of Pummarola in October 2021 during the week of Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day. Pummarola has attracted visitor...

27Jan

By Gabriel Piemonte1 Comment

Opinion

Fighting the Good Fight & Celebrating Together — Post-holiday Ruminations on Migrant Prisons

Inflatable boat in the Mediterranean carrying migrants bound for Europe. U.S. navy photo by Chief Information Systems Technician Wesley R. Dickey/Released. by Elena Marcheschi I consider myself fortunate that the recent holidays brought with them gratifying moments of communal joy and wellbeing. At the same time, the season provided plenty of reminders of old and new forms of human oppression. Oppressive practices have always been invariably contested by other human actors, whether in ancient or modern garb, engaged in a dialectical dance of resistance and fought-for liberation. Themes such as these have haunted humanity’s holidays for a very long time. It began with the burning candles of an early 2021 Hanukkah, celebrated as a commemoration of the successful re...

Is it Possible to Transform Thanksgiving?

22Nov

By Gabriel PiemonteNo Comments

Essays, Opinion

Is it Possible to Transform Thanksgiving?

By Laura Cinat President Joe Biden pardons a Thanksgiving turkey. Togetherness, gratitude, great homemade food, and the first indoor fire of the season are reasons I adored Thanksgiving growing up. Family and friends arrived on Wednesday to prepare the dressing, to laugh, to catch up, and to be so glad we had each other. My favorite times were sitting and chopping the bread, celery, and other secret ingredients that, when mixed with the turkey gravy the next day, would be something extraordinary. While I chopped, I savored the moments with my parents and siblings. We were captive at the table with nothing to pay attention to but each other and the glorious food. There were also decorations and artifacts on the table. The napkins with autumn colors, the cand...

11Oct

By Pummarola1 Comment

Opinion

Arrival: A Letter from the Editors

Welcome to the relaunch of Pummarola, an online journal of politics and culture that seeks to explore the cultural bonds, internal rifts and intersectionalities embedded within our Italian diaspora. With this new issue, our small collective assumes the editorship of Pummarola, fully aware that we have big shoes to fill. We arrive grateful to the founders Ross Caputi and Samantha Pinto for their dedication to the journal. We are fully committed to advancing their vision and expanding the reach of Pummarola to new readers and diverse communities. We have come together as a tight group, despite sometimes disparate lived experiences, opinions, motivations and priorities. We are united in our hope to produce a vibrant publication that will resonate both within and beyond the Italian Ameri...

How to Talk about Columbus with Your Family

10Oct

By Marci3 Comments

Opinion

How to Talk about Columbus with Your Family

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF_unlvjccA Video Credit: Pani Stavrou-Wilson, Uncivil History By Marci Merola It's October, and for many that means fall colors, decorative gourds and talk of Christopher Columbus in the air. Maybe it's possible to get through the month without a pumpkin-spiced anything, but the Columbus controversy is back in the news, making for an abbondanza of difficult conversations around the dinner table. How do you talk to old-school family members about the dethroning of an Italian American idol? Here are five ways to help start—or stop—the conversation. 1. We were misled. And it's not our fault. Growing up in the U.S., we were all taught the story of Christopher Columbus and his voyage with the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. (I can ...

10Oct

By PummarolaNo Comments

Opinion

Chicago Is Being Amazonified

By Pat Garofalo Photo by Rossanna Rodriguez Chicago recently made headlines for turning public parks space over to Amazon package lockers. But those lockers are only one example of Amazon and public officials using public-private “partnerships” to give away public resources and harm communities. Thanks to a deal Amazon cut with Chicago’s parks department, 49 Amazon lockers were recently deployed in public parks. (Photo courtesy Rossana Rodriguez) Residents of Chicago who went for a stroll in a local park recently might have come upon an unexpected obstruction: an Amazon locker partially blocking their path. Thanks to a deal Amazon cut with the city’s parks department, forty-nine Amazon lockers—where customers can pick up and leave packages—were deployed in public parks, with an...

Speaking Truth to the Fabricated Story of Christopher Columbus

10Oct

By Pummarola3 Comments

Essays, Opinion

Speaking Truth to the Fabricated Story of Christopher Columbus

A Call for Understanding and Inclusion to All Americans of Italian Descent By Tony Del Plato Americans of all ethnicities and cultures have staked their claim to “the land of the free.” But are we brave enough to face the dark side of the American story? Those who inhabited this land before the Europeans, Asians and Africans arrived, have suffered continuous attacks upon their lives and culture. They have endured a genocidal assault. And yet, they are alive and exist amongst us. I am calling on Americans of Italian descent for understanding and inclusion of our history on the land called Turtle Island by the Haudenosaunee peoples. America contains diverse truths based upon the historical record and the many voices among native peoples and those who colonized the Western ...

It’s time to end Columbus Day: An Open Letter to the City of Philadelphia

11Oct

By Samantha Pinto6 Comments

Opinion

It’s time to end Columbus Day: An Open Letter to the City of Philadelphia

For too long we have honored colonizers and slave masters and silenced the history of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. It’s time for Philadelphia and the world to stop celebrating the architects of genocide and white supremacy. It’s time to end Columbus Day. Contro Colombo: Italian Americans for Indigenous People’s Day We are a growing group of Philadelphian Italian-Americans petitioning the City of Philadelphia to officially replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day. We stand in solidarity with groups like Indigenous 215 and Indigenous Peoples Day Philly who have been making this demand for years. For too long, members of the Italian-American community have stood behind Columbus and lifted him up as our hero, but any student of history can plainly see he was not. The hi...

5Oct

By Gabriel PiemonteNo Comments

Opinion

Italian Americans, forget Columbus

The Christopher Columbus statue is removed in Grant Park in Chicago, following protests and police violence. By Luca Peretti Translated by Amy Bizzarri It’s early morning on June 24th when a few dozen Italian Americans have gathered around the statue of Columbus in the Italian neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. For days there had been rumors circulating about the removal of this statue inaugurated in the late nineteenth century, when the first Italian immigrants began to arrive here to work in local industry. Over the years, they would become the largest ethnic group of the city, and yet in the area surrounding the statue—in a neighborhood that has now changed immensely due to economic and historical forces—there are still the Catholic church, restaurants, social clubs, in ...