[I knew my friend—and prior
Guest Poster—Nancy
Caronia had been engaging with this week’s questions already, in and around
the Italian American community in particular, so I asked her if she’d be
willing to share some of those thoughts. What follows is her challenging and
crucial Guest Post on that topic and related questions.]
Ben,
you’ve asked a complicated question. Colleagues in Italian American and Italian
Diaspora Studies have been working both privately and publicly to ask for the
dismissal of Columbus Day and replace it with any number of options, including
Italian Heritage Day, Indigenous Heritage Day, and even Ethnic Heritage Day. See
this letter and feel free to
add your name to this petition. What is interesting
to me about the letter is whose signatures are missing. I don’t know the reasons
for this absence and I cannot conjecture, but the complications arise around
Columbus Day, for me, in that any of the days mentioned above asks us to
dismiss one group for another—as though there is not enough room at the table
for all of us. Each of us holds an important piece of the intertwining,
collaborative and colonial fabric of the project known as the United States.
Many Italian Americans, whether
they remember directly or heard the stories, have bought into an assimilation
story that suggests they have overcome great strife and deserve to have a day
dedicated to their heritage, forgetting or refusing to acknowledge that
Columbus is not the symbol of that heritage. In many ways, the strife was not
simply overcome with hard work and perseverance, but is a process of
suppression that we call assimilation that demands an adherence to
homogenization of white nativist traditions, which bury radicalism, union
solidarity, or a generalized contentious relationship with white nativism. In
other words, assimilation is about embracing the abusers. I heard the Italian
American West Virginia writer Denise Giardina speak last night about West
Virginia’s socialist roots and she made one statement that I think speaks to
Italian American suppression: “There was never a war on coal. Coal has been
warring with West Virginia. The coal industry has destroyed what it has built.”
She went on to say that she thought West Virginians suffered from a kind of
Stockholm syndrome where they identify with their abusers and that is how an
organization like Friends of Coal proliferates in West Virginia. I would
suggest that is also how Italian Americans continue to fight for a holiday that
has nothing to do with them. (If you have not yet read any of Giardina’s work,
might I suggest you begin with Storming
Heaven or The Unquiet Earth?)
Indeed,
many prominent Italian American politicians are today spouting rhetoric that
can be associated with the most conservative and right wing parts of our
government. The irony for me is that while they attempt to gain traction with
someone like 45, they have been used and dismissed fairly quickly (think of Chris
Christie, Rudolf Giuliani, and Anthony Scaramucci). Other Italian Americans simply
suggest that what occurred during Columbus’s Voyage of Discovery was a long
time ago and we should live in the here and now while pontificating about
tradition and cultural history. This last fallacy is predicated upon the idea
that somehow Italian Americans above any other ethnic group in the US deserve
to have a federal holiday named for them. They forget this holiday was not for
them, but a way to reinforce colonial culture in the US while tangentially acknowledging
that Italian Americans were more than gangsters or miscreants. From the
beginning, Columbus Day has been about separating Italian Americans from the
concerns of indigenous populations and African American people even though the
concerns of each of these groups is not singular or separate.
Here
are a few articles that might be of use: Laura E. Ruberto
and Joseph Sciorra’s essay on recontextualization of not only Italian American
history, but also the history of migration and colonization that happened in
the Americas
(if you haven’t yet picked up Ruberto and Sciorra’s co-edited two-volume set New Italian
Migrations to the United States, Vol. 1: Politics and History since 1945 (2017) and Vol 2: Art and
Culture since 1945 (2017), do it!), Elizabeth
Mariani’s piece on Indigenous People’s Day, Kelly Castania’s
piece on Italian Americans viewing themselves as allies to indigenous people, Bobby Dorigo’s
piece on the false construct that Italian Americans have historically even viewed
Columbus Day as their holiday, Jim McDermott’s
piece on “Why Italian-Americans Deserve a Better Holiday,” Stefano Vaccara’s “Long
Live Verdi” piece,
and Robyn Pennacchia’s “I am
an Italian-American and I Think Columbus Day is Garbage.” There are many
more, and I hope my colleagues in Italian American Studies might add to this
list.
Lastly,
Riggio, the CEO of Barnes & Noble was the Grand Marshall for this year’s
Columbus Day Parade. He chose to invite (for the first time mind you), Italian
American writers to sit on a B&N-themed float. Internationally-celebrated
authors like Gay Talese shared the float with deeply-respected writers like
Maria Mazziotti Gillan (her ground-breaking multi-ethnic anthologies are true
artistic and communal collaborations and her work at The Poetry Center at
Passaic County Community College, where I first heard Jimmy Santiago Baca,
Amiri Baraka, and Allen Ginzberg all read live, is a fundamental and important
place for those who are marginalized as students and writers), and
lesser-known, but talented writers like Olivia Cerrone (The Hunger Saint) and Annie Lanzillotto (L is for Lion). Lanzillotto hung a circle banner that read: Honor
Indigenous, but I could not help but feel that Riggio and the Italian American
committee who run the parade were using my writer friends and peers to justify
the parade and the holiday. These writers were never asked to march before and
to put them on a float with large cut-outs of book covers with canonical
Italian male authors (Dante! What an Italian American!) is both problematic and
insulting. Lastly, days before New York’s Columbus Day parade, Our Lady of
Loreto Church in Brooklyn, NY was destroyed. This church, built
by Italian immigrants in 1906, was a true marker of Italian immigration and
determination, but it seems we dismiss actual history of immigration in favor
of empty symbols that align with genocide, colonization, and the precursor of
Manifest Destiny.
At
a time when white supremacists are once again rearing the most heinous aspects
of white nativism’s construction, it is more important than ever to challenge
the discourse that dictates we have to accept what is offered and not expect
anything more or to think we cannot change the course of an increasingly
dangerous present. I want to be an ally to the indigenous. LGBTQ, immigrant,
and all POC communities because the way I see it, my life is not mine own. For
better or worse, it belongs to this project known as the United States and each
of these individuals and communities help to make me, a child of first and
second generation Sicilian and Irish immigrants, what I am and want to
be—someone who grows in compassion, but stands in the righteousness of social
justice for all. We must resist the easy road or the quick fix. We must engage
with the hard dialogue and learn to keep silent and listen. I not only heard Denise
Giardina speak this week, but also attended West Virginia University’s 25th
Anniversary of the Peace Tree Celebration. Onondagan Chief Oren Lyons spoke,
and like Giardina’s talk, I was inspired by his wisdom. Both Lyons and Giardina
have dared to stand in their truth no matter the consequences to their careers
or lives. Lyons talked about how lacrosse is a hard game and that during his
career and the careers of the young men he watches play today how much loss is
involved. He said, “They lose. They lose a lot. BUT, they are never defeated.”
I want us to recognize that it is not only and always about winning, but about
as Giardina said during her talk and Lyons alluded to, the spiritual journey.
This journey brings us together in solidarity and allows us to fight injustice
wherever we see it or experience it. We must be willing to see each other’s humanity
and stand up for anyone who has their basic human rights withheld. Letting go
of Columbus Day would be a step forward for Italian Americans that might mean
we lose a holiday, but we would gain an expanding consciousness and community. #RESIST
[Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think, and what would you
add?]
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