Under the Southern Sun: Stories of the Real Italy and the Americans It Created

by Paul Paolicelli

Release Date: March, 2003

Edition: Hardcover

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Exploring the imported ideologies of Italian-Americans

After Paul Paolicelli's heard the story of his grandfather's death, he needed to return to Southern Italy to dig out the ideological roots of the personal attributes of his grandfather and of other Italian-Americans . His immigrant grandfather had died from the effects of a mutilating accident in a steel plant. His grandfather's last words were, "Povri figli miei" (My poor kids). "If an illiterate peasant can die with responsibility to his children as his last thought, he had far more character and depth than I'd ever thought about. I wanted to learn how much of that character was formed in [Southern Italy]."
After a long stay in Southern Italy and extensive research, Paolicelli wrote a broadly appealing book that, so far as I know, has no antecedent.
Southern Italians, Paolicelli concluded, have been surrounded by a culture that prompts people to try to live out personal identities as industrious and humane persons who are intensely committed to families, He describes the origins of family solidity in the social conditions that prompted people to draw tight the circle of trusted friends and family members.
Paolicelli's account of how the local people of Calabria treated the internees of fascist Italy's only concentration camp highlights the ways in which Southern Italians valued humane conduct. He tells that the goal of the director of the camp was to assure that the incarcerated "enemies of the state" would survive World War II. After the camp closed, until his death in 1987, the director regularly received letters, pictures of families, and presents from camp internees.
Paolicelli explores the ways in which Southern Italy suffered from the integration, in 1860, of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily into the new state of Italy. Paolicelli explores the thesis that the new government found it convenient to characterize Southern Italians as ungovernable, over passionate, and lacking in initiative. By reporting an interview with Professor Carmine Colacino, Paolicelli describes the ways in which many Southern Italians reacted, by rebellion and emigration, to the oppression of the new state's leaders.
In describing the post-immigration life of Rudolph Valentino (born Guglielmi, in the Apulia Region), Paolicelli illustrates the ways in which many immigrants and their offspring attempted to dissociate themselves from connections to South Italy and the stereotypical images of Southern Italians. To contrast Valentino's reaction to stereotyping, Paolicelli tells the history of Frank Capra; and explores Fred Gadarphe's view that Capra's movie, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, expresses the values of Southern Italy by showing that "a community creates an identity. Without that community, and each individual's role in that community, there is no identity."
A built-in knowledge of the ways in which community functioned, claims another professor, allowed the Italian immigrants to fit into life in The USA with relative ease. "They went to America without formal education, without any wealth or influence, but they carried with them over two thousand years of knowledge of culture and of people. They thrived. They knew the stories of mankind." "It was easy to deal with the Americans and with America - [Americans] offered honest pay for honest work."
Paolicelli could not avoid discussion of the ways in which many of the descendants of l'avventura have moved toward exploring their connections to the history of their families. He tells, for example of his interview with a large group of young people who were attending a program at the University of Potenza, who were reconnecting to the birthplace of their forebears. His observations about the extent of such reconnection had been spurred by the reception given to his first book, DANCES WITH LUIGI - a book that chronicled the ways in which he had become a "born again Italian."
And, of course, Paolicelli constantly adduces evidence of the ways in which Southern Italy has changed in the years between the great wave of emigration and the time in which he has been working through his reconnection. Most notably, he describes the ways in which the lives of the people of South Italy have changed as a result of the availability of opportunity. Young people are delaying marriage, adding to a decline in the birth rate. The educational policies, coupled with the conditions that induce young people to continue their education rather than try to seek employment, have made the South a major source of well educated professionals, many of whom must leave the region in order to find employment fitting to their educational level. At the same time, many of those well-educated young people are assuming positions of responsibility that once would have been occupied only by the offspring of well-connected families.
Anyone who seeks to develop a broader perspective on the results of the great Italy-to-The-USA immigration - l'avventura (the adventure) (especially Italian-Americans) will find Paolicelli's book to be a source of stimulation and of one after another useful insight into the course of Italian-American adaptation to life in The USA.

A Journey Continues

Paul's latest book continues his soulful journey that began with his book of discovery, "Dances With Luigi." As I read through this book, I felt as if I'd been lifted physically and transported to the scenes and times Paul writes about with such excitement. "Southern Sun" is a passionate retelling of the lifes of our ancestors. Stories that history books have missed or ignored but need telling none-the-less.

My grandparents and great grandparents came from villages near Cosenza, in Calabria,Italy. I'll never know all the reasons why they chose to leave, just a few bits and pieces. Through Paul's words I can now fill in some of the blanks and at least understand the economic challenges and attitudes that must have drove them to make such a courageous decision.

If you love the Italian culture and seek to understand and preserve it, this is a book to be read and shared with others.
Paul writes with a sense of wonder and zeal for every new bit of discovery he makes. He has created a road map for my own journey of discovery soon to be made when I follow his lead and retrace my family's roots. Roots that stretch back to Italy and were originally nourished under the southern sun. Bravo!