Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

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This is my American family

On the Fourth of July 1951, my parents were married. Not long ago, I asked my mother, who, at 87, is still going strong, why they chose that date. I thought there might have been some symbolism. She quickly disabused me. It was because that was the only time “the market” would be closed, and my father’s family could attend the wedding.

The market was Nocera’s Grocery Store, on Smith Street, in Providence, R.I. My grandfather Lawrence, who also opened a liquor store a short block away, had started it in the early 1930s.

Like many immigrants, Lawrence was a risk-taker. He had gone to Rhode Island from Italy at age 8 with an older brother. When Prohibition ended in 1933, he and his brother opened a liquor store. When it became clear that the first store couldn’t support both families, my grandfather opened a second liquor store in the Mount Pleasant section of Providence — then an Irish middle-class enclave — a block from the grocery store.

My father, who was a high school math teacher, worked there part time, but his five siblings spent the better part of their adult lives working for either the grocery store or the liquor store.

My mother’s side of the family was Boston Irish and English. As my mother tells the story, her grandmother’s sister, a young girl in Ireland, was sent to sell a cow; she used the money to buy a ticket to America. Then, once she settled in Brighton, Mass., she saved enough money to bring her sister over, too. That was my great-grandmother. By the time my mother was born, the Irish dominated Boston politics — and the patronage that went along with it. They voted for Irishmen on the ballot. Not surprisingly, my mother had two uncles who were Boston cops.

My mother says that while growing up in Providence, where she moved as a child, she never thought of herself in particularly ethnic terms; that may have been because her generation had been in America long enough that their tribal identity had begun to fade. But my father and his brothers and sisters were keenly aware that they were Italian-American — and it was not always a happy thought. Like many children of immigrants, what they wanted was to be thought of as Americans, not ethnic Americans. They spoke Italian to my grandmother, who spoke no English, but they rarely spoke Italian to one another. They eventually lost contact with their Italian relatives.

When World War II broke out, my father and his two brothers immediately joined the armed forces; my uncle, Dan, had his elbow shot up during the Normandy invasion.

My father and his siblings all had Italian first names, which bothered some of them to no end. Dan’s given name had been Dante; he changed his name long before I was born.

Still, they rooted for the Yankees because of Joe DiMaggio and voted for John Pastore, who became the nation’s first Italian-American governor in 1945 and its first Italian-American senator in 1950. For much of the next three decades, Italian-Americans dominated local politics and patronage in Providence, just as the Irish had in Boston.

My mother tells me that on the eve of her marriage to my father, one of her relatives pulled her aside and said, “They’re not like us, you know.” But my mother could see that wasn’t true in any way that truly mattered. As Italians and Irish began to intermarry, tribal instincts lessened to the point of disappearing. My last name is about the only Italian thing about me. The same is true for my siblings and cousins. We epitomize the melting pot. We never vote based on ethnicity alone.

The mayor of Providence today is Angel Taveras. He is the child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and is the first Hispanic to serve as the city’s mayor. Over the past decade-plus, Hispanics have become the single largest ethnic group in Providence, outnumbering whites 38.1 percent to 37.6 percent, according to the 2010 census data.

Taveras is running for governor, and one of the people campaigning to replace him as mayor is Jorge Elorza, the child of Guatemalan immigrants. Also running for mayor is Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, who has, famously, twice been the mayor of Providence and had to leave office twice on felony convictions. Bob Plain, a liberal political analyst in Rhode Island, told me recently that the Cianci candidacy would be “an interesting referendum on your parents’ Providence.”

My mother, for one, is not longing for a return to those days. She recently threw a meet-and-greet for Taveras, whom she also supported when he was running for mayor.

“He’s going to win,” she said enthusiastically. It’s their turn, I could almost hear her thinking.

Joe Nocera is a columnist for The New York Times.

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