A Land of Newspapers: Introduction to the Special Issue on Periodicals of the Italian Diaspora

The press of the Italian diaspora has long attracted the attention of scholars. Recent works over the past two decades in particular have moved the field forward by bringing to light the history of Italian periodicals across the various countries of the diaspora and by repositioning the study of these publications relative to their role in shaping and reshaping Italian migrant identities over time. This introduction to a special issue on periodicals of the Italian diaspora aims to provide an overview of the important thematic areas of inquiry that these studies have opened up as well as to situate the contributions of the authors of this issue within these new avenues of research.Among the various Italian diasporic communities, print journalism has historically played a prominent role in propagating ideas concerning politics and culture, ultimately shaping emerging identities vis-à-vis Italy and host countries. Newspapers and magazines provided news and commentary from Italy, as well as from diasporic nations and the world at large, geared toward the immigrant community. As such, they not only reflected diasporic viewpoints and attitudes of the time and place in which they were published but also actively shaped those viewpoints through the promotion of ideas and ideologies including Italian nationalism, assimilation, the modernization of the diasporic consumer, and the advancement of overtly political agendas ranging from left-wing radicalism to Italian Fascism. Newspapers and magazines also served as significant vehicles for commercial advertisements, fundraising, and investment. They were major purveyors of cultural expression: Many featured serialized novels and touted musical and theatrical productions, while others showcased food, fashion, and design. Historic as well as contemporary newspapers and magazines are documents of the Italian diaspora that offer opportunities to understand shifting concerns and aspirations around issues of politics, economics, language, and identities reflecting and reinforcing notions of race, ethnicity, class, and gender.Writing about the abundance of Italian-language periodicals in the United States, Robert Viscusi stated, “Italoamerica . . . is a land of newspapers” (2014, xviii). From Europe and the Middle East to the Americas and Australia, wherever Italians went a trail of newspapers soon followed, and the larger the community the more newspapers it had. A recent collection of essays, Voci d'Italia fuori dall'Italia: giornalismo e stampa (2021), edited by Bénédicte Deschamps and Pantaleone Sergi, demonstrates the scope and reach of Italian migrant periodicals around the world and over time. The number of Italian diaspora periodicals along with the size of the most popular dailies in Argentina, Brazil, and the United States is indicative of their centrality to the communities they served. In Brazil, Angelo Trento's recent analysis counts more than eight hundred Italian diaspora periodicals, the largest of which, São Paulo's Fanfulla (1893–1965), enjoyed a circulation of more than fifteen thousand copies in 1910, making it the second-largest daily in the city (Trento 2021, 121; Lesser 2013, 98). Among the five hundred Italian publications in the Southern Cone identified by Sergi, La Patria degli Italiani (1876–1931), the long-standing voice of the Italian community in Buenos Aires, had a circulation of more than forty thousand, the third largest in all of Argentina (Sergi 2021, 157; Bertagna 2009, 9). And lastly, among the nearly one thousand Italian-diaspora periodicals in the United States over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Il Progresso Italo-Americano (1880–1988) boasted, at its height during World War I, a circulation of 175,000 (Bertagna 2009, 6; Vellon 2014, 23).With the few significant exceptions mentioned above, the vast majority of Italian-diasporic periodicals had short lifespans of months or even weeks and were often the personal project of a single editor with limited distribution. While this could suggest that the press did not reflect the views of the vast majority of Italian working-class migrants or impact their everyday lives, recent scholarship has instead demonstrated both the reach of diaspora periodicals and their essential roles in the transnational lives of Italian migrants around the world. The very variety and financial instability of the diasporic press, rather than diminishing its value to scholars, actually reflects well the precariousness of the Italian diasporic communities themselves and speaks to the way in which the shifting fortunes of print media were interwoven into the fabric of the similarly shifting lives of Italians in the diaspora. As Peter Vellon explains, “Italian newspapers reflected the heterogeneity and fluidity of the community itself” (Vellon 2014, 23). Furthermore, the sheer volume and diversity of periodicals, big and small, mainstream and radical, shows the importance they had within the Italian diaspora. Using New York City as an example, Vellon calculates that there were 241,843 copies of Italian newspapers in daily circulation in 1920, serving a migrant population of 803,048, making one newspaper available to every 3.3 Italian American New Yorkers. And their reach was even greater, given that, as was true everywhere in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, newspapers were often shared, discussed, and read aloud in communal spaces so that their reach went well beyond the number of individuals who purchased a copy (Vellon 2014, 10).Part of the undervaluation of the diasporic press no doubt derives from the popular misconception that the majority of Italian migrants were illiterate. In reality, at the height of the great migration, approximately 53 percent of Italians in the United States, including 55 percent of Italians in New York City, and 65 percent of migrants to Buenos Aires, were able to read and write (Baily [1999] 2004, 65), percentages that, while low by today's standards, tended to be higher than average in the migrants’ Italian regions of origin, underscoring the importance of the written word in the world of Italian migrants not only as a source of news and information but also as the primary means of connection with relatives back home. The migratory experience itself also played a vital role in increasing literacy rates back home as separated family members relied on written personal correspondence to communicate with one another. This phenomenon was especially notable among the women who stayed behind and managed family affairs and remittances for their migrant spouses. For example, Linda Reeder notes that attendance in evening classes in the Sicilian town of Sutera increased by 40 percent in the years of mass migration (2020, 104).The study of Italian-diaspora newspapers in a given country has traditionally centered on their role in facilitating or slowing the process of ethnic integration into the new host society. New perspectives on the Italian diaspora recontextualize this question by focusing instead on the transnational realities of the migrants, for, as Donna Gabaccia explains: “Migration made transnationalism a normal dimension of life for many, perhaps even most, working-class families in Italy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Family discipline, economic security, reproduction, inheritance, romance, and dreams transcended national boundaries and bridged continents” (2000, 11). The diasporic press operated within these transnational networks following the circulatory routes of the migrants themselves and provided the news and information that connected family and paese-based networks across oceans, maintaining the transnational links between local Italian paesi and their satellite communities around the world (Deschamps 2020, 23). Antonio de Ruggiero recounts in his history of Tuscan migrants in Brazil that even in the remotest mountain hamlets, villagers had precise knowledge of the day-to-day happenings half a world away in cities like Buenos Aires, New York, and São Paulo through the circulation of news and information from print media. In fact, it was through the medium of newspapers, along with letters sent home, that “La merica” existed in the imagination of many Italians, and in turn it was through newspapers that the migrants’ image of the Italy that they left was shaped (De Ruggiero 2020, 93).The transnational reshaping of identity through the mediation of the press led to a growing consciousness among migrants of their italianità. In adapting Benedict Anderson's pioneering work on print culture in the formation of national identities as “imagined communities” ([1983] 2006), scholars have noted the fundamental role of the diasporic press in creating among migrants of disparate regional and linguistic backgrounds a unifying sense of a shared culture and identity, an Italian national consciousness that ironically formed only after having left Italy. But if increased connections with the home country provided by the press instilled a newfound sense of italianità, they also facilitated the integration of Italian migrants into the host country by forming group cohesion and by creating a collective ethnic identity within the new nation's wider society. The result of this transnational process, according to Deschamps, led to the “birth of an Italian American identity,” which was “founded upon an italianità the definition of which varied from one periodical to another but which always adapted itself to the American context, permitting a growing hybridization of the feeling of national belonging” (2021, 201).Many of the most widely circulated mainstream periodicals in the diaspora were funded by prominenti, wealthy members of the community who served as political and cultural brokers between the migrant working poor and the local elite. They were the self-appointed spokespeople and benefactors of Italian diaspora communities. Through their newspapers, they reflected a generally patriotic bourgeois worldview that promoted the Italian language and defended its culture, while at the same time imparted to its readers the values of the host society in order to facilitate the community's integration and garner wider acceptance from the local elite (Deschamps 2020, 355; Gabaccia 2000, 124). In addition to promoting a diasporic sense of italianità during the age of mass migration, the newly established mainstream migrant newspapers also contended with the harrowing conditions and bigoted and discriminatory perceptions migrants experienced in various host countries. In this context, newspapers played the vital role of advocate and mouthpiece for the Italian community.2 As Deschamps writes, “In Australia, in America, and in Europe, Italian newspapers indeed built on a compelling urge immigrants felt to find a voice that could also help them fight against stereotyping and victimization” (2011, 83; emphasis in the original). For as Deschamps explains, the diaspora press “shared the hopes, anxieties, and protests of immigrants who confronted the injustices of a society where racism set the tempo of social life and where the captains of industry worried little about the working conditions of their labor force” (2020, 355). This advocacy is especially notable in the work of Vellon (2014), who details the ways the Italian American press conceptualized and defended Italian migrants’ racial identity in the face of discrimination, in the process highlighting the complicated and fraught efforts among Italian immigrants to integrate themselves into the United States racial hierarchy.In addition to advocating for migrants, the press also provided a variety of practical services, including offering employment opportunities, advertising for local businesses, and entertainment, all of which further helped shape a sense of community and made the press ubiquitous in the everyday lives of Italian migrants (Deschamps 2021, 194). Even something as seemingly inconsequential as an advice column could serve as a vital source of information, as was the case in Il Progresso during the 1950s when women navigated new US migration laws and affairs of the heart (Zanoni 2017). Periodicals also instilled and reinforced a consumerist ethnic identity, what Lina Insana (2017) calls “consumer citizenship,” which negotiated transnational realms of consumption, from imported Italian products to tipo italiano (Italian-style) goods produced by diasporic-owned companies, to mainstream host-country products and stores (see also Zanoni 2018; Cinotto 2013, 105–179). Elizabeth Zanoni points out that the shifting migration patterns around World War I that witnessed increasing numbers of Italian women arriving in cities like Buenos Aires and New York to join husbands and other male family members encouraged a feminization of Italian migrant consumerism as is evidenced in the gendered-language ads published in newspapers like La Patria degli italiani and Il Progresso (Zanoni 2018, 101–129).The important counterpoint to the dominant voices of the mainstream diaspora press was the radical press of the sovversivi. Offering something fundamentally different from the diasporic nationalism promoted by the prominenti, these publications by adherents of anarchism, syndicalism, socialism, and communism took an expansive internationalist view of Italian identity and politics, one that championed a transnational working class that was being exploited by nationalist-minded capitalists and politicians. As Nunzio Pernicone wrote in a special issue on the topic for The Italian American Review, radical periodicals “were instruments of class warfare whose primary objective was to disseminate ‘propaganda’ to the comrades and to uninitiated workers” (2001 3). In addition to critiques of capitalism, they also attacked the prominenti as well as the Catholic Church. Through an examination of the radical press's art and literature as well as the practical information on health, hygiene, and education it provided, Marcella Bencivenni (2011) highlights the radical press's wider importance as a “source of identity and self-expression, providing a sense of community and shared purpose. Indeed, more than any other document, the press captured the whole of the sovversivi's world, conveying not only their political ideas but their entire culture” (68).From promoting the cause of the Risorgimento in the mid-nineteenth century to battles in the press over Fascism and anti-Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, Italian political debates have long played out within the pages of the press. As Deschamps explains, the first papers published in the diaspora were written with an express political agenda: “For Risorgimento exiles, political action and journalism were two sides of the same coin” (2021, 187). Negotiating between enhancing Italian and out on of the wider migrant community was always a which most with the of the and its and ultimately with the of World War and in the process within the diaspora were the of in Italy, the diaspora press in various countries both promoted and the and the of to the of to the racial laws Bertagna and the at home, the Italian diaspora provided a from which to and from the pages of these debates within the press, both and were new of what it to be an Italian of Italy as well as the transnational role migrants played in the political debates within the the in the diasporic press to Fascism and anti-Fascism with Italian relative and cultural within the host reflecting not only a sense of but also their about as they to integrate into the political and fabric of their new World War diasporic periodicals, especially in the United States, were on in political affairs on both sides of the Newspapers like in the Italian in and New York Il Progresso published to impact Italian at a time when the Italian was political In fact, the along with the led a Italian to relatives and in Italy not to and this same US Italian-language papers along with ethnic and were also the laws in place the 1920s at different points in the twentieth century, the Italian-diaspora press adapted to the in its migrant by out new and and this is reflected most in its language, as periodicals from Italian to to in the host language, be it or The issue of a Italian-language was the of on the of Italian-language newspapers in the United States at the of the at the of his journalism his of these periodicals by are In his and also and about For example, that the contemporary Italian who were Italian is made of as and so to them as newspaper major in the in the in about the political and Italy at the time. notes that the of new or elite migrants (see and is an source for new is perhaps most about this on the is the that it was featured in the issue of the newly as an of a new Italian American the of publications to the great of itself as the of a and most consumer, the of Marcella and migrant Italian the as a to emerging identities and to to the and shaped new ethnic and consciousness with that and of identity, which the of identity, and which the of cultural In a of this and political the attitudes within the larger Italian as and While the was in for a five its varied to a different way of being in of Italian migrants into US society over the to the of the Italian language and the of diaspora periodicals is a that to into following that of the great As and have the of a new of working-class Italian migrants to the United States after World War helped cultural and social that were diminishing among Italian and This was true of the newspaper Il which a in to a newly migrant a labor the in established the which attracted many of the same migrant The and history of the is perhaps in the Italian-language which featured and who were and migrants, and Italians in the newly established who made the of and within the Italian American the of of also in this special issue all upon many of the and as to the growing on the diasporic press and its role over time. 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And the importance of the Italian press in America, little work has on the in making the two American contributions to this special issue especially The first of the and in São Paulo's by highlights the importance of and in the pages of São Paulo's Italian ethnic press with a on one of the most important publications in Brazil, Il to publications were in the most of the of the Italian press, making up to percent of all Italian-diaspora periodicals in Brazil and to a wider than newspapers (Trento 2021, As the pages of and other Italian attitudes toward the major social and political debates of the City, of the of by to the on Fascism and anti-Fascism in the diaspora by highlighting the of politics, and culture through a analysis of the Italian periodical In to light an important if periodical from which is itself an for Italian As such, a of the ways in which even areas of the diaspora to Italian from that even the Italian communities in important publications (2021, third in this special The of Peter in by also into the over for the in the diaspora as well as a analysis of on the education of Italian American in the pages of the especially well an Italian American community in as it its way toward integration into US society. of this is the that advocacy for the study of Italian language and culture among Italian was written in an Italian-diaspora in the special Italian in by Marcella a to the field through its on a periodical published at a time when many were the of the Italian ethnic press in the United highlights the ways that the of the national and in Italy to Italian American readers their and new sense of in their ethnic The Italian featured in from that of to to a Italian American that and as of Italian This transnational consumerist between Italy and Italian within the pages during the and had a impact on the Italian diaspora in the United States to featured all with publications from the twentieth century, but beyond its of the that this special issue serve as a of what is to be and opportunities to scholars of Italian with print media. While there are and where diasporic periodicals of the past be there is work to new and to to For example, the Robert collection of Italian American and other publications and in the of is being and for to the In a in 2021, his collection of Italian-language periodicals and to the This is by a with a and a providing scholars the of the The of and Italian-diaspora print media is perhaps the significant from a few issues from to the of Il Progresso is as The of knowledge and scholarship of one of the Italian diasporic press. This special issue is but one of the avenues for and concerning Italian diasporic for a to Italian diaspora