ABSTRACT
At first thought the question “What ever happened to Little Italy?” seems a bit silly, since they seem to be all over the country. Little Italies have long been the subject of study by historians and social scientists, but equally important have been their value to novelists, journalists, and Hollywood as well as television screenwriters. Despite all the attention to the subject however, their existence is no longer merely a matter of history and demography but increasingly one of definition, and for want of a better word, “authenticity.” Although most studies of Little Italy are singular if not unique, all of them are valuable as noted by Richard N. Juliani:
While a complex synthesis is ultimately desirable in order to understand the overall Italian-American experience, it is equally important that we construct the smaller, basic pieces that would make it possible. For this reason, detailed studies focused upon specific locations of Italian settlement in the United States for limited periods of time are essential. 1
In a similar vein, Robert F. Harney and J. Vincenza Scarpaci argued that despite their obvious presence in virtually every city:Scant attention has been given to drawing a historical and sociological profile of the Little Italy in North America. No comparative studies of Little Italies exist, and the sources upon which such study could be based on a combination of associational papers, parish records, the memory culture of those who grew up in the neighborhoods and the ethnic press—are rarely, and never systematically preserved. 2
As have other scholars of the Italian American experience, Harney and Scarpaci also complained that much writing about Italian enclaves is “filio-pietist.” As an antidote to these and other less objective works they called for serious detailed studies that would make fruitful comparisons possible. As an example they offered the broadest anthology on the subject in which they sampled nine of the most prominent Little Italies in North America.