ABSTRACT
The early insistence that the child contribute to the family was to have portentous consequences in a society where the mastery of high literacy was the only legitimate means by which an immigrant might gain access to the corridors of power. For Italian Americans the presentation, arrangement, and even the serving of foods is an art form that hides behind the appearance of spontaneity. As Americans have fled to the suburbs, it is easy to underestimate the role that demarcated and defended city neighborhoods played in amplifying the already fierce Mediterranean masculinity of the immigrant males and their sons. Gang wars of murderous ferocity were waged among Italian, Irish, Polish, and, to a lesser extent, African American and Hispanic youth on a weekly basis from the early years of the Great Migration (1880–1920) through the late twen-tieth century. Most Italian Americans mediate their existence in American society through a series of uneasy and shifting cultural compromises.
