ABSTRACT
Benedict Anderson gave the reader the concept of the imagined community that creates a nation of people who, though they might never know one another, yet see in their mind’s eye “the image of their communion.” Italian Americans, who initially identified more with their village, city or region than with Italy as a whole, became Italian in America only when they realized that Americans did not make the subtle distinctions they themselves made. The ideal family in both Italy and the United States was represented by two structures. The ties that bound la famiglia —understood as both the nuclear and the extended family—together were often strengthened, or at times augmented, by the tradition of godparenthood: comparatico. Perhaps no other phenomenon than the transformation in the use of the term paesano more thoroughly reflects the pan-Italian identity that slowly emerged in America.
