ABSTRACT
Most Italians who came to America were from poverty-stricken backgrounds. In his memoir The Other Side: Growing Up Italian in America Vincent Panella notes that the consistent custom of an Italian family is to feed its guests and overfeed itself. Most Italian-Americans come from southern Italy and Sicily, a traditional peasant culture that stressed strong family and community ties and nurtured extreme distrust of outsiders. The effects of a long peasant tradition that views education as unimportant are difficult to overcome. Italians are the largest Catholic ethnic group in America today. Opera, as a musical art form, was born in Florence, Italy, at the onset of the seventeenth century. It was started by aristocrats who wanted to revive the stories of ancient Greek mythology. Today Italy has an international reputation for making quality shoes that are the height of fashion.
