By Dina Di Maio

When I was a little girl, I thought all that being Italian required was a last name ending in "o" like the ones in my family—Di Maio, Cafaro, Lago, Abbato, DeGiamatteo, Porchiazzo. Until I turned 18, I thought Shapiro was an Italian surname.

But when I moved to North Carolina at age 11, I found out the things I took for granted all became Italian—my dark hair, my dark eyes, the hair on my arms, the food I ate, the religion I grew up with, the place I came from, the music I listened to, the holidays I celebrated. In New Jersey, there are so many Italians that their traditions are commonplace—even adopted by other groups the same way we eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. There are so many Catholics, that the holidays we celebrated were celebrated by most people we knew in the same way. No one questioned why we ate fish on Christmas Eve because the fish markets were crowded with other people buying eel and octopus too. In North Carolina, the fish markets had oysters and spots, not the traditional fish we cooked. Here, my religion was condemned and disliked by many closed-minded people who asked if I worshipped statues, who looked at me funny, who avoided me. They asked if I was born in Italy. They said you have dark hair but you’re not an Indian. What are you?

I wondered.

Life changed in North Carolina. No more trips to bakeries on Sunday for Italian bread to go with dinner. No more pastries for dessert. There are few bakeries in North Carolina, as it’s not part of the culture, at least not as I knew them up North. The photographer didn’t understand why, at age seven, my sister got pictures taken in a wedding dress. No more pig skin in Sunday gravy. No more holidays with family. No more Halloween as I had known it. To some here, it was the devil’s holiday. Kids only trick-or-treated at certain hours of the day and people gave Jolly Ranchers and peppermints not candy bars. Life here seemed to be about religion. In sixth grade, the blond girls were afraid the KKK would come to steal one of them away as a sacrifice so our teacher locked the door. I was invited to a Baptist church’s vacation bible school for the summer. I went but couldn’t pledge to the Baptist flag. I didn’t want to change to be accepted, so I chose to be alone. I befriended the other Northern stragglers, the weirdoes, the misfits. At lunch period, I said rosaries in the bathroom, partly for prayer, partly in defiance (a trait I didn’t realize was Italian until I got much older). I read books on philosophy, history, Italians and Brooklyn. I read that Italians were lynched in the South, that they worked on the railroads in the early 1900s and a group was killed due to prejudice and that Italians were banned from coming to the state. I read about the mafia, Sophia Loren, Frank Sinatra and cookbooks. I found a picture of my grandmother’s Neapolitan village in a Time Life book. I watched Goodfellas, the Godfather movies, Raging Bull, A Bronx Tale. Everything I learned about being an Italian man I learned from Robert De Niro. In fact, I went back and forth from having crushes on De Niro, Pacino, Liotta and Pesci (yes, I had a crush on Joe Pesci and am probably one of two people who bought his CD). I tried making tiramisu but my ladyfingers were hard. I tried making gravy but it was bland. Just about all I can cook that is Italian is pasta al dente. My pasta fazool is watery. I listened to Jimmy Rosselli, Louis Prima, Lou Monte. I sang C’e La Luna phonetically the way my great-grandma sang "abby birday doo doo."

I tried to hold on to the part of me that was me—what seemed to define me since I had moved to North Carolina—being Italian.

I longed to go to Brookalina where all the Italians still were. I wanted to go to the festival of the Giglio in Williamsburg. At 22, I did and found myself a stranger. I couldn’t speak Italian; I didn’t celebrate feasts. I didn’t bet on horses; I didn’t like Atlantic City. I went to ziti dinners and marched in the Columbus Day parade. I joined Italian clubs but had nothing in common with the Brooklyn and Staten Island Italians I met. I went to Italian masses and listened to old women talk about grandchildren and constipation. I was not Italian in the sense one is Italian when one grows up with other Italians. I heard about life through the stories of my parents’ past. As an adult, left to find my place in life, I had gone to New York, as all people do who don’t belong in one way or another. In New York, I found myself. I went to New York, in part, to find the Italian spark that I ignited from but instead I found that fire had died long ago and I arose from its ashes.

I went to Little Italy for dinner where men from Argentina and Egypt pretended to be Italian. "Bella, come in for some dinner," they chanted. "Mangia." Jimmy Rosselli played from the storefronts of the few real Italians left. People mourned John Gotti and cursed Rudy Giuliani. Then the Sopranos came. Posters everywhere. The name Carmela as household as Dawn for dishes. The Sopranos brought Italians up to center stage again. Italians remembered how it used to be and I thought about how it never was for me.

Posters of the Sopranos hung in subways. Young men with pinky rings walked around Little Italy in suits like a scene from Goodfellas. The good Italian restaurants served Northern Italian cuisine, gnocchi and risotto in cream sauces—not regular macaroni. Italian bread didn’t taste the same and neither did pizza. A store in Hoboken, NJ, plays Frank Sinatra songs all the livelong day (or goddamned day depending on how close you live to it). New York is like my childhood memory—remnants of Italianness.

I cursed my parents for moving to North Carolina, for making me a reject, for taking me away from the familiar, the comfortable, the usual. But if the real Carmela, my mother, had not moved, perhaps she would have died with all that is Italian in America. Perhaps she would have become lost and forgotten like the songs of Garibaldi’s march, like the pumpkin ravioli my great-grandfather used to make.