When I think of my Nana, I’m five years old again. It’s the year 2000 and we are in her kitchen. A pot of pasta and peas (pasta e piselli) simmers on the stove, its peppery scent perfuming the air. Nana stands along the wall, chatting with my mother over the phone. She wraps the spiral cord around one hand as she stirs the sauce with the other, and checks the cabinet to make sure she has a box of Ronzoni ditalini. I sit on the floor holding a small plastic nativity set, using it to act out epic journeys, romances, and battles. I played with Nana’s nativity set long before I understood what it was. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the smooth surface of Mary’s blue veil beneath my fingers.
We lost Nana in June, suddenly, shockingly. As part of my grieving process, I’ve done a lot of thinking about cultural inheritance and the ever-transforming nature of identity.
The author’s grandmother.
Nana was born Diana Elizabeth Gumiela in New York City on November 27, 1943 to Louise Maiorana and Aloysius Edward Gumiela.1 Her mother was a first generation Italian American; her family, originally from Messina, sailed from Napoli on the Citta di Milano in 1903. Her father was a first generation Polish American; his family, originally from Moczyska, sailed from Antwerp to New York City on the Lapland in 1910.2 Aloysius—always referred to as “Edward,” his middle name—was a sailor in the U.S. Navy. He left the family when she was very young, and Nana never spoke about him. Some topics were too painful.
And so, though she was half Polish, Nana and her sister Louise were Italian American. They were raised in a vibrant Italian American extended family and Nana wore that identity proudly for the rest of her life. As an adult, her household bore the remnants of her Italian Catholic upbringing. It was evident in the painting of Jesus adorning the popcorn walls of her Levittown living room, the nativity set in the kitchen, her four children in the local youth group, and the cross she wore around her neck.
Nativity sets have long held importance in Italian life, conveying important theological lessons, sacred meanings, and moral values. Saint Francis of Assissi is often named as the creator of the nativity, or presepio–a live version of the scene of Christ’s birth staged in his church in Greccio in the 13th century.”3 In the 17th century, wealthy Italians in Napoli created large scale presepi and invited the public in to view these extravagant Christmas scenes.4 During the 19th century, smaller nativity sets became part of family traditions across Italy, traditions that spread to the United States with the Italian diaspora.5
18th century Neapolitan nativity scene. Juan Quintas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Folklorist Joseph Sciorra has studied the use of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in Italian American homes; he argues these traditions—including presepi—are examples of vibrant ways Italian Americans have used material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial displays to shape New York city’s religious and cultural landscape.6 For me, that meant play. Scholars in many disciplines have noted the crucial role of play is an important part of skill transmission, enculturation, and identity building, and it was one of the most important ways I learned and interacted with my Italian heritage.7 Through play, these messages of family and belief, culture and continuity, community and belonging became familiar and dear to me.
Liz Sullivan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
My work as a historian has shaped my understanding of my own Italian American identity. As a maritime historian, my work often deals with themes of separation, ocean travel, and transformation. I’ve read harrowing accounts of whaling voyages and immigration ships which add nuance to my understanding of life at sea and the harsh realities my ancestors likely encountered.8 I’ve also found immense value in contextualizing my own family’s place within the larger American story. For example, I have used my great grandmother’s work as a radium dial painter as a lens through to examine gender and labor in urban cities during the interwar period.9 Contextualizing history in this way—through my own family’s experiences—makes it real to me.
Much of my historical research has entailed genealogy, building family trees to trace households and networks across time and space. This process has also involved unpacking familiar “myths of origin” and reconciling family narratives with larger realities of diaspora, labor, and relationships. AncestryDNA has forced me to reconcile with expanding and collapsing the way I understand my identity. I have vivid memories of discussing ethnicity in elementary school. “I’m Italian, Irish, and German!” I would proudly proclaim. Time, technology, and research has brought welcome complications to that narrative. Joseph Sciorra has argued that the Italian American identity did not result from a linear path of assimilation; instead, the creation and maintenance of this identity has been fraught with conflict, negotiation, and creative solutions.10 Though I am proud of my Italian heritage, for example, I am adamant in my condemnation of one of those “creative solutions”—the celebration of Columbus Day.11
Identity is an ever-changing process, and we enact our identities every day. Especially during this difficult year, I slip into my Italian American heritage like it is a well-loved wool sweater. I clutch childhood memories of my Nana, her Levittown kitchen, her cooking, and her nativity set to myself like they are priceless treasures. And, though I consider myself more spiritual than religious, I know that when I have my own children, I’ll be sure to place a nativity set among our Christmas decorations to foster that same sense of joy, tradition, and continuity.
- New York Birth Index, 1910-1965, Ancestry.com
- “New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924”, FamilySearch, accessed 2 March 2021.
- Cassandra Vivian, “An Italian American Christmas in Western Pennsylvania” Western Pennsylvania History (Winter 1999): 168.
- Nathaniel Hauser, “Christmas in Naples: the Theological Art of the Italian Presepio”, Forum Lectures (2004): 297.
- Joseph Bonocore, Raised Italian-American: Traditions from the Italian Neighborhood (iUniverse, 2005)
- Joseph Sciorra, Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City (University of Tennessee Press, 2015)
- Kristine Henriksen Garroway, “Childust Archaeology: Children, Toys, and Skill Transmission in Ancient Israel” in Children and Methods: Listening to and Learning From Children in the Biblical World (Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies, 2020): 55-75.
- Cian McMahon, The Coffin Ship: Life and Death during the Great Irish Famine (NYU Press, 2021)
- Erin Becker, “Great Grandma Barrett was a Shining Woman: Reflections on the Radium Girls and Industrial Disease” Gotham Center for New York City History (December 3, 2019)
- Joseph Sciorra, Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives (Fordham University Press, 2011)
- Kathy Anastasia, “Columbus Day and Consequences: Re-examining Italian American Commemorations, Historic Anxieties, and (Some Of) the Narratives They Silence,” Tapestries: Interwoven Voices of Local and Global Identities 14, no. 1 (2015)
