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# 70 •OCTOBER 19 , 2015
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IT AND US:
Palma Bucarelli
By Giovanni Verde
I wrote Birds of Passage to
honor the memory of my father and grandparents, all
of whom emigrated from
Naples to New York. The great wave of Italian immigrants started after 1871, when
Italy had been consolidated,
but il Risorgimento, did not
create a nation. As one statesman put it, “Italy has been
made. Now we must make
Italians.” The south spoke
different languages, had
been dominated for centuries by foreign powers, and
had distinct cultures.
Many in the north of Italy
held southern Italians in disdain. The south of Italy, or
Mezzogiorno, was already
poor when Italy was united.
The economic policies imposed by the North made
economic conditions wor-
WE THE ITALIANS | 71
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