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As late as the 1940s, newspaper stories written about Buffalo’s Italian population were painted with wild strokes of exotic color. “Off in a section of the city where the rays of the sun, on a bright day, glisten down upon dilapidated housetops and seek their way into narrow streets and by-ways with which the place abounds, are colonized a people i...

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At age 17, Constance Cassinelli came across letters dated as far back as 1899 addressed to her great-grandfather, Nicola Cassinelli, from his siblings. When she held them, she said it was as if the letter’s authors were giving her instructions: “Remember us. Remember us.” Right then, she decided to turn that request into a promise. Later, her fathe...

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Madalyn Monto grew up outside New York City and knew she'd live there one day. After college in San Diego, she did just that and got a job in marketing. But she wasn't prepared for how rigorous her work schedule would be. And, like a growing number of Gen Zers and millennials, the absence of a work-life balance didn't sit right with her. She and he...

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In 2017, Mussomeli, a quaint town in Sicily, launched an innovative program offering homes for just one euro to combat depopulation and revitalize the local economy. Toti Nigrelli, the deputy mayor, recently revealed the initiative's striking success, with nearly 95% of the available homes sold in five years, attracting a diverse group of new resid...

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When Hollywood produces a film about Italian Americans, it usually is of a certain vintage and the purveyors of such art are usually their descendants. In a change of pace, enter the talented duo of director Alejandro Monteverde and screenwriter Rod Barr, who collaborated last year on the highly acclaimed Sound of Freedom, one of the most successfu...

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He seemed invincible. And for a while he was. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916, John Basilone was the sixth of 10 children brought into the world by Salvatore Basilone, an Italian immigrant, and his first–generation Italian–American wife, Dora. A typical Catholic boy of his age, the future Marine was educated by nuns, good at boxing, and not inte...

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Stephanie Longo, a Doctor of Strategic Communication candidate at Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA, USA) is seeking participants for a survey that will help complete her dissertation, which seeks to determine the ancestral homeland marketing factors that motivate ancestral travelers. Ms. Longo is looking for survey respondents whose families i...

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We always talk about the “old days” when we followed traditions the family held onto, mostly in reference to food, family gathering, religious practice etc. These are all a great part of our family history, but they don’t help us with our genealogy research. Some of those traditions are so ingrained that they are never talked about. They just “are....

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Imagine moving across the ocean, where the rhythm of life dances to a different beat, where family dinners linger into the night, and where children's laughter fills the piazzas well past sunset. This is the reality for Sarah L. Thompson, an American mother navigating the beautiful yet complex terrain of raising her children in Italy. Unlike the st...

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On August 9, 2023, my son, Mike Palmer, and I boarded a flight from Pittsburgh, Penn. to Milan, Italy. We were on a journey to follow the footsteps of my late father, William Albino Vicini, who, in turn, made a similar trip to Italy in 1976 to visit our relatives and pay respects to his father, Albino Vicini, in Trefiumi, Italy. In Milan, we gazed...

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