By Vincent J. Cannato

"And so you know the difficulty in becoming an American. It isn't a sudden process. You get over it. But you don't ever quite get over it. You carry it with you. That's the great—and not so great—aspect of being or trying to be an assimilated American."

So says writer Gay Talese about his experience growing up Italian American in 1940s South Jersey. It is an introspective and angst-filled admission, somewhat unusual for Italian Americans, who tend to vacillate between voluble romanticism and hardheaded pragmatism. Yet his words are an important reminder that the process of assimilation is often, to borrow a phrase from Norman Podhoretz, a "brutal bargain."

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Source: http://www.neh.gov/