Far from Mulberry Street

"Finding the Mother Lode," a new film by Gianfranco Norelli and Suma Kurien, documents the Italian experience in California

Holidays

Learning Italian in a Los Angeles kindergarten

There is a public, not a private, school in California that is unique: it offers its students, beginning in kindergarten, full immersion in studies of a second language, which can...

Get the Best of Both Worlds: Rome & Los Angeles (or Here & Hereafter). All For Just $5,000US!

Last week I met my friend Mike Dugan in downtown Los Angeles to see his new place. It only cost him $5,000 and it is literally - to die for!

Vince Guaraldi--“the sound of Yuletide on these shores”

Some Italian-American notes about the man behind the music of Charlie Brown’s Christmas.

A Tourist Visits Italian in California

In recognition of co-blogger, Laura Ruberto, who intelligently expounds on West Coast iterations of Italian America, I offer my touristic encounter with things Italian in the...

Re-reading Diane Di Prima, in Honor of International Women's Day

San Francisco’s Current Poet Laureate, Diane Di Prima, moves Italian American Identity Above, Below, and Beyond.

Los Angeles's Little Italy

Author Marianna Gatto likens tracing the history of Italians in Los Angeles to that of “chasing ghosts,” since much of the history hasn’t been preserved. This fact seems to...

Radical Italian American Christmas Cards

Thinking about next year’s holiday cards, I turn to the leftist artists, Tina Modotti and Pietro di Donato.

Californians Sell Little Italy, One Crate at a Time

Fruit and Vegetable Crate Labels in California and the Italian Americans They Created

La Ruota della Fortuna, Niki de Sainte Phalle's take on an Italian Garden

Looking at the undercurrents of Italian migrant identity in Niki de Sainte Phalle’s Giardino dei Tarocchi.

The Gate on the “Golden Gate”

Reading Valenti Angelo’s “Golden Gate” to my five-year old son.