by Alfonso Guerriero Jr.

The American media and the government's vacillating policies toward immigration over the past century have contributed to many like Gay Talese to question his cultural identity as an adolescent growing up in Ocean City, New Jersey during World War II. He described when his father prepared packages for his relatives in Italy, and while "I waited in-line to mail the parcels, there were US propaganda posters of Mussolini, Hitler and Hirohito."

Gay stopped in mid-sentence, sat further back, fully stretched his legs out and rested his feet on a marble table across from the two leather couches that we were both sitting on, and said, "The posters made me think, am I American, or Italian or even an enemy alien." The negative images and disparaging remarks forced Gay to search unknowingly for someone who could be that bridge between the writer's American side as well as his Italian side.

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Fonte: L'italo-Americano