Just how “Italian” are Italian-Americans? This is a question that is of  interest not only to the Italian-American community itself,  but to those of us in academia and business whose job it is to determine how to appeal to  that target audience. How do they identify themselves? What is their emotional relationship to Italy and America?  What are they interested in?

These are questions that as a writer for this newspaper I often think about. Not too long ago La Voce di New Yorkpublished an excellent lengthy article on the impact of Italian language instruction in North America and the world and along the way, these fundamental questions were examined.