We were sitting in Adele Negro’s kitchen in Albany, CA in 1993.  There were four of us, contemplating the exhibit we were about to construct—on the WWII story“When Italian Americans Were ‘Enemy Aliens,’” and what we could formally name it. We ran through all kinds of titles, trying to focus on how the story was all but unknown, but none seemed quite right. Then Pina Piccolo, who was teaching Italian in Berkeley at the time, said, “How about this: Una Storia Segreta.

In Italian, La Storia means ‘history’ but Una Storia means both ‘a story,’ and ‘a history.’ So Una Storia Segreta carries two meanings: both ‘a secret story’ and ‘a secret history.’” Immediately, we knew we had our title:  Una Storia Segreta: When Italian Americans Were ‘Enemy Aliens.’ That title and that exhibit have since become famous, though it took weeks and weeks of work by four people meeting and laboring without compensation, to make it a reality.