Valentina Cecchi (President of Casa della Cultura Italiana - North Carolina)
North Carolina is the ninth most populous state in the United States. Its largest city is Charlotte, which after New York is the American city with the largest number of banks: this has led it to be, at the beginning of this century, the fastest growing area in the United States. The region of which Charlotte is part, stretching from New Jersey in...
Robert Bianchi (President of the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America)
When Italians began to arrive in large numbers in the United States, they had no representation and were heavily discriminated. Their rights were not recognized, until 1905 when a visionary, Vincenzo Sellaro, realized that only by uniting and associating themselves could they defend their rights and celebrate their origins. That is when the Order o...
Carla Gambescia (Author of the book "La Dolce Vita University: An Unconventional Guide to Italian Culture from A to Z")
We begin the eleventh year of We the Italians interviews with a true excellence in the divulgation of Italian culture in the United States. Carla Gambescia's name is known to many Americans who have the good fortune to have Italian origins and others who do not, and it is synonymous with Dolce Vita: it is precisely to Dolce Vita that Carla turns wh...
Luigi Di Maio (Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation is the home of our country's foreign policy. This glorious and historical Italian institution is in charge of the relations with other countries, with Italians around the world, and it is here that people are selected and strategies are decided to then represent Italy abroad, in the vari...
Lisa DeNatale (President of the Vermont Italian Cultural Association)
If since the beginning of the pandemic I personally have not yet had the opportunity to physically travel back to visit any of the many friends of We the Italians scattered across the United States, thanks to our interviews I often have the chance to take a virtual trip and get to know the various Italian communities both in the most famous areas o...
Maria Teresa Cannizzaro (Curator of the exhibition “Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro. La gemme in Dante e nei bijoux americani”)
For those like me who are not particularly familiar with the world of jewelry, which is also such a fundamental part of the production in which Italy has always excelled, it was curious to verify Maria Teresa Cannizzaro's passion and knowledge for the world of bijoux. A world that I do not know, but that I have learned to appreciate by being in the...
Bill Ronayne (President of the Mario Lanza Institute and Museum)
The world of American entertainment has a history that is truly full of Italian American talents, in every field. When it comes to music, there are many singers who have brought up the pride of Italian immigrants who have seen in the success of these great artists also a sense of pride for their origins, often described without respect and with man...
Robert Allegrini (President of the National Italian American Foundation)
It's not easy to take over the reins of NIAF at this time, with a pandemic that is still doing damage and casualties, and that has left major economic and social problems in the United States. Several programs of the National Italian American Foundation, as well as other national and local Italian American and non-Italian American organizations, ha...
Anna Grassellino (Italian scientist at Fermilab in Chicago)
Sometimes it happens that I find out about the story of a person who personifies exactly the message that We the Italians has been representing for 10 years now: when Italy and the United States come together, the result is wonderful. Other times I have the pleasure of interviewing people who embody one or more positive symbols of Italy. Still othe...
Giulio Picolli (Coordinator of the Italian September 11 families)
This is a very special interview for me, and of course, not just for me. Even though I wasn't in New York, my life changed forever on September 11, 2001. It changed forever but of course, not like what happened to the relatives of the victims of that horrendous day. For all these years I have spent every September 11 limiting my work as much as pos...
Jennifer Barbata Jackson (Author of the book "Dixie's Italians: Sicilians, Race, and Citizenship in the Jim Crow Gulf South")
At a time when we still have to painfully realize how much the racial question is an open wound in the evolution of the United States of America and a very urgent situation to be resolved, our Italian heart in love with America is also shaken by the specious and mistaken attempts to promote hostility between the African American and Italian communi...
Mauro Balestrazzi (Author of the book “La tournée del secolo”)
In the list of the great Italian excellences who have found their fortune in America, one of the highest level names is that of Arturo Toscanini. A century has passed since an extraordinary event, an exceptional tour that saw him as a protagonist in America together with what would later become the orchestra of La Scala in Milan. Today there is a...