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La storia di Mario Gendrachi è di quelle che racchiudono quasi interamente l’esperienza della nostra emigrazione. Nacque a Campobasso nel 1908 da Ernesto e Giuseppina. A solo due anni giunse, con i suoi genitori, negli Stati Uniti. La famiglia Gendrachi si stabilì a Philadelphia. Qui il piccolo Mario conobbe la difficoltà dell’emigrazione e la dure...

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Saturday, October 27, 2018 | 7 p.m. Duquesne University Power Center Ballroom, 1015 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA. Admission is free with ticket registration. You are invited to attend a documentary screening celebrating the Italian American experience. Brothers James J. and Justice Louis L. Manderino from Monessen, Pennsylvania were born two of six...

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When I found out National Pasta Day was a real thing, I started thinking about all the delicious carb-filled meals I've had in Philly. There's no shortage of Italian restaurants in this city serving phenomenal pasta. The first time I went to A Mano in Fairmount, I was left in awe of the restaurant's cavatelli dish, made with escargot, mushrooms, bo...

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Much like the Italian Renaissance itself, Lafayette’s Italian Studies program is experiencing a rebirth. The interdisciplinary program, which has existed at the college for more than six years, is being expanded by Professor Anthony Cummings, professor of music and the coordinator for Italian Studies. The Italian Studies minor, which currently cons...

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Gritty is on his way to becoming a Philly icon so much so that there's a movement to give Gritty his own mural.  "I’d vote for Gritty a hundred times.” Mark Macyk is like the hundreds of thousands who love them some Gritty but could the brand new Philadelphia Flyers mascot replace another Philly icon in the Italian market—former Mayor Frank Rizzo?...

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To hear Mark Spena rattle off the surnames of those who sat around the tables of his childhood in South Philadelphia – and ultimately, to hear the first chapters of what became a life spent in the love and preparation of food -- is to be invited into a scene from a movie about a large and very extended Italian family, and kindly asked to pass the n...

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Growing up in a strict Italian-American family was never dull though quite predictable.  My father, who was most certainly the head of the clan, had few rules that were explained with fanfare but my sister, Kathy and I clearly understood what was expected of us by the way he led by example.  Of all the things Dad imparted to us, I would say the imp...

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In the early 1940s, Jim Carasella was an usher at the Manos Theater in Jeannette. One day, he spotted the glamorous Royal Hawaiian Hotel in the background of a film. He dreamed of making it there in person. On a 2005 trip to Hawaii with his family for an American Legion Convention, that dream came true. “It took him 60 years to get there,” said his...

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Tucked away in the corner of South York Plaza is 700 gallons of merlot, Montepulciano and Syrah. The wine isn't hidden beneath century-old catacombs that are part of some long-forgotten slice of York County history. Rather, hundred-liter tanks and carboys sit in plain sight behind the bar of Wood Fire Italian Grill.  Vito Serradella, co-owner of th...

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I grew up with family stories.  My maternal great-grandfather, a hard-working immigrant from Abruzzo,  reacted to some now forgotten blow to his honor by hanging himself with his youngest daughter's jump rope in their West Philadelphia basement.  His wife, Philomena, was left to raise eight children, alone.  She suffered another devastating loss wh...

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