At some point, Italian Americans stopped being a monolith, particularly as a voting bloc. Then at another point, they started swinging ever more determinedly towards the right. And then, along came Donald Trump.
In many ways Conte's approach mirrors that of Barack Obama, but it is the differences that may just mean his survival once the gates of lockdown Italy are lifted.
The monolingual approach adopted for the political aim of making Italians speak with one voice has succeeded. But the campaign has been needlessly costly.
The rise of populism has brought with it a shift in traditional power structures, even those which were previously unseen.
As a Sicilian, I never regard people from Greece as outsiders. Indeed, they were an integral part of the history of Sicily almost from the beginning.
As the boomerang flies, so it flies back. The stories that lived within me, passed down from my grandparents. Theirs was an Italy of nostalgic approximation. Mine is an Italy that is bowed but unbroken, a phoenix that will rise again.
We absolutely need to think of amnesty for those economic costs that many millions of us will not recoup, but it needs to become more than a fiscal policy for the reconstruction of Italy. It must become our worldview.
How Francis Ford Coppola's work of art ultimately did more harm than good to Italian Americans.
What’s left of the Jewish permanence in Sicily? Not much remains to the untrained eye, but the integration of the Jews with the rest of the population left marks on Sicilian customs and traditions.
The memory of the presence of Muslims on the island remains and can be readily seen practically everywhere.
