Becoming Italian American: POWs and National Identity

Laura E. Ruberto (June 01, 2008)
Two national holidays, la Festa della Repubblica and Memorial Day, bring up the question of what it means to belong.


June 2, la Festa della Repubblica, marks the day in 1946 when a referendum passed to rid Italy of a monarchy; it comes a week after Memorial Day in the U.S., first celebrated to commemorate fallen soldiers of the Civil War. The two national holidays remind me of some of the ways ethnic identities get formed in relation to larger national ones, that “imagined community” we are all part of to one extent or another.

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