Italians first settled in the Newark area in the 1880s. Italian Americans of Newark, Nutley, and Belleville shows these immigrants and their families from 1900 to the 1950s. The street peddler, the barber, the baker, the undertaker, the macaroni maker, the concert musician, and more are portrayed here in the grace and dignity of their work. Outings to the shore or Branch Brook Park balanced hard work and long hours. Family gatherings, weddings, first communions, and processions for the feasts of St. Gerard, St. Rocco, and St. Bartholomew were all a part of the life of the family and the vibrant Italian neighborhoods. More than 200 vintage photographs from family albums tell these stories.

The Italian/American Experience represents a meaningful attempt to inform Italian Americans about their group's varied experiences in America. This collection of eleven works offers readers an in-depth view of Italian American culture and heritage.

Michael Immerso traces the history of the First Ward from the arrival of the first Italian in the 1870s until 1953 when the district was uprooted to make way for urban renewal. Richly illustrated with photographs culled from the albums and shoeboxes in the private collections of hundreds of former First Ward families from all across the United States, the book documents the evolution of the district from a small immigrant quarter into a complex Italian-American neighborhood that thrived during the first half of this century. Book jacket.

Newark, New Jersey was a thriving Italian American community with ties to southern Italy and Sicily, with waves of immigrants coming from 1870 -1950. According to New Jersey census data from 2000 Italian Americans are the largest ethnic group in the state. There are two million citizens in the state that claim Italian descent. Many of these residents have ancestors who lived in Newark's First Ward. The purpose of writing this book is both biographical and cultural and also the need to preserve recipes as a link to the history of a neighborhood that vanished five decades ago. Many recipes have been verbally passed down and the primary focus of the book is to preserve them for future generations. Although, the book is original to a specific geographical area the peasant food described in the recipes has become very popular in upscale Italian restaurants. The food is healthy and delicious. The "old neighborhood" was teaming with specialty shops including grocery stores, cheese shops, bread stores, bakeries, meat markets, a chicken market, and colorful peddlers. There was a pizza parlor that always used linen tablecloths and napkins. Every house had a "stoop" (colloquial name for small front porch) and on every "stoop" was a favorite chair often carried down several flights of stairs and a Nona or Zia would be seated watching over the neighborhood. These immigrants took great pride in their homes and community and knew everyone on the block and provided an informal but effective "neighborhood watch." When they were not sitting on the "stoop" they could be seen sweeping the sidewalks. One ritual that has faded from the experience of Italian Americans is Sunday Dinner with "Sunday Gravy". It was a time when families sat and ate at a leisurely pace with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered in one home. It is hoped that COOKING FROM THE ITALIANS OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY - AN ETHNIC EXPERIENCE will provide each reader with the collective memories of sitting at the table with family.

Sunday dinners, basement kitchens, and backyard gardens are everyday cultural entities long associated with Italian Americans, yet the general perception of them remains superficial and stereotypical at best. For many people, these scenarios trigger ingrained assumptions about individuals' beliefs, politics, aesthetics, values, and behaviors that leave little room for nuance and elaboration. This collection of essays explores local knowledge and aesthetic practices, often marked as "folklore," as sources for creativity and meaning in Italian-American lives. As the contributors demonstrate, folklore provides contemporary scholars with occasions for observing and interpreting behaviors and objects as part of lived experiences. Its study provides new ways of understanding how individuals and groups reproduce and contest identities and ideologies through expressive means. Italian Folk offers an opportunity to reexamine and rethink what we know about Italian Americans. The contributors to this unique book discuss historic and contemporary cultural expressions and religious practices from various parts of the United States and Canada to examine how they operate at local, national, and transnational levels. The essays attest to people's ability and willingness to create and reproduce certain cultural modes that connect them to social entities such as the family, the neighborhood, and the amorphous and fleeting communities that emerge in large-scale festivals and now on the Internet. Italian Americans abandon, reproduce, and/or revive various cultural elements in relationship to ever-shifting political, economic, and social conditions. The results are dynamic, hybrid cultural forms such as valtaro accordion music, Sicilian oral poetry, a Columbus Day parade, and witchcraft (stregheria). By taking a closer look and an ethnographic approach to expressive behavior, we see that Italian-American identity is far from being a linear path of assimilation from Italian immigrant to American of Italian descent but is instead fraught with conflict, negotiation, and creative solutions. Together, these essays illustrate how folklore is evoked in the continual process of identity revaluation and reformation.

Italian-Americans compose one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States, numbering more than 14 million in the 1990 census. Though they have often been portrayed in fiction and film, these images are often based on stereotypes not borne out among the immigrant and assimilated population.