La Grande Famiglia and & Creativity of World War II Italian POWs in the US

This week on The Italian Radio Hour - In the 1950s, a New York radio station created ‘La grande famiglia’, a program for Italian Americans sponsored by a Progresso tomato company. The mechanism was simple, but ingenious: in exchange for ten labels as proof of purchase, a correspondent would go and record the voices of relatives in Italy. In a world without a telephone, the thirteen seasons of the show represented, for many people, the only link between their loved ones and their homeland. In 2022, Cristiano, the author of the podcast, discovered that in America there were thousands of records with recordings of the broadcast, sent as a souvenir by the radio station to the participating families. Thus began a search that reconnected the threads of personal and collective memories, starting from an extraordinary sound archive.Today, I am joined by two leading scholars in Italian American studies: Prof. Joseph Sciorra, folklorist and Director of Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, and Prof. Laura E. Ruberto, cultural historian and professor at Berkeley City College. Both have made lasting contributions to the study of migration, memory, material culture, and identity within the Italian American experience.With their numerous publications and continuous collaborations, Ruberto ad Sciorra are helping us listen differently to the Italian American past—and understand how everyday voices shape collective heritage.In addition to talking about the significance of La Grande Famiglia, Joseph and Laura describe their jointly curated exhibition at the Calandra Institute entitled: “CREATIVITY and WORLD WAR II Italian P-O-Ws in the United States”, which presents creative work made by Italian soldiers who were imprisoned by the Allied forces during World War II, focusing on those held in the United States. These objects, often made from salvaged materials, ranged in size from a small inlaid ring to a large Catholic chapel with a 65-foot bell tower. There is no archive or collective depository about World War II Italian prisoners of war in Allied hands. To document this creative work, the exhibit pulls from research completed by co-curator Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College), including historical photographs, rare remaining artifacts, oral testimonies, written accounts, family memories, and private collections. The exhibition, designed by Polly Franchini, brings together a selection of these objects, images, and stories to present this little-known history. Highlighting the artistry of incarcerated Italian servicemen (some of whom maintained allegiance to Fascism) is not meant to trivialize the atrocities of war or to minimize the resistance of those who fought at great sacrifice. Rather, it offers an opportunity to reflect on the myriad ways that identity and imagination are shaped materially during the adverse conditions of war.