Buon Appetite! Welcome to THAT'S ITALIAN!
That is Soooooo Italian! These two girls are eating their spaghetti and are not even wearing a bib or using a mopene!
What a class act!
This web site is dedicated to the Italian American experience. My name is Francesca Roccaforte and I am a second generation Italian American. My maternal grandparents Antonetta and Miguel came over on the boat from Naples, Italy in the early 1900's. They settled in the East New York section of Brooklyn, New York, a very Italian neighborhood at the time. My paternal grandfather Luigi left Sicily around the same time and landed in New York to live and work. He married a Neapolitan -American beauty named Josephine and had four children. My father Frank is the third of the four kids. Frank met my mother Virginia when they were still teenagers. Her beauty is what caught his eye. They married in their early twenties and had three children. I am the youngest of our family, the only girl. I was named Francesca after my father. I inherited my father's flair for photography and writing and my mother's sense of design. Most of the photos are mine on this site except the one below which I found on a greeting card and thought it was amusing.
Creating this site is a good learning experience for me. I have been researching little facts and figures on the internet and learning all sorts of things about people who I never even thought were Italian because they change their names. I don't know if its because they think people cannot pronounce their names or what, but it isn't uncommon for Italian Americans to shorten and anglicize their names or for immigration to create new names
for them at Ellis Island! This makes family genealogy complicated and daunting for people like me who have
been doing family research for many years now.
Almost twenty years ago, I produced a study on Italian American women, conducted oral herstories, shot still
photography and videos of all these Italian Cultural events in the SF Bay Area including Sacramento. I attended
several American Italian Historical Association conferences as both an exhibitor and lecturer.
At this time, I also donated both my grandmother's needle point and crocheted blankets and their photographs
to the Joseph Calandra Institute in New York. I thought they would do a better job of preserving them then I could. I wanted to pay homage to my immigrant grandparents and what they went through to survive in America after they left Naples and Sicily.
Please do remember to celebrate Italian culture by eating a big bowl of spaghetti and saying a toast in their memories!
Buon appetite! Salute!
Francesca
What a class act!
This web site is dedicated to the Italian American experience. My name is Francesca Roccaforte and I am a second generation Italian American. My maternal grandparents Antonetta and Miguel came over on the boat from Naples, Italy in the early 1900's. They settled in the East New York section of Brooklyn, New York, a very Italian neighborhood at the time. My paternal grandfather Luigi left Sicily around the same time and landed in New York to live and work. He married a Neapolitan -American beauty named Josephine and had four children. My father Frank is the third of the four kids. Frank met my mother Virginia when they were still teenagers. Her beauty is what caught his eye. They married in their early twenties and had three children. I am the youngest of our family, the only girl. I was named Francesca after my father. I inherited my father's flair for photography and writing and my mother's sense of design. Most of the photos are mine on this site except the one below which I found on a greeting card and thought it was amusing.
Creating this site is a good learning experience for me. I have been researching little facts and figures on the internet and learning all sorts of things about people who I never even thought were Italian because they change their names. I don't know if its because they think people cannot pronounce their names or what, but it isn't uncommon for Italian Americans to shorten and anglicize their names or for immigration to create new names
for them at Ellis Island! This makes family genealogy complicated and daunting for people like me who have
been doing family research for many years now.
Almost twenty years ago, I produced a study on Italian American women, conducted oral herstories, shot still
photography and videos of all these Italian Cultural events in the SF Bay Area including Sacramento. I attended
several American Italian Historical Association conferences as both an exhibitor and lecturer.
At this time, I also donated both my grandmother's needle point and crocheted blankets and their photographs
to the Joseph Calandra Institute in New York. I thought they would do a better job of preserving them then I could. I wanted to pay homage to my immigrant grandparents and what they went through to survive in America after they left Naples and Sicily.
Please do remember to celebrate Italian culture by eating a big bowl of spaghetti and saying a toast in their memories!
Buon appetite! Salute!
Francesca
