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The author is a journalist, based in Chicago
His name was Jimmy. No, wait a minute: Matthew. All right, Amedeo. My grandmother used to call them by many names.
Like many Italians who migrated to one of the largest generations of European and American migrants, they did not care what anyone called it: they just care that 4ft 10in all went to Ellis Island by the sea. German submarine “Berlin”, eight weeks before the first world war in 1914.
This is how my grandparents began to fall in love with American dreams. “Jimmy”, as he was known for his metalworking, went to work every day for the Bethlehem Steel corporation. He watched baseball in the living room on the way from the mill, in the Italian suburb of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He grows tomatoes in the backyard. And he died when he was forced to resign at the age of 70. He never spoke an English word, as far as I know – but I could not think of anyone more American than my Grandfather Bastianelli.
He may be surprised at what I am trying to do right now: prove that I have the right to become two Italian citizens through him, and to issue Italian passports to my Chinese-born children. In the 15 years I have known him, I have never heard him say one good thing about the “old world”. I could joke about the Tuscany cypress trees and the “strade bianche”, but they loved the stench of iron and metal bridges in Bethlehem.
He died before I told him I had learned Italian in the 1970’s – but he certainly would not have agreed. Her children never spoke a single word in her parents’ language, except for the insults she repeatedly chose from my grandparents.
Like many Americans of my age, I never considered asking him where he was born, or when. And I know my grandma is called Lucy – my daughter is named – but there is nothing else. Her well-known name was Shelbo, but what was that in original Italian? And he was born in 1898, as he says on his gravestone, or 1897 (in his social security records) or 1899 (his words). Did one of them ever become an American citizen? A 2019 vote Posted by ancestry.com, a genealogy company, found that more than 20 percent of Americans do not even mention a single grandfather: I fall into that category.
I have to put all this in order to get an Italian passport with the right to stay in the EU. Britain probably re-entered the EU, at this point, before I even checked. Because I am not the only Italian-American who is trying this: Italian ambassadors across the US have many requests, and they have many years left. I first heard this from my Italian-Chile-American nephew’s mother-in-law, and then I found several other friends doing paperwork there.
I thought I could do a DIY, until I couldn’t find my grandparents’ wedding record, death or birth certificates in the state museum. So I turned to My Family in Italy, a great mentor to Italian citizens in the United States. Founder Bianca Ottone says dual citizenship takes about three to four years: her organization can check everything for me (for $ 5,000 to $ 7,500).
Crista Cowan, an Ancestry genealogist, says that the search for families is not the only opportunity to stay in the EU. People turn to family history which they call “living times of truth” – “and the plague has become a moment of truth for many”.
“Family history gives us a sense of belonging,” she says. That’s why I broke down in tears when I found a picture of Jimmy’s grave – which I had never seen – in Ancestry. Findagrave site, I stumbled upon the death certificate of an uncle who I did not know I had.
Maybe, one day, advances in DNA technology will help my (adopted) children create a family descending from 5,000 years of Chinese ancestry. But, right now, they have a ball chasing their grandfather, Jimmy / Matthew / Amedeo, like the real Italian-Chinese-Americans. I just hope we catch him before I meet Jimmy and Lucy in heaven in Italy-America. There are so many things I would like to ask them.
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