Dear Readers,
Welcome to the Summer 2022 issue of Italian Americana, which marks our second issue produced in collaboration with the University of Illinois Press. This issue features articles that exemplify how global issues and perspectives can emerge from local investigations. Specifically, the oral histories that are at the heart of Donna DeBlasio and Martha Pallante's article “Becoming Italian American in the Nation's Heartland: The Immigrant Experience in Ohio's Mahoning Valley” examines the differential experience of Italian immigrants who settled in northern Ohio to work in the steel industry. Despite the geographic and cultural origins that they shared with their compatriots who settled in cities in the northeast, they developed distinct identity markers in response to the exigencies of factory employment and the multiethnic environment in which they lived and worked. One notable example is the higher rate of educational achievement among the immigrants’ children, which the authors attribute...
