Although Imbro, a Little Rock resident, is also one-quarter Swedish, she strongly identifies as an Italian-American. Her naturally blonde hair disguises the fact that her family makes their own marinara sauce from scratch. Her father has spoken Italian since childhood, and she is working to learn it, too.
Imbro is entering her senior year as an International Relations and Global Studies (IRGS) and Economics and Business double major. A study-abroad experience is mandatory for IRGS majors, and Imbro tailored the requirement to fit her own interests. Her two-week trip gave her a chance to reflect on her ancestry, as part of a larger self-designed Odyssey project called “The Composition of an ‘Italian’.”
“I’ve always wanted to know why I’m so proud of my Italian-American heritage,” Imbro said. “It’s simpler to just be ‘American,’ but Italian-Americans always seem to say they’re Italian-Americans. My mom has Swedish heritage, but she doesn’t say she’s a Swedish American.”
Imbro wanted more than the typical tourist experience in Italy. She searched HomestayWeb.com and quickly found a kind, English-speaking Sicilian woman eager to host her. Imbro stayed with her and her 16-year-son in Palermo, just two hours away from the tiny fishing village where her great-grandfather grew up and where some of her family still lives.
The home stay allowed Imbro to get a much more personal view of Sicily, including visiting the family’s farm in the country. The property was home to 150-year-old olive trees – and the ruins of a medieval town. It wasn’t until midway through the two-week stay that Imbro realized she was staying with Palermo’s aristocracy.
“I had been wondering why all the guys my age, the brother’s friends, dressed so preppy, with sweaters tied around their shoulders,” she laughed. “These were the richest of the rich, so it was not the typical Sicilian experience in that respect.”
Imbro did have the chance to meet a more typical Sicilian family – her own.
“I met my father’s cousin, who is a working teacher, and my dad has never even had the chance to meet him,” she said. “My dad was kind of living vicariously through me. I could send him all the pictures of his aunt he hasn’t seen since he was 4, who just started sobbing when she saw me.”
Imbro used several of her relatives as research subjects, asking them why Italians and Sicilians are so proud of their heritage. She also asked them to define what makes an Italian an Italian or Sicilian a Sicilian. Imbro casually discussed these topics with a wide range of people, but she asked her host mother and three of her relatives to write out their responses, for use in the appendix of the research paper she is writing.
Several of the responses focused on Sicilian history, a series of conquests by foreigners that has melded Arab, Norman, Greek and other influences into a unique regional culture.
“They said it can be because of the convergence of the cultures, and it can be because they’ve been around since centuries B.C.,” Imbro said. “They don’t really know why they have the pride – they just believe themselves to be the best. It was almost ridiculous, like: ‘We have the best looking people; we have the best culture; we have the best history; we have the most beautiful cities.”
Sicily is home to several remarkably well preserved Greek temples, of which the Sicilians are also intensely proud.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Athens and see the architecture, but the Sicilians I met told me, ‘You wouldn’t even enjoy going there after seeing this,’” Imbro said. “That’s what I mean by pride: Even their Greek temples are the best!”
The pride was also apparent in the near-religiosity with which the Italians watched Italy soccer games. In the half-hour leading up to a match, the streets were packed with cars of fans desperate to get home to see it. During a Euro Cup match, businesses closed and the streets and sidewalks emptied. When Italy lost, Imbro’s host family appeared devastated.
Imbro’s indifference to the sport earned her some flak. The gist: “How can you be an Italian-American if you don’t watch (and worship) Italy soccer games?!”
Moments like that throughout the course of her stay allowed Imbro to parse the Italian and American halves of her hyphenated identity. In some ways, the things she had associated with being Italian were actually very American. Imbro had expected Italians to act like her relatives in New York and Philadelphia, with the Atlantic aloofness. As it turned out, the Sicilians were very warm and open – more like the Southerners she had met living in South Carolina and Arkansas.
On the other hand, Imbro had ascribed some of her father’s behaviors to his Italian upbringing. He had retired from Wall Street in order to buy and run a small business, so he could spend more time with his family. When Imbro told her host brother and his friends that story, they were taken aback.
“They respected it, because family is very important to Sicilians, but they also said that they would never take that same chance, that that’s a very American mentality,” Imbro said. “In Italy, if you have a secure job you would never leave it, and your family would understand because you’re the father, you’re the patriarch, you’re the breadwinner.”
One of the most surprising moments for Imbro was when she watched her host family cook. Making seafood sauce involved combining a can of pasta sauce with a can of tuna – near sacrilege to the American Imbros.
“My father thinks that’s horrible,” Imbro said. “But our family came over in 1914, so it’s kind of like a time capsule. They’ve progressed over there, just like we have, and no one really has time to sit at home all day and make sauce from scratch.”
Although Sicily was not entirely what Imbro expected, she fell in love with the place and the people.
“I could totally live there for the rest of my life and be completely happy,” she said. “They asked me to stay for another month or two, but I couldn’t change my flight. I would love to go back. As long as I learned the language and developed some patience for sitting in traffic, I could definitely live there.”
In the meantime, Imbro is spending the rest of her summer working for her father’s business, Party Time Rental and Events. In her free time, she researches the politics, culture and architecture she observed in Sicily.
“There are so many different aspects that were magnified by my trip, and now I want to research all of them,” Imbro said. “It’s like Pandora’s Box; it’ll never stop.”
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Imbro’s trip was sponsored and partially funded by the Hendrix Odyssey program, a curricular program that offers funding and credit for experiential learning projects at home and abroad.
"Your Hendrix Odyssey: Engaging in Active Learning” is a major component of the Hendrix curriculum. The philosophy is, “You learn more when you do more.” Each student is required to complete three Odyssey experiences selected from six categories: artistic creativity, global awareness, professional and leadership development, service to the world, undergraduate research, and special projects. Imbro’s project was Global Awareness.
Hendrix, founded in 1876, is a selective, residential, undergraduate liberal arts college emphasizing experiential learning in a demanding yet supportive environment. The college is among 165 colleges featured in the 2008 edition of the Princeton Review America’s Best Value Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884.
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