1/ Almost La Dolce Vita: How Did I Fall In Love With Italy?

A New Series About Life And Culture In Italy, From Apulia With Love

Me on Piazza Navona in Rome maybe twenty years ago

I love Italy. That’s for a fact. But I hate how it is romanticised in the media, tourism, and the movies. In these three industries, it has become the number one place for people to give an idyllic image of a country where, among many other things, a far-right Prime Minister is parading as a moderated right-wing head of state, there is no minimum wage, young people ready to work are forced to go abroad or to stay at their parents to get a chance to earn a living, non-white Italians don’t have access to citizenship, etc. And the list could go on.

Italy is a beautiful country for its language, cultural diversity, and people, but it is also a bundle of worries for people of my generation, the one before mine and future ones. From my observation, being Italian and wanting to live La Dolce Vita is a constant struggle, and I noticed it was even more so now that I am living in Apulia.

So why, as a foreigner and a Black one at that, did I decide to move to Italy in 2022?

Let’s dive into my love affair with Il Bel Paese from its origins to understand my choice.

I studied Latin from 13 to 22. If, at the beginning, I did so reluctantly, I quickly saw the benefits of hours of translation and learning Roman history, Latin grammar, conjugation and syntax.

Latin was an entry point to Italy, yet in middle school, though I knew the country existed, rightly because I was studying Latin and not Italian, it felt like reading a beautiful history book about a dead empire rather than a living nation. I wasn’t mature enough to connect the dots between the Roman Empire and modern Italy or how it shaped the French language and culture.

Only when I went to high school did my vision shift, thanks to a tall, blue-eyed lady with brown hair cut into a bob, who I didn’t know yet would influence my life forever.

It was a rainy day, and I never saw such a busy classroom. We were 40 students who chose as a third language/option Italian. But that morning, Madame T. chose violence. She crushed the enthusiasm of la rentrée that many a student feels, for she was speaking in Italian, seemingly not giving a fig about the sudden stony silence that took over the joyful hum that makes the first days of school. Many came to ‘learn’ Italian but didn’t expect to put this much effort into it. They probably expected it to be a recreational hour. Subjects in French schools are unofficially ranked, with the humanities often at the lowest, especially third languages.

A Glimpse On French Education As A Child Of The African Diaspora

And Madame T. knew it. For this reason, she showed from the beginning what her lessons were like. Four hours a week of full immersion into Italian, no French was accepted. And that’s how, from 40 students, we ended up being 7 week after week. It was her survival of the fittest test to see who was really serious about learning Italian.

Madame T. wasn’t just an Italian teacher; she was Italian. This little detail made a huge difference. After all, unlike the typical language teachers who are taught the language and culture, she was born into it, which gave her a no-sense approach to the subject taught and allowed her to present her home country from a realistic point of view.

Madame T., who must have been in her mid-to-late thirties at the time, was from Lecce, Apulia—the region I am living in now—and was married to a French man whose Italian grandparents came to France in the 50s. I mention this because both represent two stories of Italian immigration in France at different times. It also shows that Italian immigration to other European countries has been a constant for decades.

High school in France lasts three years, and Madame T. was pregnant each of them. She had four children, one girl and three boys, whom I met when I went to have dinner at her place, which was always the occasion to observe dynamics that put a smile on my face:

• Madame T.’s 6-year-old girl could switch seamlessly from French to Italian and vice versa. She once gave me her stamp of approval, turning to her mother saying, “Mamma, la tua allieva è bravissima, parla benissimo italiano!” [Mom, your student is really good, she speaks Italian very well!].

• Her 4-year-old understood Italian perfectly yet refused categorically to speak it. I still vividly remember Monsieur T. mixing French and Italian to ask his son, “Où sont tes calzini?” [Where are your socks?] and the little boy answer, annoyed, in complete French.

• Her 3-year-old was a little prankster, so he talked in Italian or French whenever he wanted to.

• Monsieur T., though he grew up hearing his parents talk to each other in Italian, was never addressed in the language because his family wanted him to speak only French. Yet, he spoke Italian (because he learned it secretly) but with the Frenchest accent ever!

---

Almost La Dolce Vita is a new section I want to turn into a podcast to bring you closer to Italian culture. To make the podcast a reality, upgrade your subscription to a monthly (6€) or an annual (48€) one.

---

Being 7 in the classroom with Madame T. allowed for such a bond between her and us and enabled us to approach Italian free from the shackles of the curriculum.

I remember we spent hours watching Italian classics, such as The Bicycle Thieves, A Special Day, and Rocco and His Brothers. She would also introduce us to the most famous Italian singer-songwriters, such as Lucio Dalla, Fabrizio De André, Lucio Battisti, and Francesco De Gregori.

After someone was surprised to hear how different Roman actors sounded in movies vs how she talked, Madame T. used the song Caruso by Lucio Dalla, the chorus of which is in Neapolitan and was inspired by a 1930 Neapolitan song called Dicitencello vuje, to make us understand in Italy each region had its own dialect. She then told us that since Italy’s unification happened in 1861 in some regions, especially the southern ones, many people still spoke their dialect rather than Italian. She took Apulia as an example, telling many people of her generation had grandparents who didn’t speak Italian at all and barely went to school. At the time, nobody in the class knew about Italy being a ‘young nation’ because, in history and Latin classes, it was either referred to as the Roman Empire or Italy, whatever the period. There was no mention of the country being made of various kingdoms such as Naples, Sardinia, Sicily or the dukedom of Savoy. Madame T. didn’t give us solid history lessons (the curriculum was too heavy for that), but she ensured we had the basics to deepen our knowledge of Italy.

Once I began studying Italian for my bachelor's degree, I realized how much Madame T. prepared me—because I was the only romantic who decided to further my study of Italian for the love of it. I knew by heart some of the excerpts of the Divine Comedy by Dante because she made us read If This Is A Man by Primo Levi on our third and last year with her. It wasn’t in the curriculum, but she thought we should read it. The memoir is harrowing yet so beautifully written, as the author describes the atrocities he went through in Auschwitz. It is the best to read and enjoy Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. Page after page, it is evident the author recalling excerpts of the poem is his way to stay sane, survive, and cling to humanity—the power of words.

Madame T. is the reason I fell in love with Italy and am here writing Almost La Dolce Vita. Though I love the country, I find the media's narration about it and how Italy markets itself to the world unreal. Such fallacious storytelling doesn’t benefit the country and its people.

I have found myself increasingly irked by the stories media outlets publish about Italy’s next town to invade and how some middle-class and wealthy foreigners—often Americans—are flocking to Italy for a better life yet are oblivious to the culture and the impact of their immigration to the country. On the last point, it is always amazing to observe how the Italian government will welcome such people with open arms when their presence means inflation for the locals, yet is so adamant about pushing back against hard-working foreigners whose main faults are not being wealthy and white. Double standard much, you say?

---

BEFORE I GET STONED FOR THE WORDS ABOVE…

The Grand Tourist is a podcast I enjoy listening to because it touches on topics I love, such as design, food, travel, fashion, and architecture. This summer, I stumbled upon an episode entitled Living The Dream: House Hunting In Italy, so I listened because everything regarding Italy interests me. For the premises, I didn’t expect the episode to be about people like you and me house hunting; I knew it would be about rich people. The title, starting with ‘Living the Dream’, already set the tone for me about the unrealistic narration of Italy I am talking about.

The host, Dan Rubinstein, talked to four people in the episode. Among them was an Italian real estate agent whose job was to sell beautiful properties to wealthy foreigners in Italy. There was nothing surprising until the real estate agent, an Italian woman, said Southern Italy was culturally poor compared to Northern Italy. This is precisely the type of narration that blights some Italians about Southern Italy. And if a professional can tell such a thing in a podcast, imagine what image you give about Southern Italy to your clients who already don’t see the country for what it is.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a book presentation by Apulian historian and writer Bianca Tragni, whose mission is to debunk the idea that Southern Italy isn’t cultured. In her last book, Le Sciagurate Regine di Napoli [The Wretched Queens of Naples], she explores how the kingdom of Naples met its demise through four queens - among them, there was the infamous Maria Carolina of Austria, Marie-Antoinette’s sister. This book allows to understand with historical facts why southern regions were robbed of the possibility of development and, therefore, were impoverished financially and culturally. How I wish this real estate agent were at that presentation!

---

As a foreigner in a country I love and respect, I would like Almost La Dolce Vita to be an outlet where the media's narrative about Italy is debunked. Hence, I will not only share my experience as a foreigner but also the culture and people of this country, hoping to bring you an honest portrait of it first in writing and then as a podcast. So, Benvenuti!

---