Un Buon Natale Con Italiani!
This photo was shot with my digital camera on Christmas Eve–the Night of the 7 Fishes in coastal Italian families.
You can read about this tradition in my memoir Left of the Dial.
We are from a town near Naples so we are Neapolitan thus we celebrate the holiday with 7 fish–the lobster is the big attraction.
Years ago when I was the Health Guide at the HealthCentral website I researched via a simple Google search the impact of culture on a person’s recovery from a mental health challenge.
Trust me I couldn’t find any studies that corroborated the link between culture and recovery. I couldn’t find this for Italians, Hispanics, African Americans, or any other ethnic folk.
You can read more about Italian American Mental Health in the book Benessere Psicologico: Contemporary Thought on Italian American Mental Health. The book costs $20 and is well worth the splurge.
It was published in November 2013. To this book I contributed a 10-page chapter titled “Recovery is Within Reach.”
Years ago at HealthCentral I did write about the impact of culture on my recovery. I wrote about finding a female Italian American therapist to talk to.
I do think that ethnic identity can have a positive role in helping a person recover.
I stand firm in my assertion that I recovered because of my mother. I recovered because I had the love and support of my close-knit Italian American family.
It’s time to stop judging people. It’s time to stop stereotyping people. We each of us need to see the person first. Not attribute to them a characteristic you think they have just because they’re from a certain ethnic identity.
Which is to say that not all Italians are bigots. A friend of mine who was Sicilian had a woman tell him she couldn’t hang out with him because he was Italian and she was African American. She had always been told to have nothing to do with Italians.
Can you imagine that?
I say: come on over and have some lobster!
Come on over and have some lobster!
Insieme.
We’ll treat you like family.
Left of the Dial 