Forty Years on the Masthead: My Life as an Ethnic Journalist
This paper tells the story of my experience as an editor and writer for the Chicago-based newspaper Fra Noi. Started by the Scalabrini missionary Father Armando Pierini in the 1960s, Fra Noi was more community newsletter than newspaper, designed to unite and rally Italian Americans around the building and maintenance of the Villa Scalabrini, a home for the Italian aged. As a young boy, I would read each monthly issue to my nonno, who could not read or write English or Italian.
In 1978, after my first trip to Italy—the first of my family to return to Castellana Grotte, from where my mother’s parents had emigrated—I began writing about my experiences and sent off a few pieces. Nothing, no response for months. In spring 1985, Jim Ylisela Jr. became editor and found a file full of my submissions. He called me up, and thus began my regular appearance in the paper as well as a reluctant apprenticeship as a reporter and founding editor of the Arts Section.
As I wrote, I began to understand that my audience was not only those who read the paper at the time, but also those yet to be born. Other writers would ask me if I thought what we were doing made a difference. I told them we were producing messages in bottles that would someday wash up on other shores. Writing for the future became my motivation. Now, that past’s future is here in the stories I tell about more than 40 years of writing I have done for the publication.
Fred L. Gardaphe is Distinguished Professor of English and Italian/American Studies at Queens College, CUNY, and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. He has been writing for Fra Noi for over forty years. A Fulbright Fellow (University of Salerno, 2011), he has served as president of the Italian American Studies Association, MELUS, and the Working Class Studies Association. He is cofounding editor of Voices in Italian Americana and cofounder of Bordighera Press. His books include Italian Signs, American Streets, Dagoes Read, Moustache Pete is Dead!, Leaving Little Italy, and From Wiseguys to Wise Men. His forthcoming study on humor and irony in Italian American culture will be published by Penn State University Press in 2026.
