Look! Look! - Books

New history of Bay View’s (and Milwauke’s) Italian heritage

The unique patterns of Italian and Sicilian emigration are writ large in Anthony M. Zignego’s new book, Milwaukee’s Italian Heritage: Mediterranean Roots in Midwestern Soil, as are the social, economic, and political forces in Italy that impelled the Italian diaspora in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Based on his UW-Milwaukee master’s thesis, the academic underpins Zignego’s narrative. However, his text is colorful, infused with stories and anecdotes of Milwaukee’s Italian immigrants drawn from oral history and newspaper accounts, letters and memoirs, and supported with data from church and census records. The text is richly illustrated with photos, some that will make Bay View hearts flutter.

A distinguishing feature of the Italian communities in North America, Zignego stresses, was their transient nature. Chain migration and return migration characterize the pattern of many Italians who traveled and worked in Milwaukee, Chicago, Buffalo, and New York City. Some worked in the United States for part of the year, and then returned their native village. Others made several trips back and forth.

Between 1905 and 1920, more than 50 percent of Italian immigrants in America returned to their homes in Italy, often in November. They stayed in Italy until spring when they returned to the States with one or more family members. Astonishingly, 13 million people left Italy between 1880 and 1915, Zignego writes, the largest emigration from any country in recorded history.

Zignego points out that the majority of Italian immigrants settled in the Third Ward, migrating from southern Italy and Sicily, while another, considerably smaller population settled in Bay View, migrating predominantly from central Italy and the Piedmont in northwestern Italy. In 1910, there were 4,788 Italians in the Third Ward and over a thousand in Bay View. Among the Bay View settlers were Giocondo Groppi, who opened a grocery story at Delaware and Russell avenues in 1912; Remigio (Charlie) and Eleanora Cialdini, also grocers, whose store was on Delaware Avenue; and Baptiste Gardetto, who established a bakery on St. Clair Street in 1932 (which grew and grew and was sold to General Mills in 1999).

Zignego devotes three of the book’s five chapters to the experience of Milwaukee’s Italian immigrants, exploring the neighborhoods, living conditions, work, and the social tensions between those in the Third Ward and Bay View.  He delves into family life within the Italian community, including an exploration of the role of women in the development of the Italian culture in Milwaukee, both inside their own ethnic community and among other ethnicities via their roles as shopkeepers who served their neighbors. The final chapter demonstrates how the first and second world wars served to solidify Italian immigrants’ identity politically as Americans while retaining their cultural identity as Italian. During that same period, feste celebrations became popular, which celebrated aspects of their American and Italian identity and heritage.

The book is a fascinating exploration of the Italian migration, including the transient nature of thousands of those émigrés, which disguishes their immigration pattern. Especially appealing are the sections about the establishment of their communities in Bay View, Milwaukee’s Third Ward, and in the Brady Street neighborhood.

Regrettably, the publishers did not include Zignego’s index, which diminishes the book’s utility as a reference work. Despite that lamentable omission, the work is a rich contribution to our knowledge of Milwaukee history, and a fine tribute to the legacy of the people of Italy and Sicily who made Milwaukee their home.

Zignego’s forebears emigrated from Portovenera, Italy (in Luguria, on the Mediterranean, south of Genoa). He grew up in Milwaukee. Leroy Zignego and his brother Vernon Zignego (the author’s grandfather and great uncle) established Zignego Company, Inc. in 1955, a construction company in Waukesha. See calendar for his forthcoming appearances at Boswell Book Company and the Italian Community Center.

Milwaukee’s Italian Heritage: Mediterranean Roots in Midwestern Soil

Anthony M. Zignego
The History Press
Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-59629-836-1
$19.99

Just right for some, not all

No time to write your memoir?

You’re wrong: just six words required.

Skeptical? Perhaps the 1,000 examples in It All Changed in an Instant-More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure, the second volume in this hyper-truncated genre developed by SMITH Magazine, edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith, and published by Harper Perennial, will change your mind.

Launched in 2006, SMITH is an online magazine specializing in storytelling, with a penchant for personal narrative. The editors developed the six-word genre based on the real or apocryphal tale where Hemingway wins a challenge (in a bar-where else?) to write a novel in six words. His nano-narrative, according to the legend was, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Many of these mini memoirs are more aphorism than life story, but among the 1,000 tiny tropes readers will find the witty, sardonic, bitter, sweet, and ironic. A few examples:

• Cloudy with chance of sun. -Julie Beman
• Former boss: “Writing’s your worst skill!” -Amy Tan
• I turned eleven. No Hogwarts letter. -Laura Murray
• He knew about her peanut allergy. -Saaleha Mamjee-Mayet
• From bar singer to Halloween costume. -Taylor Hicks
• Most dying is done at work. -Cameron Vest
• Ending our relationship on Facebook? Classy. -Quin Browne

Not for everyone, It All Changed in an Instant is for those who enjoy collections of jokes, wit, inspirational verse, quotations, and meditations. A subject/theme index is included.

The first book in this series, Not Quite What I Was Planning was on the New York Times bestseller list for six weeks in 2008.

It All Changed in An Instant-More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure

Edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith

Harper Perennial; 978-0-06-171943-1; Paperback; $12

The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin

There’s a bill currently in the Wisconsin Legislature that, if passed, will place a new symbol, along with the badger, violet, and robin, in the state’s pantheon. The lucky little life form being looked at by the Legislature is Lactococcus lactis, the one that helps convert milk to cheese.

If you doubt the microbe’s merit, consider the alchemists who rely on it-hundreds of Wisconsin’s cheesemakers who produce more than 600 varieties of cheese.*

Forty-three of the state’s consummate cheese artisans are deftly and articulately profiled in a new UW Press release, The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin.

Self-proclaimed cheese lover James Norton, a food writer, and Becca Dilley, a photographer, roamed the state to interview 43 master cheesemakers who create varieties ranging from “ordinary” cheddar, feta, Swiss, and Parmesan to the not-as-ordinary chèvre, Crescenza-stracchino, Finnish juustoleipa, SarVecchio, Gorgonzola, and Limburger.

In his introduction, Norton relates the genesis of the state’s master cheesemaker program. The impetus that drove its creation was threefold: the desire to collect, preserve, and transmit cheesemaking knowledge, to provide a research site and opportunities, and to develop a branding and marketing program to promote quality Wisconsin cheese, which would result in financial returns to the state.

Created in 1994 by the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, the two-year Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Program was patterned principally after the rigorous Swiss model. Part of their mission was to recognize and preserve the talent and knowledge of the state’s cheesemakers. Establishing a certification program that would confer master status to program grads was a goal. Another was marketing the cheesemakers and their products via the program’s trademarked “Master’s Mark.”

Earning the program’s master cheesemaker credential entails meeting stringent standards. Before would-be masters can apply, they must have been in possession of Wisconsin cheesemaking licenses for 10 years and been making the cheese for which they seek certification for five years. Only after meeting those qualifications, are they permitted to take the strict oral exam conducted by program board members. Following admission, there are two years of courses, and “constant testing of [their] cheese and evaluation of [their] plant,” culminating in a written final exam.

Program participants choose one or two cheese varieties to “master” during their training, and upon completion of the program, receive their certificate and medal, the master title, and permission to use the Master’s Mark on labels of cheese they produce for which they’re certified. Norton notes the program has graduated only 50 masters to date (as of November 2009).

Folded into the main body of the text that’s comprised of the cheesemakers’ profiles are informative elements about the history of Wisconsin cheesemaking, and the art, science, and lore of the complex craft, often enlivened with entertaining anecdotes.

For example, in the profile about Jeff Wideman and Paul Reigle (Maple Leaf Cheese, Monroe, Wis.), Wideman explains how the old Monroe dairy co-op, and many like it, operated. In 1922 there was a network of 3,000 small co-ops throughout the state that produced Wisconsin’s cheese, but which dramatically declined mid-20th century when mass production replaced the small, local producers. Wideman related how the co-op system operated, citing the Monroe dairy co-op. Milk was delivered to the cheese plant from local farmers, who like the cheesemakers, were co-op members. The milk was transformed to cheese, graded, and sold to a single buyer. The co-op invoiced the buyer, who sent payment to the co-op’s bank. Those proceeds were deposited, by percentage, into the respective farmers’ and the cheesemakers’ accounts.

Another example of what can be gleaned from the profiles is a description and photo of a fascinating water purification system developed by cheesemaster Robert Wills (Cedar Grove Cheese, Plain, Wis.). Wills’ system is comprised, in part, of 10-2,600 gallon water vats full of plants, leeches, frogs, blue gills, algae, and mosquitoes that clean the plant’s wastewater and significantly reduce water usage and overhead.

Sidebars embellish the main text. Some, entitled “flavor notes,” describe less well-known cheeses. There’s a history timeline that summarizes Wisconsin cheesemaking, another that describes the cheddaring process, and one that demystifies processed cheese.

The end matter includes an instructive glossary. The index is adequate but not perfect. (If you want to find all the chèvre or mozzarella producers referenced in the text, highlight them as you read because you won’t find them in the index.) A flaw that I encountered was not all instances of text relating to co-ops were cited in the index entry, “co-ops, dairy.”

Cheesemakers can also be used to construct a tour of the featured plants. It’s divided into five geographical regions, each with an excellent map indicating the location of the featured master cheesemakers.

The volume is beautifully designed with judicious, generous white space, engaging photographs, and lucid text, including those passages about cheese chemistry and production. One can read the entire work in a couple of hours but there’s so much information I would expect many will file it on the locavore shelf of their home library’s reference section.

*Not all varieties of cheese rely on Lactococcus lactis, but some that do are cheddar, Camembert, Edam, Gouda, Monterey Jack, Muenster, feta, and Gorgonzola.

The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin
James Norton and Becca Dilley (Madison, Wis. natives, currently Minnesota residents)
University of Wisconsin Press
Trade Paper  $24.95
ISBN 978-0-299-23434-8
At local bookstores and uwpress.wisc.edu