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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

new suppliers in the United States. And Italy’s population was growing, meaning more hungry children with less food to feed them. In some places, women were mixing plaster from the walls in with their flour to make the bread dough stretch a little farther. Through it all, though, Italians clung to a sense of honor. Even when there was no food in the house, families would rattle the pots and pans and shake the tablecloths out the windows as if to rid them of crumbs, hoping to fool their neighbors into believing theywere eatingwell. But it’s only possible to pretend for so long, and by the 1870s, hundreds of thousands of Italians were looking for a way out or a better life.

Thousands of Italians arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s on ships steaming from European ports.