I wrote this book to capture stories that speak to a heritage that becomes more distant with each succeeding generation of Italian Americans.
After I stopped working for a living, there was COVID-19. Life events included the birth of a grandson and a little hideaway in Italy’s beautiful mountains. The desire to write this book began to burn.
I wanted to capture stories that speak to a heritage that becomes more distant with each succeeding generation of Italian Americans. It is an impending loss that I do not want my grandson to experience.
Suddenly, I had endless hours, days, and years to devote to researching the subject. An interest became a passion, and my years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) instilled in me a desire to dig deep, really deep. So, too, the rigorous nature of the institution nurtured my quest to get to the “why" as much as the "what."
Il Viaggio is a serious look at what the journey was like to become American. The book travels back and forth across the ocean for a century and a half. It is every bit as much about the country that let them go (Italy) as it is about the country that received them (U.S.). And so the obsession began. I doubt it will ever end.
I am a first-generation American, born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. As a child, I accompanied my mother to her sister's Italian grocery store, sitting on a big round of butcher paper and testing the cheese and the salami.
Fifty years later, when visiting my mother in Cleveland when she was almost one hundred years old, we were still going to one of Cleveland's largest Italian markets. And I was still tasting cheese and salami there.
I went off to Pittsburgh at eighteen, where I studied history at Carnegie Mellon. Four years later, I earned an Ed M at Harvard. I spent most of my career at MIT, where I kept the electricity on, managed a staff of hundreds, and built the last round of MIT's iconic buildings. Since then, I have worked as a consultant, writer, and lecturer, mainly focused on Italian American history and culture. I split my time between Boston and Sulmona, Italy. I use Sulmona as a base to explore my family's ancestral homeland and research the roots of those who, like my parents' families, made the viaggio to America in search of a better life.
— Victoria V. Sirianni
