Lindsay Marie Morris

While researching my first novel, The Last Letter from Sicily, I stumbled on the book Una Storia Segreta by Lawrence DiStasi, from which I learned about government restrictions and actions during World War II that targeted some 600,000 Italians, so-called enemy aliens who were not yet American citizens. Many were placed under curfew, and some were banned from their workplaces. But what I found most jarring was the fact that about 10,000 Italian people were evacuated from their homes in California alone, and hundreds of Italian men were rounded up nationwide and placed in internment camps.

 

Those stark statistics inspired my second novel, Beneath the Sicilian Stars. I fell down a research rabbit hole, where I discovered the documentary film Potentially Dangerous, produced by Noah Readhead, Zach Baliva, and Naomi Baliva, which sheds light on this hidden history through interviews with historians and individuals with families directly affected by evacuation and internment experiences. 

I spoke with Zach, who also served as the director, about the film. He shared how the documentary started with an entry to the Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum, an annual fellowship opportunity sponsored by The Italian Sons and Daughters of America, AGBO, and The National Italian American Foundation, which supports projects that tell original Italian American stories. 

The film would win the 2021 award, among other prizes and distinctions. And actor John Turturro signed on as executive producer. You can catch Potentially Dangerous on PBS. (Check your local listings for PBS member stations.) It's also available on DVD and streaming. 

 

 

What inspired the making of Potentially Dangerous?

I learned about the Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum shortly before the deadline in 2020. I wanted to enter something because I've worked mainly in narrative filmmaking, but I've also worked as a journalist and a freelance writer. So, documentary is kind of a natural space for that combination. The problem was I didn't have a topic, and the deadline for the film forum was approaching. I thought, "I'll fill out an application, and through the process, I'll get to know the people involved. They'll reject my application this year, but next year, I'll be prepared."

I needed a story, so I Googled "unknown Italian American story" or something. When you do that, the first search results are Larry DiStasi's work on this topic because one of his books (Una Storia Segreta) translates to an unknown story or a secret history.

 

I went through dual citizenship, and my family is Italian American. I had never heard of any of this before. And so, really quickly, I got interested in it. 

Oftentimes, you find a story, and it's already been done, or there's already a novel, or there's already a documentary, or whatever. So, usually, when I contact people, they're like, "Oh, somebody tried to do this already, and it didn't work." And with this, it was the opposite.

 

When I contacted Larry, he said, "This has been my life's work, and I would kill for somebody to make a documentary about this. Please do; I'll turn over all my research and connect you with all the people."

I would have had nothing if Larry had not been involved or receptive or hadn't primed the pump by doing all his research. But I just contacted him at the right time. And so he was very, very receptive. 

As I was going through the research with him, I started to realize this was something I had to be involved in. And primarily when I realized that there were people detained and held within Ellis Island, that was kind of the clincher for me because I remember going to New York as a young child, and you hear, "This is where our family came through." And just to realize that not many years later, these same people who saw this as a beacon of hope and freedom were held against their will in the same facility, to me was just this fascinating juxtaposition.

As I started doing more work, people were super receptive to being involved, and it took on a life of its own. We ended up winning the Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum and got funded.

It was just being in the right place at the right time. And lots of credit to Larry, who is really the champion of this cause. And if it wasn't for him doing a lot of the work over the years… He put people in a position where they were more receptive to speaking to me.

 

I know that when he first started interviewing people, many didn't want to participate. And so 15 years later, when I came along, they were like, "Alright, we've started to tell this story, and now we want to see how far we can take it."

 

Zach interviewed several individuals about their family's experiences during World War II.

How did you approach the sensitivities of the story?

Larry had done a lot of hard work on that, but it was a weird combination of dynamics. I had to move quickly because we had a deadline. And if you didn't hit that deadline, which was five months during COVID with an $8,000 grant, you had to pay that money back. So I was moving very quickly, but one of the most important things to do was to build trust and get to know these people, so they want to tell you these very traumatic things that happened to them 80 years ago. You can't just fly in there and say, "Alright, the camera's on. Talk."

 

There was one very elderly woman whom I spoke to first. She was, I think, in her upper nineties, and she's the only person who refused to participate. She said she didn't want to appear on camera because she was insecure about her appearance. That was a little bit of an excuse. She had this really compelling story. I think she lived in a house near Pittsburg, California, with all these other people and was the one to help teach them English.

 

I worked with her two or three different times to try to convince her, saying, "We won't even put you on camera; it'll just be audio-only for research purposes." She was the only person who wouldn't do it, and it was very discouraging because she was the first person I approached, and I feared her reaction might be a sign of what was to come. 

For everyone else, it was just moving as slowly as we could to make sure they were comfortable. And then it was also word of mouth. That helped because when I contacted people, I would say, "So-and-so sent me to you," or "Your cousin told me that you had an amazing story, and it would be sad if we missed it." 

A lot of the work that I do as a journalist is interview-based, so I've done, in my freelance career, two or three thousand interview-based articles. You develop this natural ability to sit with people and learn how to make them feel comfortable and how to elicit the best responses. I didn't just set up the camera and right away say, "So what was it like when your father was ripped from your home?"

 

A lot of these people are elderly and have kids and grandkids who are a little protective of them, so there were some small hurdles, but overall, most people really wanted to get the story out there, especially because they realized—not to be morbid—this is their last chance. 

 

Still from Potentially Dangerous, dramatizing an FBI raid of an Italian family's home.

Why do you think this aspect of history has remained hidden?

I think part of it is that they were so ashamed, but also afraid of speaking out. We featured Tony Rosati from the other Pittsburgh, whose father was detained twice. He shared that his mother was paranoid for the rest of her life. For decades later, every time the phone rang, she would worry about who was on the other end, like, "Are they listening to our conversations? Can I trust law enforcement?" 

When you think of all those dynamics, you realize these are the reasons why this story hasn't been told. These people are so reluctant to tell their stories because they're worried about what might happen to them and that something like this could happen again.

 

Your executive producer is John Turturro. How did that come to be?

My main goal with the project after it was done was to just get it to the widest possible audience. In the world of film, especially today when it comes to distribution, it's sort of like a used car salesman or loan shark world where everybody wants a piece of the money, and everybody gets it except for the person who creates the content. So you get all these offers from people. But unless you are a really big name, usually what happens is you get a very little amount of money. They put it on the shelf, and it'll be available for five bucks on iTunes or whatever, but nobody's really going to rent it because there's no marketing or whatever.

 

The trade-off for me was that if we could get it to public television, there might still be little money involved, but millions of people would see it. That quickly became the goal, and then I realized I would have a greater chance of reaching that goal if somebody like John was involved. 

John comes from a military family. His family is from the parts of Italy from which several of the story's families came. And I had seen that he had worked with some notable Italian directors, and I just felt like, "OK. Out of all the people I could approach, he has to be at the top of the list." And he was super receptive. He said, "I'm really busy, but anything I can do, even if it's just lending my name to this project, anything I can do to help, I would love to."

 

Without him, I don't think we would've gotten to PBS, for example. He really helped us open those doors.

 

What other projects do you have in the pipeline?

Funding is always the wild card, and it's heartbreaking to me because, even within the Italian community, there are many causes and initiatives that these organizations already support. They all want to screen Potentially Dangerous, but there's no money to fund another project.

 

I was working on one for a while that ended up going away. It was going to be called The Last Goldbeater in Venice. I found this guy who's like 75 years old, and he's literally the last artisan in Europe who makes gold foil and gold leaf by hand.

 

Every day of his life for the last 50 years, he's gone into this closet-sized studio and beat a bar of gold—I forget the exact number—like 30,000 times with a 13-pound hammer to make one leaf of gold foil. They use this on the most important monuments in the world, and if they use machine-made materials, it's not the same as all this stuff. 

So the story was that if he doesn't find an apprentice by the time he retires, this very important cultural art form will go extinct, like mask-making, glass blowing, lace, and other Italian traditions. It mirrors the plight of the city of Venice, which is over-tourism and climate change. 

We had a major hospitality brand on board to fund half of the budget, and then, at the last minute, they withdrew their support because they had other priorities for their marketing dollars in 2024. I couldn't ever replace them. Then the guy retired, and the story went away. In the documentary space, this happens a lot.

 

Now, I have another story. I found a group of West African refugees who have all fled terrorism and war and ended up in Italy, and they've formed a soccer team to sort of assimilate and give them hope and purpose as they rebuild their lives in this new country.

 

The cool part about it is that the Italian government sponsors them as an anti-racism movement. They placed them in the lowest tier of the official Italian soccer league, and against all odds (as this underdog story), they won the Cup in their first year and moved up from the ninth to the eighth level of the Italian soccer league.

 

One of their players signed a contract with a Serie-A team and scored a game-winning goal in his first game, and it kind of put them on the map. And so now, a lot of Italians know that this team exists. 

Unless we find a sports brand, team, or somebody to co-fund this with us and produce it, then I'm afraid the same thing will happen. But that's the project now: to figure out if there's a way to fund this story before it also goes away. 

There are lots of stories to tell, but limited time, resources, and money to do it. And for me, it's heartbreaking when a story that one really believes in just vanishes because of money.

 

Hundreds of Italian "enemy aliens" were imprisoned in internment camps across the nation.

How do you hope Potentially Dangerous will contribute to a greater understanding of Italian American history?

It's something I think about a lot, and not everyone agrees with me. I really do believe that because these events happened, they stopped publishing Italian-language newspapers in some places, and people started hiding that part of their personalities and that part of their identities. And that sort of contributed to my own experience in the Midwest of how my family is like, "OK. We're Italian, we're Italian American." But it doesn't really mean a whole lot to us, unfortunately. And these events had a big role to play in that. My argument is that because of what happened, we've been left with this caricature of what it means to be an Italian or an Italian American.

We have the mafia stereotype, and we have this very shallow understanding of the Italian American expression in the United States. My argument is that if this hadn't happened, there would be a more robust and deep expression of Italian Americanism because they wouldn't have had to hide certain parts of their culture to be accepted. Therefore, that expression would've been fuller and more complete for generations. And now you have all these organizations like the Italian American Future Leaders of America, and people of my age and younger who are trying to recapture that. But these events really played a part in that. 

 

 

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December 7 is a date which will live in infamy. It was the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, but that night, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also began arresting "potentially dangerous" Japanese, Germans, and Italians. And they did so before the United States was officially at war.

 

This response was far from last-minute. Since 1939, the FBI had been compiling lists of suspicious and allegedly subversive persons they decided required surveillance and, in the event of war, internment. Among the hundreds targeted and later interned were journalists, Italian Consulate employees, and veterans of World War I (when Italy and America were allies). Opera star Ezio Pinzo was arrested for allegedly altering his singing tempo to send coded messages to Benito Mussolini.

 

Internees were sent to military camps in states including Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Maryland, and Texas, where many spent years imprisoned. How could the government do this? Title 50 of the U.S. Code, based on the 1798 Alien & Sedition Acts, gave them the power to detain "enemy aliens" in emergencies.

 

The government effectively declared war on much of its immigrant population, imposing restrictions on about 600,000 Italian residents without U.S. citizenship who, on Dec. 8, had been designated enemy aliens by presidential proclamation. Such "enemy aliens" were required to re-register as such; FBI agents raided homes and confiscated weapons, radios, cameras, and even flashlights. Non-citizens on the West Coast were placed under a strict curfew, required to carry "alien enemy" ID booklets, and told they would need a permit to travel more than five miles. Those who did not comply were subject to arrest and detention.

 

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the military to designate areas of vulnerability and relocate individuals deemed a threat to national security. More than 120,000 Japanese people, including American citizens, were forcibly displaced. What's lesser-known: By the month's end, the government ordered the evacuation of at least 10,000 Italian Americans from their homes in California alone. People had just days to relocate. 

Why isn't this in most history books? The question bothered San Francisco Bay Area historian and author Lawrence DiStasi, whose father came to the U.S. from Italy. He began digging through records and archives, collecting testimonials, and eventually created a traveling exhibition called Una Storia Segreta, Italian for secret story and hidden history.

 

His efforts and compiled testimonies induced President Bill Clinton to pass the "Wartime Violations of Italian American Civil Liberties Act," which was signed into Public Law 106-451 in November 2000. While no reparations were distributed, the act acknowledged injustices suffered by Italian Americans during the war.

 

DiStasi compiled a collection of essays and accounts about Italian wartime restrictions and internment in Una Storia Segreta in 2001. He wrote a deeper analysis in Branded: How Italian Immigrants Became 'Enemies,' published in 2016.

 

I discovered these works in June 2020 while researching my World War II-era historical novels. Later, I encountered the original Una Storia Segreta exhibit at the Pittsburg Historical Museum in Pittsburg, California, where the federal government evacuated about a third of the population in 1942. The website, unastoriasegreta.com, reproduces the exhibit.

 

I was delighted to have the chance to speak with DeStasi about his important work and its legacy.

Share the story behind Una Storia Segreta with us.

I had never heard a thing about these events when I was growing up in Connecticut. When I came to California in the late 1960s, I started to hear about this real turmoil in the Italian American community, specifically in San Francisco and Pittsburg, up on the Delta. I thought this was really an important story, but everybody said no one would talk about it because they were embarrassed and ashamed. There was also animosity in the community because some people had informed on others.

Eventually, we in the American-Italian Historical Association's Western Chapter decided to hold a conference in 1993 at the University of San Francisco. And it was a sensation. Somebody at that conference said, "Why not do an exhibit?"

 

We had never done an exhibit before, but four of us decided that we could, in fact, do this. So, with Rose Scherini as our chief researcher, and I as the project director, and with Adele Negro then president of the AIHA Western Chapter, and a designer we found named Elahe Shahideh, who had done a previous exhibit at the Museo Americano in San Francisco, we set out to make it happen. We had panels nailed to the wall, and we managed to gather some artifacts. A friend of ours, an Italian teacher, suggested the title Una Storia Segreta, which means both "a secret story" and "a secret history."

 

Opening night was an absolute smash sensation. People from all over the Bay Area wept in front of the panels. We got more publicity for that than any other effort we had ever made. It was featured on the front page of the Style section of the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

That started us off, and Bill Cerruti from Sacramento, with the help of Connie Ilacqua Foran, whose father had been interned and whose husband was a senator, got approval for the exhibit to come to the Capitol in Sacramento, and that was huge. The governor signed a proclamation. We had a banner in front of the Capitol that said "Italian American Exhibit." Bill spent about seven thousand dollars to make our panels, which were displayed around the rotunda of the Capitol.

 

It was a beautiful exhibit, and that gave us more publicity. We started getting requests from all over California from Italian-American organizations who wanted to host the exhibit. When it went down to Monterey, where many fishermen were affected, our friend Hugo Bianchini, an architect, decided to make frames for each panel. We got the exhibit framed and put it in two traveling crates.

Hugo said, "This exhibit will be traveling for five years." We thought he was crazy. It turns out that Una Storia Segreta ended up traveling for more than twenty years.

 

Una Storia Segreta panels on display at the Rayburn House Office Building

 

How did the exhibit inspire the passage of legislation?

People would request that I come with the exhibit to give a talk, so I went all around the country. We had it at several state houses as well, all without soliciting any organizations. It just traveled by word of mouth.

 

The highlight was when we displayed it in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. John Calvelli, the chief of staff to Elliot Engel at that time, saw the exhibit in the Rayburn and said, "We can pass legislation about this." So, he took the lead in getting the legislation drawn up and got us Judiciary Committee hearings, at which I and several community leaders spoke. We managed to get Ezio Pinza's wife to come and testify at our hearings. She gave a very moving testimony. We also persuaded baseball great Dom DiMaggio to testify.

 

We also had several people from the Bay Area testify in Washington, D.C. Afterward, John Calvelli said, "We hit a home run. We're going to get this legislation passed."

 

After two tries, the Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act was passed and signed into law by President Clinton in 2000. That was a real success.

 

Attending Judiciary Committee hearings in Washington, D.C.

 

Was your own Italian family affected by these wartime events?

I would go around the country saying, "Can you imagine there are people whose own families were affected and didn't even know about it?"

 

Well, I turned out to be one of those people. Because my father and my uncle were both classified "enemy aliens" during the war, and nobody ever talked about it until our exhibit went back east.

 

My sister asked my cousin, "Did you know about any of this? Can you imagine?" And my cousin Rosemary said, "Well, yes, my father was an 'enemy alien.' They came and took our radio."

 

Then my daughter was looking into Italian citizenship, and I asked a friend in Washington if she could send me my father's records. That's when I learned that my father was actually an "enemy alien" himself. He never said a word about it. We have none of his papers or anything like that, but that was the story. That just knocked me off my feet; I couldn't believe that that was the case, but that was why we called it Una Storia Segreta. Secret story, secret history.

 

A young Costanza Ilacqua Foran stands between her parents.

 

Which stories featured in Una Storia Segreta and Branded stand out most?

Connie Ilacqua Foran's father in San Francisco was interned. They interned him because he worked with the Italian Consulate a little bit.

 

Rose Scudero became one of our star informants because her family was evacuated and had to move out of Pittsburg. Her father could stay, but she left Pittsburg with her mother. When the restrictions were lifted, she said she was a little bit like Paul Revere, running back to Pittsburg through the streets, shouting, "You can go home now; you can go home now!" That was really moving. 

 

 
Notice to evacuate from U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle

 

What message or lesson do you hope to share with your work?

During wartime, anything can be justified. You never know what the powers that be can make the case for.

I just want readers to know that this happened despite all the denials and attempts to hide it. History is never quite complete, and you can always find out something new.

 

I'm very proud of the work we did. We put this thing on the map, and it'll never again be forgotten or hidden because over 600,000 Italian Americans were affected by this one event. It's one of the biggest things that's ever happened in the Italian American community.

 

 

 

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Frank Bruno grew up in Pittsburg, California, hearing his grandmother's memories of Isola delle Femmine, a fishing village outside Palermo, Sicily. But he knew very little about the place and didn't think much about it. That was until 1992, when his friend, Vince DiMaggio, shared that he'd returned from his godparents' wedding vow renewal in the same town. Vince had spoken with Isola delle Femmine's then-Mayor Vincenzo DiMaggio about possibly having a Sister City relationship with Pittsburg.

 

Frank and Vince weren't alone in their ties to Isola delle Femmine; most of Pittsburg's Italian American population shared that connection. As President of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, Frank was in a good position to take action. He asked Pittsburg's mayor, who agreed to the proposal, and then he reached out to officials in Sicily.

When Isola delle Femmine's mayor came to Pittsburg, he saw its iconic fisherman statue, sculpted by local artist Frank Vitale, whose grandparents came from Isola delle Femmine. He wanted one for his town, so Pittsburg community members raised funds to make it happen.

The sculptor still had the mold he used to build a replica that the Americans sent to Sicily. Today, you can find that statue at Isola delle Femmine's Piazza di Pittsburg, named for the town's original sister city.

That would have been the end of the story: a lasting connection made in honor of shared heritage. Frank moved to Novato, California, in 1997 and lost track of many of the people who were involved until 2017, the 25th anniversary of the Isola delle Femmine-Pittsburg delegation's first visit.

Frank and Vince returned to the fold, and a group from Isola delle Femmine joined the community for a reception. Two years later, Frank, Vince, and Vice President Mary Coniglio co-founded Friends of Isola delle Femmine with a mission statement to preserve, protect, and promote Sicilian-American heritage within Isola delle Femmine's California sister cities, which today number three after the 2017 and 2019 respective additions of Monterey and Martinez.

Frank, who serves as Friends of Isola delle Femmine's President, shared more about how and why Isolani emigrated to the U.S. and first landed in Pittsburg. We also discussed the organization's events, outreach, and evolution, as well as its challenges for the future.

Friends of Isola delle Femmine 1994 trip - Sal Caccaroni, John Buffo, Vince DiMaggio, Sculptor Frank Vitale, Frank Bruno, Mary Coniglio, Rocco Battaglia, and Vince Coniglio

 

 

How and why did Isola delle Femmine residents find their way to Pittsburg?

Back in the 1860s, when Garibaldi unified Italy, it did little to help the people in Sicily. They were still starving, and there was no work. One story was that they were so hungry they resorted to eating wheat plaster from the walls.

In 1862, two brothers from Isola delle Femmine with the last name Aiello came to New Orleans, where a big influx of Sicilians lived in the French Quarter.

They were trying to make a living fishing and cooking. After a Yellow Fever outbreak, they left Louisiana for Oregon, where they fished for salmon before seeing an advertisement from California. The state was looking for fishermen to come and help fish the delta to feed the people who came in for the Gold Rush. So the Aiellos got on a train and ended up in what is now called Pittsburg, California, on the Sacramento River. They started fishing and called for their family, saying, "Here in Pittsburg, the weather is like home. The fishing is abundant, and we're making money."

A lot of people started to come, and many of them worked and stayed here. Then, a lot of them went back home. Pittsburg was the fishing area, but there was seasonal fishing. So when the seasonal fishing went to the wayside, they went to Martinez and Monterey, and many of them stayed there while others went back to Pittsburg. So that was the influx, which is why we have three Sister Cities with Isola in our organization.

 

Describe your cultural exchange and promotion efforts.

Back in 1994, we started a student exchange program. We only did it twice. We sent high schoolers back there, and they went to school. Isola delle Feminine sent college students here, which became a vacation for them. And I said that's not what we really wanted to do as a student exchange program.

My idea, and we're trying to start this now, is to have something similar to what I'm involved in with the Rotary Club: a group study exchange. There would be dentists or any occupation that is here that wants to go. We would supplement, coordinate their stay over there, and have a little bit of money to help them there. But they would pay for their trip. They would go over to Isola and the Palermo area and vice versa.

We can do it with contractors, dentists, doctors, and many professional business people who would come back and forth. As for the cultural heritage stuff, we're working on doing what I call an ancestral fair, having an area where folk music and heritage stuff are going on, and then having booths. 

 

How have you connected with younger generations?

We're giving scholarships to our members' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are going to college. We give out six; two years ago, we gave out 10. They would have to qualify normally by having a grade point average acceptable for college and writing a statement about what it was like growing up Italian. Then we have a picnic and give out our scholarships.

One of our roadblocks is passing on our cultural heritage to the younger generations. It's very difficult. They're proud to be Italian American, but that's where it ends. Now, all of us old-timers look at this as memories. Growing up in Pittsburg was one of the greatest childhoods anybody could have. I mean, it was just full of family everywhere.

 

We have functions, but not many younger people have come. Instead of trying to decide how to capture the younger generation and have them tell us what they're looking for, we're going to have a discussion and invite a number of our younger members who are 40 or 50 years old to ask them.

If we're going to succeed as a cultural heritage organization, we need to replace these people. I can't do this forever.

Scenes from Friends of Isola delle Femmine picnics

 

Tell us about your events.

We've had some fundraisers to fund administration, scholarships, and anything else we want to do. We've done pretty well. 

We started with a program back in 2019 called That's Italian. We had some opera singers, and we sang show tunes at a place called the Colombo Club in Oakland. About 565 people could sit down for dinner, and then upstairs, there is a banquet hall, bar, and stage. We had 200 people, and they went downstairs and had a nice Italian dinner. And then they came up, and we had this big show and a live auction.

 

After the pandemic, when the British Queen passed away, one of our members said, "Why don't we have a High Tea but Italian style?" We had one in Monterey and one in Pittsburg. We're finishing up our third one, which will be the last, and we're going in another direction.

 

Our summer picnic was designed to be something we used to do as kids and families. Here in Northern California, we have Mount Diablo, where we had Camp Curry and Marsh Creek, and we could swim and play baseball as a family. We wanted to do something similar and said, "Why don't we just give our scholarships out then?"

 

We are getting about 250 people, and we can showcase what we do and get new members out of that. We have an Italian who lives in Martinez and owns a catering company. He comes and does the pasta and salads, and then we cook sausage. The mayor of Martinez and the city council people come out, and they do the serving. 

 

What do you ultimately want to share with your community?

There are Italians and Sicilians from Isola here in Pittsburg, California, but not many. They've branched out to the other areas. What I want to accomplish for the community is to bring back our pride and heritage and continue to have that. We all want to remember what our nonnas and nonnos did for us when we were growing up. We're trying to put together a cookbook per se with all these recipes in our newsletter. But we want to do more cultural stuff to remember our grandparents and great-grandparents; hopefully, the next generation will be appreciative.

 

Frank Bruno with family at the celebration and unveiling of the Fisherman Statue and sister city in 1994

 

 

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From a young age, Brooklynite Paige Lipari yearned for a space where she could bring together her passions for food, books, and the arts. As she grew older, she realized she also wanted to share what she loved with her community.

 

Following a trip to her family's home in Alcamo, Sicily, Paige decided that the space would be a bookstore catering to gourmands by selling Sicilian and Italian specialty goods alongside cookbooks and serving as an event space for foodies and neighbors in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And so began Archestratus Books + Foods in 2015.

 

I recently sat down with Paige, who shared more about Archestratus's start, her deep connection to Sicily, the challenges and rewards of running a niche business, how she has engaged the community, and more.

 

Tell us about your connection to Sicily.

I'm Sicilian on both sides. My father was born in Sicily, and my mother is second-generation American. I have a very strong connection with my Sicilian heritage. We go to Sicily every few years and visit my family in Alcamo.

 

My family has a city house and a country house because it was four hours to Trapani by donkey, but now it's seven minutes. They're in the city house in the winter, and then they go to the country house for the warmer months, where they have vineyards. They grow grapes, and they sell mosto to winemakers. 

I actually didn't go to Sicily until I was 19, which felt very late. And then we started going more and more, but my nonna always brought the Old World Italian. I never really related to this sort of gold chain/ white shirt Italian American—that just wasn't in my family. I grew up with a nonna who always had some wine on the table with some fruit and cheese. We always ate raw fennel after every meal.

 

She was very much into agriculture and would grow things all year long. The food was unique compared to other Italian American restaurants we visited. And she was my first anchor in that culture.

 

Archestratus specializes in vintage and new cookbooks.

What inspired you to open Archestratus, and what led to the naming of the bookstore?

When I was really young, I loved books, and there was this closet where I would sit and read by myself. And I was a latchkey kid with two working parents, so I started cooking for myself really early.

 

I kind of knew in the back of my mind that I wanted a bookstore. I also love design and making spaces feel warm and cozy. And then I love the arts, so the idea of having people perform in this space, doing conversations and talks, and keeping that intellectual stimulation.

 

It wasn't until I went to Sicily for the first time, when I was 19, and met my family, that I completely broke open this obsession with Sicilian food and, of course, Sicilian cookbooks. I fell in love with them, and it changed my life. 

When I came back, it was kind of my way of connecting with them and also preserving my heritage because my nonna was starting to have dementia. The recipes were all in her head.

 

When I learned about Sicilian cuisine, my creative juices just flowed so hard in that direction. I could never really put my finger on why it was different or what it was about until I went there.

 

Sicily's so beautiful and unique, and it's amazing to me that now it's getting its flowers as far as how it is its own place. But 20 years ago, when I started out making this food and getting really passionate about it, nobody knew. No one was talking about how it's influenced by Spain and North Africa, and there are a lot of Middle Eastern flavors, and there's the Couscous Festival and all that stuff.

 

I was passionate about spreading the word.

 

Where did the name Archestratus come from?

I read Pomp and Sustenance by Mary Taylor Simeti and read about Archestratus, and I immediately felt a connection with him. He was kind of wild in what he wrote, and he was deeply mysterious; we don't know much about him.

 

I named the store first, and then all these answers revealed themselves later. He was a poet who was more interested in places and simplicity, enjoying himself and having a good time. Food was all about that and gathering.

 

Cookbooks are documents of places, times, and people. I'm interested in how food is a way of seeing the world and bringing people together.

 

How do you select the books for your collection, and do you have any personal favorites?

I go to book sales. I love books where it feels like there's a real voice. I know there's a place for more prescriptive things that fill a niche. I just make sure that they're really of good quality and were done with intention. 

Some of my favorite books are Pomp and Sustenance and Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray.

 

Patience Gray's husband was a sculptor, and they would travel around the Greek and Italian islands in the Mediterranean, chasing marble for him. So she would spend time in these places. While he was doing the work, she would go out and sniff the windows of the homes, figure out what the women were making, and write about them in a strange, esoteric, funny way.
 

Can you share some highlights of the community spirit at your bookstore?

We started the Archestratus Cookbook Club in 2015, and it has always been successful. We pick a book every month, and then everyone shows up with one portion of a dish. Then we all just have this feast, take a little bit of everything, and try other dishes from the book to see if you want to buy it.

 

Our bake sales are probably the most incredible. We held a bake sale for the L.A. fires and raised $9,000 in three hours, which was matched by a corporate sponsor. We also held a bake sale for Joe Biden, one for Planned Parenthood, one for Ukraine, and one for Palestine. 

We usually have around 80 bakers, and then it gets people to come. It's such a great model. You spend $20, but then if it's a big sale, that $20 can turn into $200.

 

What's been your biggest business challenge?

The pandemic was a challenge, but it wasn't my biggest challenge. In a bizarre way, I almost felt like I was ready. I already wanted to expand and had been researching more food vendors.

 

During the pandemic, we were a bookstore cafe, and I was already starting to think we were outgrowing this space. So, I was already researching vendors for fresh milk and eggs and trying different things. And so I had set up all these connections, and then the pandemic hit, and I was like, well, I could do a grocery pickup.

 

On March 19, 2020, we did a grocery pickup, which was one of the first weekends. By April, we had one day when we had to pick up for 220 people. They would come up on the street with their order, and then I would fulfill it. So I had this bizarre flow happen with the pandemic, and we were O.K.

 

My biggest challenge after the pandemic was when we expanded, and then I realized, "I don't like this. I don't want to do this. I don't like having a bigger staff, and I don't like dealing with this landlord."

 

I thought I would love it, that this was what we needed. But then I realized we needed to be smaller, more flexible, and lighter on our feet.

 

I did this big thing, saying, "We're doing this." Then, I had to pull back and make that hard decision to contract.

 

Every decision I make is pretty public, but I was not doing the thing that I know I love. I love making food, and I love cooking, but it was not making me happy anymore at that level. Facing that and just financially getting through that and out of it has been extremely challenging, and I'm still dealing with the effects. 

 

What are your upcoming plans?

I know that people want recipes, and I want to share them. And so, figuring that out is going to be 2025, and starting to do that. I know there will be a newsletter, so I'm going to start writing one and sharing some of these recipes.

 

Another more community-driven thing I want to do this year is create a community zine and start making a cookbook with everybody, especially coming out of these bake sales. We have such a network of people who love to develop recipes, cook, and have family recipes. We started doing that before the pandemic, but it never got off the ground. And this is the year I want to make time.

 

What do you hope people take away from a visit to Archestratus?

I hope that they get inspired to be more of themselves. I hope that they see that we're operating on a frequency of not giving a shit, and I hope that they go off and they do whatever they want to do. 

 

 

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