Good Morning Italy, the new editorial project by ilNewyorkese Network, will be presented on Thursday, May 14, in New York, with an event at the Italian American Museum, at 151 Mulberry Street, in the heart of Little Italy. It is the first print issue of the magazine and is titled Success. The Italian Way. We will present it from 6 to 7:30 p.m., with a public event followed by a reception at Ferrara Bakery & Café, just a few steps from the museum.
Good Morning Italy was created to tell the story of Italy to an international audience: Italians abroad, Italian Americans, people who love Italy and readers who want to understand it a little better, beyond the more familiar images through which it is often represented. It is not a magazine designed only to talk about food, tourism, beauty or nostalgia, although all these things are naturally part of the Italian imagination. The idea is to start from people: from their work, their stories, and the different ways in which Italian identity changes when it moves outside Italy.
The first issue is dedicated to success, but not in the most generic or motivational sense of the word. Success. The Italian Way brings together stories from cinema, sports, fashion, business, music, culture and the Italian American community, in an attempt to understand what it means to succeed as Italians, or as Italian Americans, in very different contexts.
The issue includes contributions and interviews with Armand Assante, Robert Davi, Kathrine Narducci, Riccardo Silva, Gianluca Passi, Francesco Facchinetti, Christopher Macchio, Bilena Settepani, Christian Di Sanzo and Premium Pete. The cover is dedicated to Fabrizio Brienza, an actor, model and well-known figure in New York nightlife, portrayed as an Italian who built his image in New York without fully adapting to American codes.
This is also why the presentation will take place at the Italian American Museum. The museum is located in Little Italy, in one of the areas most closely tied to the history of Italian immigration in New York, and tells an important part of the Italian presence in the United States: that of the families who arrived between the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of neighborhoods, associations, shops, churches, and an identity that has changed considerably over time. Presenting a magazine about today’s Italy and Italians around the world in that setting means bringing together the story of Italians who looked for a place in America and that of those who today move between Italy and the United States from very different starting points.
Speakers during the evening will include Marta Mammana, Deputy Consul General of Italy in New York; Fabrizio Brienza, protagonist of the cover story; and Premium Pete, a podcaster and well-known figure in New York urban culture. It will be an opportunity to introduce the project, present the first issue and explain the perspective with which Good Morning Italy wants to work: an attempt to tell the story of Italy through stories that may be very different from one another.
After the event at the museum, a reception will be held at Ferrara Bakery & Café, at 195 Grand Street. Ferrara is one of Little Italy’s historic businesses, founded in 1892, and is part of the commercial landscape that for many New Yorkers still represents the Italian identity of the neighborhood. Good Morning Italy starts partly from there too, and tries to answer a question: what remains of Italian identity when it changes language, city, work and generation, and how can it be told without always reducing it to the same symbols?
To attend the presentation, registration is available through this link.
