re: Italian vs. Sicilian

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We are the children of what are truly medieval cultures. I love the world we grew up in, and it will always be there, close to my heart.

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None of my friends seem to have much interest in the background influences, or how we became to be. It is really saddening.

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True Turks look more like orientals, look at Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.


Many of the Turks I’ve met look Greek, or even Roman, they have the faces you see in ancient mosaics.

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"Turk" as in Anatolian Turkey is really a mish-mash of a bunch of different ethnicities (Greek, Eastern Christian like Armenians, Berber, Balkan, Egyptian, Central Asian, Eastern Slavic, Arab, etc.) who were Turkified over the centuries. If you've ever been to Istanbul, you can kind of see it in the people there. I've also worked with a lot of people who are either Turkish or of Turkish origin over the years in different capacities, and the ethnic features really run the gamut. You'll see everything from basically a traditional Northern European profile with very white skin and blue eyes to a vaguely East Asian-oriented feature profile. One of the most attractive women I've ever worked with was Turkish, and she definitely had more of a Central Asian profile than anything else.

Edit to Add: Not to get all more-worldly-than-thou, but I think many Americans who haven't spent much time in the Middle East or Eastern Med probably don't appreciate the ethnic differences between and within these countries, and those differences reflect the (very, very) complex history of the region. As an example, a lot of Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians look pretty much exactly like Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Tunisians (who have more than a bit of European ethnicity), Albanians, and so on if you strip away the differences local dressing and grooming habits. There is a universe of difference between Basra and Beirut, between Tunis and Riyadh. It's like saying that Montreal and Mexico City are similar because they're both in North America.

That just makes me sad, I wouldn’t wish our fate on anyone

Northern Virginia, where I grew up, is just miles of soulless development. If you didn’t know better you could be in Maryland, or New Jersey.

Everyone is from somewhere else, and there’s no culture left.

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My wife's Sicilian side down in Morgan City always call themselves Italian,

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I always confuse my Italian Morgan City people as Sicilian Morgan City people

I assume it's like the difference between coonasses and rednecks.

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A lot of Sicilians immigrated to Louisiana in the late 19th/early 20th century.

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My grandparents on my mother's side came from Sicily in the early 1900's. They owned a strawberry farm in Hammond.

NOVA has always been pretty bad with that. What high school did you go to? My kids went to Oakton and PVI.

I think Sicilians don't like other Sicilians a ton, there isn't really much of a collective effort down there. Seems like a lot of Paranoia, jealousy etc. Someone said clannish or cliquish earlier, I think that's it.

trying to think of the name of the book that establishes a lot of this behavior, written by an American who moved down to Sicily after WW2

My wife is Sicilian and did 23andme. She is primarily Italian, Anatolian and Spanish.

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We (Sicilians) call spaghetti sauce red gravy and we put sugar in it

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This is a fact.

My great grandparents on my moms side came over from Sicily.

The part of the family that went to the country, got into farming and grocery store. The ones that remained in New Orleans, went into the grocery/bar/restaurant business. Restaurant is actually still open. Been sold twice, but still there.

Side story.....we made copies of a bunch of pictures for the restaurant that were lost in Katrina. Had a “family only” re-opening after Katrina. Good stories about relatives that i had never been told.