Westchester Italian Cultural Center

They Came by Ship, by Mario Toglia

They Came By Ship: The Stories of the Calitrani Immigrants in America is the product of the Internet Age which brought together people researching their roots to their ancestral town of Calitri in Southern Italy. They came to know one another and, in many cases, rekindled old friendships and discovered distant relatives in second and third cousins. They began sharing stories on the internet of the good old days, recalling neighborhoods where their parents and grandparents had settled after emigrating from Italy. Their recollections proved to be so interesting and poignant to all that they needed to be set down in permanent form and preserved for future generations. The book contains over 100 personal and biographical stories, which illustrate various aspects of the lives, traditions and customs of the Calitrani community within the Italian immigrant experience. Also included are several newspaper articles and obituaries, as well as a list of more than 4000 Calitrani names who settled in America.

Presented by Eric Dregni, author of Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital.

What begins as a gastronomical quest soon becomes a revealing, authentic portrait of how Italians live and a hilarious demonstration of how American and Italian cultures differ. In Never Trust a Thin Cook, Eric Dregni dishes up the sometimes wild experiences of living abroad alongside the simple pleasures of Italian culture in perfect, complementary proportions.