Confessions of an Italian-American

Doreen Netti and the Return to Her Roots

There are memories that need no words.They carry the quiet weight of a hand held on a sofa, the scent of freshly baked bread, the comfort of shared silence in front of a glowing television. For Doreen Netti, her first bond with Italy did not pass through language, but through gesture.

As a child, she spent hours beside her paternal grandmother, Ester Pasqua Palmisano — a reserved, gentle woman who spoke only Italian. Neither truly understood the other’s language, and yet they understood each other perfectly. Hand in hand, day after day, until the day her grandmother passed away.

After school, Doreen would go to her maternal grandparents’ home. Her grandfather’s garden was an ordered and fertile universe: tomatoes of countless varieties, courgettes, green beans, herbs, and fig trees that had to be protected from the harsh New England frost. The fig tree was a family ritual: buried beneath the soil in winter, brought back into the light in spring. An ancient gesture, repeated with care — as if safeguarding more than just a plant, but memory itself.

In the kitchen, her gran

dmother cooked without scales or recipes. Everything was shaped by hand, guided by instinct and experience. Bread, pasta, festive biscuits, sauce. Doreen would sit at the kitchen table in wonder, absorbing the aromas. She was always given a small piece of dough to knead beside her. Italian remained a secret code, spoken by adults when they did not wish to be understood. It was never formally taught to her — yet its essence was passed on all the same.

Those afternoons became some of the happiest moments of her childhood. Even the compulsory afternoon nap felt like a threat — a fear of missing something: the kneading of dough, the watering of the garden, the twice-yearly burial or unveiling of the fig tree that had travelled, years before, as a fragile cutting from Italy.

Time, as it always does, moved on. Her grandfather died when she was only six. Years later, her grandmother followed. At that time, Doreen did not yet understand their sacrifices, their humble beginnings in Italy, the courage it took to cross the ocean. She could not have known how much it would one day matter.

As life unfolded, what remained were the cousins. With them came stories of “the old days”: Saturday summer picnics, long Sunday dinners stretching from midday into late evening, faded photographs, amateur films of weddings and anniversaries, familiar faces appearing again on screen. Conversations would turn to what their parents remembered being told about relatives in Italy — fragments passed down, sometimes incomplete, yet precious.

Doreen began collecting what she could. Dates of birth, marriages, deaths. Names. Connections. A patient reconstruction carried out over years, set aside and resumed as life advanced — marriage, children who grew too quickly, a quieter home.

Then came travel.

Her first journey to Italy in 2018 — Venice, Florence, Rome — awakened something unexpected. Upon returning to the United States, she felt an ache, as though a part of her remained there. A persistent desire to see the towns her grandparents had once called home.

Soon after, she began the process of applying for Italian citizenship. Certificates, naturalisation records, marriage documents, death records — carefully assembled into ordered files. An appointment at the Italian Consulate General in New York was scheduled for March 2020, only to be cancelled at the last moment due to Covid. Documents were eventually posted instead. Then came the long wait — twenty-four months while the Consulate processed the application and

communicated with the Comune of Turi.

During that suspended time, Doreen searched further. Genealogical archives. Ancestry records. And then letters — more than 150 of them — sent to families bearing her grandparents’ surnames in Casamassima, Sammichele di Bari and Turi.

One reply arrived from Sammichele. Then, on 28 July 2022, an email from Turi.

It was from Giovanni Palmisano.

He wrote that they might not be related, but he would gladly try to help. That was enough. From that day forward, emails travelled back and forth across the Atlantic, each one adding another piece to the puzzle. Birth records. Photographs of streets and houses. The parish church. Links to obituaries in Connecticut. Even information about Saint Oronzo, whose statue stands in Turi.

When Doreen and her husband Joel arrived in Turi in October 2022, she did not yet realise that the B&B Aurelia, recommended by Giovanni, had once been his family home.

In just three days, more than a century seemed to collapse into the present. Introductions turned into embraces. Rosa and Anna — third cousins. Others followed. Tears flowed freely as generations were bridged in a single moment. She walked through the town, visited the cemetery, unexpectedly discovered the grave of her grandmother’s sister. She learned to make orecchiette by hand with her newly found cousins. She wandered through Bari in the evening light, still astonished by the warmth of it all.

Then Sammichele di Bari, her grandfather’s town. A meeting with the mayor — who happened to share her surname, Netti. Later, dinner at Giovanni’s home, welcomed as though she had always belonged.

Her final evening in Turi was filled with conversation, laughter, embraces, and the quiet realisation that something long missing had been restored.

On 17 April 2023, the Comune di Turi officially recognised Doreen as an Italian citizen.

Five years after she began gathering documents, her journey had come full circle.

“I was born American,” she reflects, “but now I know that I also belong to the town of my ancestors.”

And she will return.

Source and Credits

Article written by Miriam Valentini, adapted from a text by Prof. Giovanni Palmisano.

Original source: Turi Online