Going to a school for language proved to be a very formative experience for many reasons. One of those reasons is that while attending this school I was able to meet a lot of people from a lot of different places around the world, and all of these people came with the goal of better immersing themselves into Italian, or to be more specific, Senese culture. In the five weeks I attended the Dante Alighieri school, I met people of all ages from Spain, Germany, Libya, and Switzerland just to name a few. The experience really forced us as students of the Italian language to communicate with each other exclusively in Italian no matter what level we were at.
Spreading so much time with these students from around the world, I had the opportunity to get to know some of them and more often than not they were willing to share bits about their backgrounds, opinions and ideologies. Granted, sometimes their commentaries could be considered intense but, nonetheless, I was always able to hear what they had to say. Today, I want to discuss the opinions of three individuals who unpromptedly offered their perspectives at different points of my trip. First I will discuss a bit about the opinion of a fellow student at the school, followed by the brief perspective from a worker at a local sandwich shop, and concluding with what one of the professors at the school had to say.
To start off, I met a student from Spain in my language class who humored me in a short conversation about herself and her thoughts about the United States. She was an older woman who, for purposes of this blog, I’ll call Maria. She was born and raised in Spain and is very much enamored with Italian culture. “There is just something unmatched about Romance languages and the cultures they belong to,” she remarked more than once. Her argument seems to be that, at least in her opinion, cultures that fall outside of the “romance origin” tended to have little to no appeal. (This is something I don’t personally agree with.) When I asked her about her thoughts on the United States, her general views weren’t necessarily scathing, only skeptical. She said to me that a lot of the things she heard about the United States confused her. “Controversial policies at the foot of debate today in the states are not topics I know a whole lot about,” she said, “But even I could argue that there are issues that need to be fixed.” Maria argued that, due to its youth, the United States hasn’t yet cultivated a strong cultural identity as captivating as Italy’s or Spain’s. However she also acknowledged her bias as a native of Spain who spent a majority of her life studying the rich history of Europe.
Keeping Maria’s perspective in mind, I had a brief conversation with a worker at Bocconcino’s – a local panino shop. Bocconcino’s was my favorite panino shop in Siena and I’d take a trip there at least once a week. The two men who were always working at the shop when I would visit were very kind people, and on my last day in Siena, I let them know that it was my last day and I would be returning to the United States soon. Excitedly, they recounted all of the places in the US that they had visited over the years. Both talked about how much they enjoyed the diaspora of cultures and geography of the states, as they had visited various areas themselves. Their opinion of the states was a positive one, and they were delighted to share their love of American culture; even more so to hear any little facts I may have had about my hometown.
At this point, I have heard two (kind of) contradictory opinions about the United States. However, throughout my five week language program I sporadically would get to hear someone else’ perspective on the matter. The professor of my culture class occasionally brought up differences between Italy and the United States. He described the different views in religion and the different approaches to culture, but he never imposed a particular narrative of “American culture.” Our professor is a very respectful and open-minded person, and he may not have explicitly mentioned either a positive or negative opinion on the United States. I did learn that through the eyes of many native Italians, American tourism can be exhausting. With hundreds or thousands of Americans entering Italy weekly, trying to find peaceful moments to appreciate the art and history of Rome can be difficult. Italy is itself a very touristy location which isn’t an issue. The issues arise when tourists treat the history disrespectfully, without taking the time to think beyond taking a picture.
I believe that now knowing about the different perspectives on the Unites States and American culture, I can myself see how different cultures from different parts of the world interpret who we are and what that says about the things our culture values. One of my favorite things about learning about different cultures and meeting people from different cultures is constantly realizing just how limited my own perspective can be. After speaking to other students at the DA school as well as my instructors and local residents, I was able to see that there is no singular idea of what the United States is, and that these kinds of opinions are subjective to personal experience.