Remembering is crucial to the formation of collective identities, and oral histories, as repositories of collective memory, play a fundamental role in shaping the identities of migrant communities. In what way, then, do memories influence the construction of a diasporic identity? And what constitutes memory? Those questions define the goals of Remembering Italian America: to examine the role of memory in the process of identity formation in Italian American communities and to interrogate its relevance to other diasporic communities and debates about immigration.As the subtitle suggests, memory, migration, and identity are terms to be understood intersectionally: Memories shape group identity and with their affective, social, and political contents also speak to the experience of other migrant communities. The authors draw primarily on the concept of “communicative memory,” or collective memory based on everyday interactions, events, and improvised storytelling sessions, often messy and raucous, that take place within groups (e.g., families, associations, professional groups) holding a unified image of their past stemming from shared experiences. Even individual memories are thus socially mediated and develop in the process of communication. Throughout the book, the authors interweave established scholarship and “mnememes” (14)—nostalgia-laden cultural memories encapsulated in oral accounts, metaphors, phrases, and gestures that together can conjure up a collective past. Such a comprehensive approach has the merit of investigating the powerful concept (and uses) of “remembering” in a plurality of forms.Memory, the authors argue, can communicate a past unevenly and even incorrectly: In this book, they set history against such “misrememberings,” memories that, even as they are unsupported by historical fact, shape guiding narratives of migration, community, and identity formation. Examples of common misrememberings include the origins of the Christopher Columbus legend, when Italian American prominenti sought to create a national hero in an attempt “to rescript” the negative American view of Italian immigrants (90); or the belief of many Italian Americans that their ancestors, unlike current immigrants, entered the US lawfully.Siblings Laurie Buonanno and Michael Buonanno draw on decades of fieldwork and interviews in the Northeast and Florida as well as on research in local archives, oral histories, and earlier scholarship. The authors’ own memories as third-generation Italian Americans provide additional perspectives, most notably as witnesses to the renewed hostility toward today's immigrants. As they explicitly state in the introduction, their task is one of “clarifying memory in order to mobilize empathy” (18). In their view, it is in the recognition of a history of immigration shared with others that an Italian American identity finds value. And such recognition must be rooted in remembering the actual history of the Italian American experience rather than in “the nostalgic accretions of misrememberings” that, deliberate or not, obfuscate it (18).In each of the three sections of the book (History, Socioeconomics, and Worldview), the authors tease out elements of communicative memory that provide insights into the larger Italian American history. Part 1 offers a concise overview of Italian emigration to the US, the development of transatlantic networks, and the changing impact of US immigration policy on migratory flows. The authors address a widespread misremembering among Italian Americans about the conditions of post–Unification Italy that led to mass emigration. Italian Americans, they demonstrate, easily identify the role that la miseria played in their own family's exodus; the authors go beyond these commonplaces to connect personal deprivations of la miseria to the dysfunctional politics of a unified Italy. They identify as “hungry idealists” (36) the emigrants from the Italian South who responded so decisively to the interconnected oppression of poverty and politics at the turn of the twentieth century. Their contextual approach also reveals how accurate memories of discrimination and prejudice can empower political activism and encourage immigration reforms. The many Italian Americans who lobbied for immigration law reform (the 1965 Hart-Celler Act), the authors argue, made themselves “a force in the shaping (rather than the victims) of U.S. immigration policy” (77) as they forged their own identity in a multiethnic America.Part 2 examines the socioeconomic factors that helped transform early Italian Americans’ provincial attachment to their local communities of origin, known as campanilismo, to a later, more complex diasporic “pan-Italian identity” (83). The authors remind us that, in early generations, the object of migrant memory was typically that of a town left behind. Later, defined more broadly as “Italians,” they negotiated memories to create newly imagined communities to meet the demands of a new social order. Here Laurie Buonanno and Michael Buonanno focus on the tensions between the domestic and local worlds within historic Little Italies and the larger relationships between Italian American and American society. They craft a compelling, multilayered narrative that intermingles actors from the national stage (e.g., the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire) with lesser-known stories grounded in local memories (e.g., Sicilians’ participation in a Latin identity in Tampa's Ybor City). Anecdotes and more complex oral histories, many gathered through first-hand interviews, toggle between family and community identity (e.g., godparenthood or comparatico, class structure and prominenti) and wider social, political, and economic conflicts (e.g., the historic “Bread and Roses” strike). Similarly, “Making a living” (chapter 6) sets nostalgic recollections of work in “the old days” against the reality of exploitative practices of child and contract labor that padroni imported from Italy.The intermediary figure of the padrone, often chosen as a godfather for a client's child, finds its equivalent in chapter 10 in the godmother or comare, whose sphere of intercession in the community is “feminine and spiritual” rather than “masculine and economic” (9). Lucia, the authors’ grandmother, a Catholic who became an unconventional Protestant, exemplifies this role by practicing folk religious traditions that the Catholic Church did not recognize, such as healing people from the evil eye. While the authors build on existing theoretical approaches to Italian American religiosity and secular traditions, their interviews and oral histories humanize the experience of remembering and both complicate and deepen our understanding of a major source of identity. Still, it is unclear how their work on “clarifying memory,” while a valuable tool for historical understanding, can effectively mobilize empathy toward current immigrants. They suggest ways in which their work might build an openness to other immigrant experiences, but they do not offer a more practical agenda for engaging with social-justice efforts across communities.In their conclusion, the authors suggest that Italian American communities have faced a “double liminality” (230)—not just between Old and New Worlds but also between Italian Americans as white people in relationship to people of color—that has produced a sense of insecurity over their social status that today accounts for the conflicted views of many Italian Americans about race, ethnicity, and what it might mean to be an immigrant. Their analysis does not, however, fully address the ways this group's insecurity shapes how Italian Americans today look at the newest victims of prejudice and discrimination. What, then, can facilitate more empathetic relationships? The authors place their trust in the power of stories from within migrant communities—that is, in historically informed storytelling as a tool for social justice. There are some caveats, however. Namely, storytelling must include diverse voices and real-life accounts from migrant communities beyond the usual topics. Italian Americans must acknowledge that historical knowledge must correct misrememberings and be willing to listen to other migrant communities’ stories, to “recognize and celebrate the parallels between current and bygone migrations” (242).Laurie Buonanno and Michael Buonanno's work demonstrates how memory grounded in historical knowledge can strengthen Italian American identity as well as cultivate more empathetic attitudes toward other ethnic migrant communities. Their open invitation to rethink remembering and storytelling beyond merely nostalgic sources of identity can help unlock new connections across migrant cultures and enable Italian America to remain relevant to emerging discourses about immigration and diversity. Remembering Italian America will make an excellent textbook as an introduction to Italian American history and culture, especially if integrated with other resources that embrace the history and oral memories of other Italian American communities, such as those that cover the post–World War II immigrant generations and other regions of the United States, particularly the Midwest and West.