Am I a stereotype?

I find a lot of wasps tend to think of second generation Italian Australians as loud, violent, clubby, sexist, illiterate midgets. These people are not right, but neither are they entirely wrong. In fairness, I’m 5’6’’ and have never been arrested for a violent crime.

Also the idea of Italians slitting throats en masse is a myth largely based on The Sopranos, The Godfather and Joe Pesci’s role in the Home Alone franchise. You can’t rely on films to fill in all your cultural gaps. I don’t think of all Asians as living in fetid huts and selling gremlins to children. Some of them manufacture illegal software. They’re a varied people. That said my own grandmother wants to bludgeon a relative of hers to death with a piece of rotted wood. That was something she just announced. We don’t dwell on it. She also wants to exhume the body of her mother-in-law, so we think her interests are more broadly morbid, not just restricted to butchering extended family. I think she also predicts still births. Not with any accuracy — she just likes to put the prediction out there. She’s essentially anti-life. Almost immediately after her daughter (my aunty) gave birth, she asked: “Has the doctor mentioned you’re too fat?” Wow, just had a fetus ripped from my vagina, now I’m “too fat”, thanks Mum, it truly is a wonderful life.

In fairness, I don’t catch a lot of what she says. My family speaks a very crude Italian dialect. They’re essentially bogans. This also explains why first generations are generally known as illiterate, misogynist dogmatists. Many had limited education. They rule in their own way. These traits are rarely inherited by the second generation, although many are very Catholic. I’m also Catholic, but in the residual sense, i.e. not at all. Also unlike the first generation, I have never been teased because of my bloodline, except for my first boyfriend, who as I recall once said, “You’re a stupid dago bitch.” I said, “Dago? Dago is Spanish, you fucking moron.” What a relationship. It was only later that I discovered “dago” is actually Italian. Even so, it’s pretty fucking outdated. I don’t call the French “republican scum”. I call them “stinking frogs”. I kid, I kid, they’re a varied people.

Another difference between the generations is fiscal wealth. The prime directive of the first generation is to work extremely hard and bank thousands of bones. These people value “saving” unto itself. This trait is less common amongst the second generation; I, for example, prefer to throw money down the toilet. I would say my father has a strongly developed understanding of “rich versus poor”, but this implies I believe he “understands” anything, which I don’t. I accept that my father is some kind of genius, since he obviously is, but this is largely eclipsed by a kind of gleeful psychosis. I recall dining at a restaurant with a cousin of ours, when after my father loudly recommended he (the cousin) kill his ex-wife, a waiter asked my father whether he was finished eating his plate of chocolates. My father winced, waved his hand in exasperation and said, “Give them to the poor people.” The waiter looked around the table for some kind of explanation; we gave him nothing. Then, as the waiter backed slowly away, my father shot out a menacing finger and screamed, “Those with a sweet tooth.”

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