Student examines history, culture of Princeton’s sister city in Italy
By: Marjorie Censer
Princeton Township’s sister city, Pettoranello di Molise, Italy, was always a part of Alisandra Carnevale’s life.
First and foremost, it was her heritage. Her father immigrated with his parents and sister when he was just 13 months old in 1952, and he has always told her stories about life in the town.
But Pettoranello increasingly has become an important part of Alisandra’s daily thoughts. A senior at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., Alisandra is writing her senior thesis on the folklore of Pettoranello and the way it has shaped the lives of its residents and its former residents who immigrated to Princeton.
Just as Pettoranello has long been a part of Alisandra’s life, the project has been part of Alisandra’s plan since before she began college. While visiting Pettoranello in the summer before her freshman year at Lafayette, she watched the annual Feast of St. Mary’s Assumed in the Sky. She says she was awed by the strong sense of community and deep religious beliefs revealed in the rite. That moment, Alisandra says, is when she decided to begin a significant study of the town.
The sister-city relationship between Princeton and Pettoranello was inaugurated in 1990 and is intended to recognize and celebrate the numerous Italians who came to Princeton from Pettoranello.
When Alisandra’s father and his family first arrived, they lived on Humbert Street with many other Pettoranello immigrants.
"They formed sort of their own immigrant enclave there," Alisandra says.
Though the first immigrant to come to Princeton from Pettoranello was distant relative Achille Carnevale in 1884, most began emigrating after World War II.
"After the war, nothing was left for them," Alisandra says.
Alisandra was born in Princeton at the time, her parents lived on Mountain Avenue. When she was 2, they moved to Lawrence Township, and she attended Villa Victoria Academy in Ewing.
When she entered Lafayette, she already had plans for her thesis and shaped her coursework accordingly. Alisandra took a folklore class and established relationships with professors who would later become her advisers.
In the summer of 2005, the history, anthropology and sociology major traveled to Pettoranello again to research its folklore and history. The small town of roughly 400 residents sits atop the highest hill in the area. The other hill towns form a ring around Pettoranello.
For her thesis, Alisandra conducted interviews with current residents of Pettoranello, as well as those who had left the town for Princeton particularly focusing on the meaning of folklore for those subjects.
Princeton immigrants, she notes, were more likely to speak of why they left the town and the war than rituals and ceremonies in the town. The folklore of the town its traditions, rituals and superstitions is "not as salient for them," Alisandra says.
She recognizes that folklore can change over time and can affect the way individuals understand themselves.
"Folklore played a role in shaping the lives of the peasants of Pettoranello," she explains. "It shaped their own history of themselves and their own identity."
Alisandra’s research also included speaking with the mayor of Pettoranello, combing the town archives, conducting research at the provincial library and area museums, and analyzing resources available at the Princeton Public Library and the Historical Society of Princeton.
She says she also will explore the way folklore changes the understandings of gender and of elders. For many Princeton immigrants, accepting the elders’ statements as unquestioned truth is no longer the norm.
And Princeton immigrants are more likely to deny superstitions. They say the evil eye only is true in Pettoranello, Alisandra says, but that it doesn’t exist in Princeton.
"They’re trying to separate from the past," Alisandra says.
With much of her research behind her, she is now preparing to begin writing what she expects to be a more than a 100-page thesis. Though she plans to attend law school and become a lawyer after graduation, Alisandra says she will always study the town whether for fun or for publication.
It’s important "that the sense of community is preserved and passed down," she says. And her family is thrilled to see her work.
"It’s their history, and they’re glad it’s going to be told in a way that highlights individuals," she explains. "They’re going to have their story be told."