Maltese Americans: Keeping Malta Close Across Generations

Malta is a very small country with a strange ability to stay very big in the lives of the people who leave it.

That may be one of the most Maltese things about Malta.

You can move 5,000 miles away. Your children can be born somewhere else. Their children can be born somewhere else. Decades can pass. And somehow there is still Pastizzi at a family gathering, somebody is arguing about the proper way to make something, and everyone knows exactly which village the family came from.

That's the Maltese American experience.

Or at least one version of it. There are thousands.

The War Changed Everything

For a lot of Maltese American families, the story starts with World War II.

Malta had seen emigration before the war, but what happened during and after WWII changed everything.

Malta sits in the middle of the Mediterranean, which has been both a blessing and a curse for about as long as people have been fighting over the Mediterranean. During World War II, its location made the islands incredibly important strategically.

It also made Malta a target.

The Maltese endured years of bombing, shortages and destruction. Homes were destroyed. Families were displaced. Food and fuel were scarce. At times, the islands came dangerously close to being cut off completely.

Malta held on.

In 1942, King George VI awarded the George Cross to the people of Malta in recognition of their courage. The cross eventually became part of the Maltese flag, where it remains today.

But surviving the war didn't magically make everything normal again.

Malta came out of it battered. Housing was scarce. Jobs were limited. And there were a lot of young Maltese trying to build lives and raise families on a very small group of islands.

Emigration became part of rebuilding.

Between 1946 and 1976, nearly 140,000 Maltese emigrated. Australia received the largest number, while others went to Britain, Canada and the United States. Malta itself supported and encouraged emigration during much of the postwar period.

That's an extraordinary number of people for such a small country.

But the important part of the story isn't that they left.

It's what they took with them.

Their work ethic. Their faith. Their food. Their traditions. Their sense of family. Their pride in where they came from.

They didn't leave Malta behind.

They brought Malta with them.

Little Maltas in America

Maltese communities in America didn't start with World War II. Some were already well established by then.

Detroit is probably the best example.

Maltese immigrants began settling there in significant numbers in the early 1900s. Detroit was booming, factories were hiring, and the growing automobile industry offered something Malta couldn't always provide enough of.

Jobs.

And immigration has a way of building on itself.

One person comes over and gets established. Then a brother follows. Then a cousin. Then another family from the same village. Somebody helps the new guy find a job. Somebody has a room where he can stay. Somebody knows somebody who knows somebody.

Pretty soon you don't just have Maltese people living in America.

You have a Maltese community.

Churches, clubs and social organizations became gathering places. Maltese businesses opened. Families grew. New arrivals had people waiting for them who understood where they came from.

Detroit became one of the largest centers of Maltese American life, but it wasn't alone. Maltese communities also developed around New York, San Francisco and other parts of the country.

And there is something about Detroit and Malta that makes a surprising amount of sense together.

Both have strong working class traditions. Both have tremendous pride in where they're from. Both are built around family and community. Both have taken a few punches over the years and kept going.

And both are full of people perfectly willing to explain why you're wrong.

Usually before you've finished talking.

What They Brought With Them

People don't just bring themselves when they immigrate.

They bring food. Religion. Language. Family habits. Superstitions. Holiday traditions. Opinions. And recipes nobody bothered to write down because apparently Nana was supposed to live forever.

Maltese families brought all of it.

Food may be one of the strongest connections to home.

Pastizzi are probably the obvious example.

Flaky pastry filled with ricotta or peas. Pastizzi tal-irkotta or pastizzi tal-piżelli.

And, naturally, opinions.

There are always opinions.

Then there's Ħobż, with that unmistakable crust and soft center. Maltese sausage. Rabbit. Imqaret. Figolli. Te fit-Tazza. Kinnie.

These weren't just foods people remembered from Malta. They became ways of keeping Malta present in everyday life.

The same thing happened with festas, Catholic traditions, Maltese clubs and family gatherings. They created places and occasions where people could speak Maltese, eat familiar food, see familiar faces and pass those traditions along to their children.

But probably the most important institution wasn't an institution at all.

It was the family.

Family isn't really a side feature of Maltese culture.

It's more like the operating system.

Sunday dinners. Baptisms. Weddings. Holidays. Church. Somebody's birthday. Somebody's anniversary. Somebody visiting from somewhere.

And cousins.

Lots and lots of cousins.

The result was that children growing up thousands of miles from Malta could still grow up surrounded by Malta.

Passing Malta Down

The first generation remembered Malta because they lived there.

They knew the villages. They knew the language. They knew the people. They knew exactly where they came from.

Their children grew up hearing those stories firsthand.

Then came the grandchildren. Then the great grandchildren.

And with every generation, something changes.

The language might fade. Families move away from the old neighborhoods. Clubs close. Traditions evolve. The Sunday gathering gets harder when half the family lives in another state.

But Maltese identity can be surprisingly stubborn.

Maybe you don't speak Maltese.

Maybe you've never lived in Malta.

Maybe your knowledge of the language consists of six words, three foods and several expressions you remember being yelled by an older relative.

But you know where your family came from.

It's in the surname. The food your grandmother made. The old photographs. The Maltese cross somewhere in the house. The stories you've heard so many times you aren't entirely sure whether you actually remember them or just remember being told them.

And sometimes something interesting happens.

You get older and start asking questions.

As a kid, all of those Maltese things were just the weird things your family did. Then one day you want to know why.

What village did we come from?

When did they leave?

Who stayed behind?

Do we still have relatives there?

Suddenly the things your grandparents worked so hard to preserve become the things you're trying to rediscover.

That may be one of the greatest accomplishments of the Maltese who came to America.

Generations later, their grandchildren and great grandchildren are still asking where they came from.

And they still care about the answer.

Going Back

At some point, family stories aren't enough.

You want to see it.

Visiting Malta when your family came from there is different from simply visiting another country. You're seeing someplace new, but you're also looking for things you've known about your entire life.

Suddenly the names are real places.

The village your grandparents talked about has streets, shops, churches and people complaining about parking.

The surnames that seemed unusual in America are everywhere.

Pastizzi aren't something you have to hunt down. They're behind the counter.

Ħobż is just bread.

Kinnie is in the refrigerator.

And nobody thinks any of this requires an explanation.

Then you discover all the things the family stories didn't quite capture.

Valletta at night. The walls of Mdina. Village festas filling the streets. Gozo. The churches. The balconies. The limestone. That ridiculous blue water.

And the traffic.

Nobody adequately explains the traffic.

For some Maltese Americans, that first visit answers questions.

For others, it creates about fifty new ones.

You start looking for the family village. The church. An address. A cemetery. Maybe relatives you've never met.

Malta stops being just the place your family came from.

It becomes a place you know for yourself.

Keeping Malta Close

The Maltese American story isn't about trying to recreate Malta in America.

Malta is Malta.

What those first generations did was make sure Malta remained part of the family even as the family became American.

And that connection doesn't have to look exactly the same in every generation.

For one generation, it might be speaking Maltese every day. For another, it's cooking the food. Visiting Malta. Going to a festa. Joining a Maltese club. Flying the flag. Keeping family photographs. Making sure the kids know which village their great grandparents came from.

Sometimes it's even smaller than that.

A case of Kinnie in the refrigerator.

A Maltese flag in the garage.

A photograph of Valletta on the wall.

A Pastizzi shirt that causes a complete stranger in a grocery store to stop and ask:

"Are you Maltese?"

And immediately, there's a connection.

That's the part I love.

Two people can be standing thousands of miles from Malta, see one small reference to the culture and instantly understand something about each other.

Pastizzi.

Te fit-Tazza.

Ħobż.

Kinnie.

A village name.

A surname.

Things that might mean absolutely nothing to everyone else in the room.

But we get it.

That's also the idea behind MaltaWear.

It's not about putting the word Malta on stuff.

It's about celebrating those little things that immediately mean Malta to the people who know them.

The Maltese who came to America built new lives, raised families and became Americans. But they also managed to pass something along.

Generations later, their grandchildren and great grandchildren still know where they came from.

Malta is only about 122 square miles.

Small enough that you can barely see it on some maps.

Apparently, not small enough to forget.

Small Island. Big Culture.