I‘m spending my Columbus holiday this year in New York, participating in the parade sponsored by Italian-Americans who proudly celebrate the courage and skill of the Genoese explorer who transformed the world.

The fact that it was an Italian who introduced the Americas to the rest of the world (and vice versa) meant a lot to Italian immigrants who made their own treacherous journeys here some four centuries later, and that included my family. I think about my mother’s grandparents making their way down the hills of Sicily, to a port they’d never seen, through strange waters, to arrive days later in a foreign country for which no technology could prepare them. Columbus Day for me recalls my childhood with my dad and his family, from the region of Campania, Italy, who struggled so that we might all achieve the American Dream.