I’ve always been interested in language and partly because I grew up speaking two languages at home. Specifically, I speak a southern Italian dialect from the Bagnara Calabra region of Calabria and, of course, English.  My mother tells an interesting story of the local kindergarten teacher in New Jersey wanting to send me back home on the first day of […]

Life as a child is often full of paradoxes and as a small boy I wondered why we needed a day to celebrate Italian-American culture in the United States when I lived like an Italian in the United States each and every day of my life, for example.  As I grew up, I realized many Italian Americans observe Columbus Day […]

The year was 1997 and I was a college junior applying for a prestigious fellowship for first generation college students.  The fellowship provided funds and a mentor to guide and prepare students for graduate work in the humanities and sciences.  The fellowship had strict academic and social-economic requirements.  On the socio-economic side, students were expected to be first generation college […]