A Foot in Two Places
I was born in New Jersey, but my roots were planted across the Atlantic. My parents came to America from a small town in southern Italy, carrying little more than a suitcase, a dream, and the belief that this country would offer a better life. Like so many immigrants before them, they arrived not just with hope, but with urgency — the kind born from knowing that there was no future left in the place they had left behind.
Growing up, I always felt like I lived in two worlds. There was the America I experienced in school, on TV, and in the streets — fast-moving, loud, ambitious, and self-inventing. And then there was the Italy I experienced at home — slow, deliberate, traditional, and deeply rooted. One world told me to dream big, speak up, and move fast. The other told me to honor the past, keep my head down, and never forget where I came from.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this quiet tug-of-war shaped everything I would later write about. It’s what gave me a sense of distance — not just from my peers, but from the very idea of America itself. Because while I loved this country, I never saw it the way some others did. I saw the cracks early. I saw the struggle behind the myth.
The Weight of Gratitude
There is a strange pressure that comes with being the child of immigrants — especially when your parents gave up everything for your chance at something better. My father worked in construction. My mother cleaned houses. They never complained. They rarely rested. And they asked very little from the country other than the chance to work and live in peace.
They told me, often and without irony, that I was lucky to be here. That I should be grateful for the opportunities that surrounded me. And I was — but gratitude has a weight to it, especially when you feel it’s your job to prove their sacrifice was worth it.
I felt that pressure in every exam I took, in every job I chased, in every decision I made that felt more “American” than “Italian.” I was building a life for myself, yes — but also for them, for the version of themselves that didn’t get the chance to go to college or write books or speak in boardrooms without an accent.
Gratitude, when left unspoken, becomes a quiet kind of guilt. And guilt, in turn, becomes a longing — for a home you never quite belonged to, in a country you’re still trying to understand.
The American Myth
We all grow up with stories. The ones my classmates seemed to carry were about individual triumph, upward mobility, and reinvention. The American Dream — work hard, follow the rules, and success will come.
But that’s not the story I saw at home. My parents worked harder than anyone I knew, but we didn’t vacation in the Hamptons or drive new cars. We lived modestly, quietly, and sometimes precariously. There was always just enough, but never more. My father never talked about the dream — he talked about survival. About getting by. About keeping your head down and staying out of trouble.
Over time, I began to question the dream altogether. Not just because it wasn’t guaranteed, but because it often ignored the invisible labor of people like my parents — the ones cleaning the office floors long after the executives had gone home, the ones building the skyscrapers they would never work in.
The American myth is seductive, but it is selective. It favors the loud over the quiet, the new over the old, the seen over the unseen. And as the son of immigrants, I learned to live in the spaces it overlooked.
Becoming My Own Invention
As I got older, I did what many writers do — I began turning my distance into perspective. I took the tension between these two worlds and made it a lens. I wrote essays that tried to make sense of cultural contradictions. I wrote stories about people who didn’t quite fit in. I searched for beauty in broken places.
In many ways, my writing has been a long conversation between the Italy I inherited and the America I inhabit. I’ve written about loneliness, not just as a personal feeling, but as a cultural condition. I’ve explored masculinity not as a role to perform, but as a burden to question. I’ve walked the line between memoir and social commentary because that’s where my life has always existed — between observation and experience.
I am my parents’ son. But I am also a child of this country, shaped by its noise and its contradictions. I carry both with me — the weight of my family’s past, and the complexity of the American present.
A Different Kind of Belonging
Today, I live far from where I grew up. I’ve traded the tight neighborhoods of New Jersey for the open silence of northern New Mexico. I no longer try to choose between the two worlds I come from. I let them both inform me — the old and the new, the immigrant and the native, the myth and the truth.
Belonging, I’ve learned, isn’t about assimilation. It’s about integration. It’s about making peace with where you come from while still forging a path that’s entirely your own.
I am an American. I am also my parents’ son. I belong not because I’ve followed the myth, but because I’ve questioned it. And in doing so, I’ve found something deeper — a place between worlds, where stories live, where truth begins, and where identity is no longer a destination, but a journey.