“Columbus wasn’t Italian”
I never had a strong attachment to Columbus Day as a holiday for and celebrated by Italian Americans because of my father, the person who gave me the Italian heritage.
Born in Chicago in February 1917 to Maria and Galileo, my dad grew up, speaking all Italian in his first four years, in an ethnically diverse neighborhood with Jewish, Slovakian, Welsh and other European immigrant families. His favorite toast was “Ala famiglia” followed by “A cento anni,” which he would inevitably add, “A good toast, unless you’re 99.” He loved everything Italian: “The Godfather,” “Moonstruck,” ravioli with red sauce, and Luciano Pavarotti.
He did not like Columbus, however. Not because of any heightened awareness of the genocide the Spanish-hired captain unleashed on the Indigenous world, but because “Columbus wasn’t Italian,” he’d say.
“He was Genovese.”
This was my father’s way of saying a few things at once. Italy wasn’t even a country in 1492. It was a bunch of separate city-states, like most of Europe at the time. Rome was the center of power for the Catholic Church, not the state of Italy. Columbus came from the city-state of Genoa. Located on the Mediterranean, Genoa was a dominant naval force. My father was not impressed that a Genovese went off to make his fortune and history under the flag of Spain.
