“My family is Italian,” one of our visitors commented as I welcomed her college class and their professor to the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles this past June. As her peers meandered through the museum, the student, 21-year-old Olivia, stood in front of the permanent exhibition screens watching projections of turn-of-the-twentieth-century images of peasants in the Mezzogiorno and Italian immigrants arriving at Ellis Island.

She seemed genuinely moved. “What part of Italy did your family come from?” I asked, sensing her greater-than-average interest. “One side came from somewhere in Sicily, but I’m not really sure about the other side…Calabria maybe?” she responded.