May 2025

Dear readers,

I am the son of immigrants. My mother lived through the Nazi occupation of Belgium and came to the US after World War II.

My father left Cuba in the 1930s. He was active in a pro-democracy group, and when Batista’s secret police came looking for him, he decided that if he wanted to live, he needed to leave.

They both had accents, each one different. Because of what they’d experienced up close, they were both committed to democracy and fiercely proud of their adopted country.

As a family physician in the Bronx, when I looked at many of my patients, I saw my abuela or abuelo–my dad’s parents, who immigrated to the US too late in their lives to learn English or ever feel quite at home here.