Page 51 - Microsoft Word - CMA BOOK_2

Cultural Migration in Autobiography Grundtvig Partnerships 2009-2011

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

e-mail: kszia@komesnet.com.pl http://cma.internetdsl.pl

51

The Italian Group

Coordinator Heide Wilm Guerrini Tutor Maria Scolaro

When all this started, Heide and I were a bit worried and the future seemed full of uncertainties. We were lucky, though, and met a handful of very nice and cooperative people. Yet we were not a group and working with so many different mentalities could have proved puzzling. So, together with Heide, we planned a series of meetings, whose chief purpose was to create a comfortable environment, a virtual place where everybody would have the opportunity to feel welcomed and absolutely not judged, free to express themselves. I chose a few words to start with, but words which could help us have a clearer vision of ourselves and the others around. Identity, first of all, and then Destiny, Homesickness, Religion (hard to deal with…), Integration, Prejudice. Were they only an immigrant’s matter? Today we can state that every human being has got these powerful issues deep in their heart, except that we are often too busy to decipher them till circumstances compel us to take time and try to understand. Most autobiographical passages deal actually with the feelings, emotions or opinions arisen during our meetings. Very seldom we ‘read aloud’ what had been written, more often we had intriguing oral exchanges. The texts were written in Italian and only occasionally corrected as for grammar rules or lexis. They were finally translated into English.

Being a group slowly became an important part of our project, which we encouraged organizing dinner parties with ‘writers’, their families and friends, of whatever nationality; in addition we tried to get involved in any event, especially public, related to immigrants and their-our life. We feel this approach will give us the chance to go on working aiming at the creation of a permanent ‘workshop’ for a better mutual understanding and social cohesion.

A few writers abandoned the group due to family reasons or unpredictable events, while one of them asked us not to publish her autobiography, a decision we decided to accept and respect. It has been a wonderful adventure, for which I feel grateful to all the people who made I possible.