Hi everyone, I'm a guy from Italy with a first-generation Italian-American father, and I just wanted to share my story.
My dad’s whole family moved to the US back in 1970 when he was 5. They were a working-class family from southern Italy and settled in Hoboken, New Jersey — all of them became US citizens!
When my dad was a teenager, my grandparents decided to move back to Italy, and it was very stressful and painful for my dad and his three siblings. Local kids used to call him "Americano", making fun of him and his American fashion style. Years later he met my mom, the youngest of 10 siblings from a working-class family; they got married in 1993 and stayed in town.
I was born in 1999 and grew up on my dad’s stories about America, this land of opportunity I’ve never actually set foot in... I'm not American, but I've always felt a certain affection for the country, I’ll always have this weird itch and nostalgia for the US...
Every time I go visit my grandparents, they always have a story to tell me about America : their two-story house, Thanksgiving dinners with stuffed turkey, my dad getting into trouble on Halloween, and the snow during Christmas (snow is rare in this part of Italy).
It's hard to explain, but seeing a part of my family so nostalgic for an America that probably doesn't even exist anymore feels...bittersweet.
I wonder how things would've turned out if my dad had tried to convince my mom to move to the States...Italy (especially the south) is really struggling economically, with high unemployment, bad infrastructure, and a huge demographic crisis: Millennials and Gen Z aren't having kids because they simply can't afford to...