I am an immigrant from Italy. I arrived in the U.S. in August of 2019. I came to the U.S. for my father’s work. I chose an object that reminds me of my past in Italy, it is the game of Tombola. Tombola is a game to play in group. To play Tombola a person picks one of the numbers from a bag and says it aloud to all the other players, they have a paper with many columns where there are some numbers. The number that the person extracts from the bag the other players have to cover it with something small. In our Tombola game, the numbers are wooden and worn out from years of play. My grandmother even made the bag to keep the numbers in. It is the classic game played from all the Italian families Christmas day after lunch. It is important to me because I really love to play it with my family. We played it not only on Christmas day but everyday that we were together and out the weather was bad. We even played it on Easter day, on the Epifania and on New Year’s Day.  In our family, the person that used to read the numbers was my uncle and when he extracted the number he always said some joke. The winners of the game were always my grandmother or Maurizio, an old friend of my family. I am always unlucky and I win very rarely. My favorite part of the game was doing some pranks to my grandmother with my cousins. My Italian identity is represented by the Tombola game, even if it is not a unique game because every Italian family plays it, but I will always cherish it because it reminds me of my family that is in Italy, and it reminds me of Florence, too.
 

– Matilde

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant