The Antonia Simonelli Story

Project Brief

Antonia and her adult children had lost their loving husband and father. Antonia was approaching her eighties when her youngest daughter contacted me about writing her mother’s (and incorporating her father’s) life story. Maria knew very little of her family’s Italian story and before all those remarkable anecdotes of life in Sicily, surviving WW2, migrating to Australia and raising a family were lost, she wanted them saved (through interviews with her mum) and produced in narrative form – including as many photos as they could.

From the Client

Maria Simonelli (daughter)

“I always regretted not recording formally my dad’s stories and life back in Italy before I was born. Then when he passed away all that knowledge and history and context did too. I was not going to have the same thing happen to mum. Being a child of migrants and not having a relationship with grandparents or aunts etc, because they either passed away or were back in Italy, meant I felt like we started our family from day one in Australia. No concrete history with loads of stories — just us. So getting a sense of life before Australia, 1949, means much more to me now. I want to know where I came from and understand why.

Most remarkable of all was that a reluctant mother who was shy and embarrassed about her story before the process started, wanted more of her story told when the taping had finished. She’s now talking about part 2!”