Hi, my name is Patrizia Corigliano Giovannini. Most call me Pat for short.

One of the biggest feelings I remember growing up was a being in a constant state of confusion. I grew up in the US, then moved to Italy at the age of 9, then back to the States again as a young adult! I was born in New York to my Italian immigrant parents. My mother & I have a language of our own. It's a mix of English an Italian dialect from a little town in Calabria, the south of Italy, where both my mother and father are from.

During my early years in the US there was once a class project where everyone had to wear the flag of where they came from. I was wearing the Italian one and most other students were wearing the United States Flag ... I didn't understand why I was different since I was born in the States like everyone else, but my family identified as Italian.