My mother was once interviewed as part of an exhibition called Italian Memories in Wales. At the time I presumed that she would be nervous and find it difficult to express herself. I was very wrong. What I hear in those interviews is an articulate woman very able to remember the smallest details of her arrival in Wales in 1950: the arduous two day journey and the frightening crossing of the English channel during a storm – she was used to the placid Venetian lagoon; she recalls her landlady who had pictures of tombstones on the walls and lived in candle light – “What happiness!” she says with a chuckle. My mother is proud of her struggle to survive and build a new life. “It takes guts!” she says with a strong Welsh accent.

The clash of culture and landscape coming from Venice to the Rhondda valley must have been a shock. She was frightened and “lost”, something I guess every immigrant must feel. As I listened to her I realised the opportunity I had missed by not recording the oral history of my father while he was alive. He travelled to Wales six months before my mother, with a very basic grasp of English and the promise of work with the National Coal Board.

I do, of course, remember many conversations I had with him about the hardship both below and above ground. After just a few years, and birth of their first child, he contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalised. My mother had to take my sister back to Italy to be cared for by her parents while she returned to the sanatorium in Wales to look after my father. Tuberculosis was a disease that needed a long recuperation. He came close to death and was given the last rites, but after two years he recovered to begin a new career as a photographer (not to mention having two more children, including me). He told me that his near-death experience gave him the boost to gamble on an uncertain profession and it paid off.

The recorded interview of my mother was the impetus for me to write a book based on an immigrant Italian family in Wales and their cafe, Sweet Pizza. Italian cafes became a community focal point all over the UK. The sub-plot of the book is the story of Joe Merelli’s granddad and the turbulent days during the second world war when Italians living in the UK were interned.

As I wrote the book I became conscious of the parallels with the “hot topic” of immigration today. I wonder how I would have coped if I had found myself in an unknown country in my twenties, unable to speak the language. The nearest I came to that was leaving Wales at 18 to study in London, which was no more than millions of students do year in year out, and I was lucky to live in a time when I received a comfortable grant.

The story is not autobiographical, but it struck me that my mother’s oral history is repeated by immigrants that preceded and followed them from all over the world – I was at school with the offspring of immigrants from India, the West Indies and Eastern Europe. Being the child of an immigrant makes you question who you are and where you’re from a little sooner than most – was I Welsh or was I Italian? I certainly remember going through an “Italian phase” when I supported Italy against England in football (fortunately I don’t remember Italy ever playing Wales). These days it’s more clear-cut – I’m proud of my cultural heritage, but I feel Welsh. When Wales play England in the Six Nations I oh-so want them to win, and when Wales play Italy? Well, I hope Italy put up a gallant battle and lose by just a few points (if Italy ever beat England I think I’ll cry with joy).

My mother now lives in Italy (to be near my sister and her grandchildren), but she always tells us she left her heart in Wales. She has a wonderful live-in carer, Tatiana from the Ukraine, who has her own story to tell. The story of immigration continues.

Oral histories shape our future, and they need to be recorded. It’s so simple. All you need is a recording device (pen and paper will do), you sit down with your parents, grand-parents or guardians and begin. We all have a history to tell.

• Sweet Pizza by GR Gemin is available from the Guardian bookshop.