Igiaba Scego

Si analizza e chiarisce grazie ad un confronto ragionato della critica, il concetto letterario di "struttura a più voci" e polifonia all'interno del romanzo. Si analizzano poi tre autrici del Postcoloniale italiano e dell'uso che fanno nei loro romanzi della struttura a più voci e della polifonia, mettendo in risalto da una parte il comune utilizzo di questa strategia narrativa, dall'altra gli esiti differenti ottenuti nella scrittura. Si evidenziano attraverso percorsi di lettura dei tre romanzi alcuni elementi dei Postcolonial studies e del postcoloniale italiano, della Race theory e dei Gender studies.

This article analyses a number of female protagonists from a selection of novels written by Italian postcolonial women writers: Mahlet from Gabriella Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle (2007), Domenica Axad from Madre piccola (2007) by Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Rhoda from the eponymous novel by Igiaba Scego (2004) and Zuhra from Oltre Babilonia (2008) also by Scego. A thematic exploration of these characters brings to light in particular the choices behind their embracing of Italian language and culture, the representation of their bodies wounded by manifestations of racism and sexism, and their plurilingualism as a form of rebellion against an unbending and monolithic idea of Italy. The aims of the article are twofold: to shed light on the collective imagination these characters embody and represent, and to verify their potential function as heroines within the texts.

[ITA] Igiaba Scego, con questo ultimo romanzo, fissa definitivamente l'espressività e l'intensità della propria scrittura narrativa e pone di nuovo al centro dell'attenzione di critici e studiosi il «diritto» degli scrittori translingue a fare letteratura di alto profilo. La Scego costruisce un romanzo ottocentesco. Infatti, il libro ha avuto una lunga gestazione e si poggia su anni di ricerche e di documentazione da farne una prova letteraria di primo ordine, non solo per i contesti storici che attraversa ma per il modo in cui, narrativamente e strutturalmente, li attraversa.

[ENG] Igiaba Scego, with this latest novel, definitively fixes the expressiveness and intensity of her narrative writing and once again places the "right" of translingual writers to make high-profile literature at the center of attention of critics and scholars. The Scego builds a nineteenth-century novel. In fact, the book has had a long gestation and relies on years of research and documentation to make it a literary proof of the first order, not only for the historical contexts it crosses but for the way it crosses them, both narratively and structurally.

This article discusses the concepts of nostalgia and cultural identity in Italian migrant literature in light of Bhabha’s theory of hybrid identity and Ahmed’s concept of home as a second skin. Nostalgia, from the Greek nóstos (return home) and álgia (pain), was originally a seventeenth century medical diagnosis for those suffering from severe homesickness, and the term is often used by scholars of migrant literature. But what is home in contemporary migrant literature? How can one long for a home one can no longer remember or never has lived in? How does nostalgia influence the migrant’s local and cultural identity? Among the authors who examine these questions is the Italian Somali writer Igiaba Scego, and the discussion of nostalgia and cultural identity will be based on readings of two of Scego’s short stories, “Dismatria” (“Exmatriate”) and “Salsicce” (“Sausages”), as well as her autofictional novel La mia casa è dove sono (My home is where I am).

Epiche della moltitudine: il titolo della tesi è una suggestione, nel tentativo di inquadrare la tendenza di certa narrativa italiana che, a parer mio, ha definito i caratteri di una contemporanea letteratura militante. Una letteratura che scelto un luogo da cui narrare e un soggetto specifico a cui rivolgersi [...] È una narrativa che di nuovo assume su di sé la responsabilità del narrato, non rinuncia a essere divertente ma si fa di nuovo etica. Il suo obiettivo principale si può definire nel recupero del rapporto tra narrazione e prassi. Ciò si realizza principalmente come superamento di quelle scelte etiche ed estetiche che hanno influenzato parte della narrativa novecentesca – soprattutto nella parte finale del secolo – e racchiuse nell’accezione, forse troppo generale, di letteratura postmoderna. Queste scelte si definiscono attraverso un’esasperata interpretazione del reale, l’avvilimento di qualunque concetto di verità, l’ostentata ironia. [...] Il risultato è stato la moltiplicazione di individualità irriducibili esposte a poteri multipli e soggiogate – in campo sociale e politico - e di egocentrismi e narrazioni autoreferenziali in campo letterario. In questi termini, il discorso compiuto da quella che vogliamo riconoscere come epiche della moltitudine intende invertire la rotta: riconsegnare ai soggetti degli elementi comuni, strumenti, consapevolezze che li rendano di nuovo attori/agenti nel reale. Come comunità vasta, meticcia, ribelle capace di coordinarsi lungo direttrici inaspettate, fondate su nuovi desideri umani, elaborati in seno a nuove collettività. Elemento fondante la prassi è il recupero dell’intersoggettività come condizione umana irrinunciabile e forma di protezione: un’interazione intellettuale, emotiva, fisica – non sottomessa a logiche esterne – il capitale, lo stato, l’impresa, l’interesse politico – ma necessaria ai soggetti che la generano – per riconoscersi, liberarsi, divenire.

While political discourses on the current 'migratory crisis' often take the language of ecological emergency, depicting Western states as self-sufficient ecosystems put in danger by the 'vermin' of external intruders, postcolonial writing proves crucial in reimagining frontier limbos and precarious existences as the originating centres of unprecedented transformations. Drawing on biological and cultural definitions of the "ecotone" (Haraway 2007, Morrissey 2015) and on Edward Casey's notion of spaces "in-between edges" (2008), I intend to explore two different declinations of literary ecotones centred around migrant children's experiences, namely Igiaba Scego's "La mia casa è dove sono" [Home is where I am] (2010) and J. M. Coetzee's "The Childhood of Jesus" (2013). The first chronicles the Scegos's diaspora from Mogadishu to Europe as well as the writer's own struggles in growing up a black Italian-born girl in 1990s Rome. The second is a dystopian fiction in which the protagonists are strangers recently arrived by boat in a posthumous dimension where all inhabitants have forgotten their past and are content with their anodyne present. Scego's memoir and Coetzee's novel provide instances of different but equally powerful literary ecotones. Whereas Coetzee's fictional text focuses on the existential and philosophical limbo of a lost child literally experiencing a new (after)life, Scego's work deals with specific objects (the home-drawn Rome-plus-Mogadishu map, Bernini's Roman sculpture of an African elephant) as objective correlatives of complex and transformative collective geographies.

Reproduction represents the future of any country. Up-and-coming generations influence the language, culture, and tastes of their society. In the global landscape, but especially in Italy, unprecedented migration flows continue to have a major impact on socio-political dynamics of belonging. One major, recurring trend has been the perception of (im)migrants as “undesirable” subjects who threaten the supposed homogeneity of national Italian identity. But, how, exactly do i(m)migrants understand their relationship with, and their experiences “on the margins” of, Italy?

This course introduces students to plural perspectives on the migrant experience in Italy. It draws on an archive of contemporary audiovisual materials produced by migrants who differ in age, gender, socioeconomic status, nation of origin, and educational attainment. Exposure to these authentic texts of a usually non-literary nature (i.e. films, documentaries, interviews, graphic novels, performative pieces, musical compositions, graffiti, and art installations) will refine students’ oral comprehension and production. Course assignments, such as creating a mini video podcast, leading a mini lesson, recording Vlogs, and producing a short documentary, will improve students’ comprehension and command of spoken Italian.

I argue that novelists Igiaba Scego and Abdourahman A. Waberi, building on the work of Nuruddin Farah among others, engage the trope of nomadism so as to propose a pre- colonial imaginary of a Somali polyvalent cosmopolitanism as a possible tool for thinking through our contemporary geographies of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
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Un analisi di  «scritture transitorie». I testi che prendo in esame sono tre e appartengono alla letteratura della migrazione e alla letteratura postcoloniale. Si tratta dei romanzi Oltre Babilonia di Igiaba Scego, Madre Piccola di Cristina Ali Farah, Regina di fiori e di perle di Gabriella
Ghermandi. Per la loro analisi mi avvalgo degli strumenti e
delle riflessioni sviluppatesi in diversi campi disciplinari: la filosofia, l'antropologia e la critica letteraria.
Tre sono anche gli elementi che emergono dai testi e su cui mi concentro: la volontà di sapere e il conflitto con l’istituzione; il corpo come luogo della riscoperta del sé, della conoscenza e della relazione con l’altro; la memoria come sapere conflittuale e veridico.

This article addresses how (cultural) identity in Igiaba Scego's literary works is achieved through a struggle of bodily pain. Narrating from a female point of view, Scego explores in depth the female migrant condition which in her texts is accentuated by the migrant body's diversity and subsequent enhanced visibility. When reading Scego's literary work, the conflictual relationship that many of her protagonists have with notions such as identity and cultural belonging is striking. Her protagonists' autoanalytical questioning and lack of unity in terms of identity sometimes results in painful and self-inflicted bodily expressions, and this paper's analysis of Scego's hybrid and suffering protagonists is based on readings of the novels Oltre Babilonia (2008) and La mia casa è dove sono (2010), as well as the short story 'Salsicce' (2005a).

Igiaba Scego is a Somali-Italian author, journalist and activist. While Scego was born in Rome and is very much Italian, her novels, short stories and essays often center on the largely untold history of the Italian colonial enterprise in Somalia and the subsequent Somali Civil War.  In her 2015 novel Adua, Scego illuminates the legacy of colonialism by chronicling the intergenerational trauma passed from Zoppe to his daughter Adua. Zoppe works as a translator for Italians during the fascist regime; and Adua is an actress exploited by the Italian film industry. Both father and daughter are drawn into the Italian orbit due to false promises. While Zoppe associates Italy with wealth and upward mobility, Adua believes in the glamor and stardom she sees onscreen in her hometown's lovingly-restored, fascist movie theater. Adua, however, differs from Zoppe in that she is able to overcome past traumas. Rather than becoming arrested in time, Adua restores her agency through storytelling with the help of a community of women, both real and imagined. Just as Adua imagines supportive, capable women, she is herself imagined by her creator Igiaba Scego. This metanarrative act of imagination grants Scego a similar agency to her character: both intervene in a long-fought battle to collectively reimagine Italian colonial history.

[ITA] Con quali e quanti occhi è possibile, oggi, ri-leggere il colonialismo italiano
in terra d’Africa?
Se è vero, come ha scritto il più grande storico del colonialismo italiano, Angelo del Boca, che «l’Africa è stata una parte importante della vita degli italiani»,
per quale motivo oggi tendiamo a occultarne il ricordo e tendiamo a sapere poco
di quello che accadde al di là del Mediterraneo in epoche e tempi diversi? Nessun giornalista, politico, intellettuale, per esempio, si è mai chiesto criticamente
perché la gran parte delle vittime della strage del 3 ottobre 2013 (363 morti accertati e una ventina di dispersi) al largo di Lampedusa fosse eritrea. Per quale
motivo dal Corno d’Africa si continua a scegliere l’Italia come punto d’approdo?

[ENG] With which and how many eyes is it possible, today, to re-read Italian colonialism in Africa? If it is true, as the greatest historian of Italian colonialism, Angelo del Boca, wrote, that "Africa was an important part of Italians' lives", why today do we tend to hide its memory and tend to know little about what happened beyond the Mediterranean at different times and times? No journalist, politician, intellectual, for example, has ever asked himself critically why the majority of the victims of the massacre of October 3, 2013 (363 confirmed dead and about twenty missing) off Lampedusa were Eritrean. Why do people from the Horn of Africa continue to choose Italy as their landing place?

La narrativa di Igiaba Scego, scrittrice italiana di origini somale, si inserisce nel filone variamente definito come «letteratura migrante» o «postcoloniale». I racconti e i romanzi dell’autrice sono estremamente ricchi di riflessioni e di inserti di natura metalinguistica; un tratto che si fonde con altri elementi portanti della sua prosa quali la narrazione autobiografica, numerosi riferimenti di natura religiosa, il forte legame con le vicende storiche dell’ultimo secolo, l’impegno civile, oltre – naturalmente – ad un singolare intreccio di lingue e di culture. Concentrandosi in particolare sulle sue opere maggiori e più recenti, in questo saggio si indagano i contributi teorici e pratici che l’autrice fornisce attraverso i suoi scritti nel quadro degli odierni modelli linguistici e letterari.

Fiction by Igiaba Scego, an Italian writer of Somali origin, is part of the genre variously defined as “migrant” or “postcolonial” literature. The author’s stories and novels are extremely rich in reflections and additions of a metalinguistic nature; a trait that blends with other key elements of her prose such as autobiographical narrative, numerous references of a religious nature, the strong link with the historical events of the last century, civil commitment, as well as – of course – a unique interweaving of languages and cultures. Focusing in particular on her major and most recent works, this essay investigates the theoretical and practical contributions that the author provides through her writings in the context of today's linguistic and literary models.

Roma negata. Percorsi postcoloniali nella città (2014), a book comprised of
Rino Bianchi's series of portraits and Igiaba Scego's narrative, and African-American
artist Carrie Mae Weems's Roaming (2006), a collection of photographs shot in Rome,
take the viewer on a pilgrimage through the city, exposing and questioning the relationship among architecture, space, and identity. Both works chart the ethics and aesthetics of collective memory in its rapport with monuments and buildings that commemorate and celebrate nation, empire, and national identity. The artists! itineraries through the Eternal City are a meditation on history, memory, and public space that reminds us that national identity-formation through symbolic architecture hinges on selection and omission. From within the built environment, the two photographers and the writer prompt us to ask ourselves whose story architecture archives and memorializes. Their creative endeavors should thus be approached as counter-narratives that seek to invert the architectonic and monumental erasure of minority identities throughout history.

While political discourses on the current 'migratory crisis' often take the language of ecological emergency, depicting Western states as self-sufficient ecosystems put in danger by the 'vermin' of external intruders, postcolonial writing proves crucial in pushing the boundaries and reimagining frontier limbos and precarious existences as the originating centres of unprecedented transformations. Such is the case of J. M. Coetzee’s "The Childhood of Jesus" (2013), a dystopian fiction in which the protagonists are strangers recently arrived by boat to a mysterious and apparently posthumous 'new' country with a decidedly Beckettian twist. In this new location, every newly-arrived has been shorn of his/her memory, taught the official and only language, and kept in refugee camps and various waiting spaces before being allowed into a standard dwelling. Everyone is looked after by a pervasive (though apparently benign) state bureaucracy which allows for no variety, no personal initiative and no irony, so that the protagonists’ yearning for “something more” that is missing will lead them to unexpected consequences. Comparing Coetzee’s novel to Igiaba Scego’s Italian memoir "La mia casa è dove sono" (2010), which chronicles the Scegos’s diaspora from Mogadishu to Europe as well as her own struggles in growing up a black Italian-born girl in 1990s Rome, I intend to explore two different declinations of ecotones. Whereas Coetzee’s novel focuses on the existential and philosophical limbo of a lost child literally experiencing a new (after)life, Scego’s work deals with specific objects (the home-drawn Rome-plus-Mogadishu map, Bernini’s Roman sculpture of an African elephant) as objective correlatives of complex and transformative collective geographies.