The recent histories of Italy and Somalia are closely linked. Italy colonized Somalia from the end of the 19th century to 1941, and held the territory by UN mandate from 1950 to 1960. Italy is also among the destination countries of the Somali diaspora, which increased in 1991 after civil war. Nonetheless, this colonial and postcolonial cultural encounter has often been neglected. Critically evaluating Gilles Deleuze and F x Guattari‘s concept ofminor literature as well as drawing on postc...

Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives is about identity—individual and national—and belonging. It is also an affirmation of diversity. The editors of this volume have brought together articles that analyze the literature of migration as well as creative pieces by recognized authors who have a lived experience of migration. English speakers will find their own societal struggles with diversity mirrored in Italy’s colonial inheritance and its renewed nationalism...

Italian Women Writers, 1800–2000: Boundaries, Borders, and Transgression investigates narrative, autobiography, and poetry by Italian women writers from the nineteenth century to today, focusing on topics of spatial and cultural boundaries, border identities, and expressions of excluded identities. This book discusses works by known and less-known writers as well as by some new writers: Sibilla Aleramo, La Marchesa Colombi, Giuliana Morandini, Elsa Morante, Neera, Matilde Serao, Ribka Sibh...

Schitarrate! è una jam session fra musicisti disposti a cimentarsi con la penna e scrittori desiderosi di confrontarsi con il mondo della musica.Un’antologia nata dall’omonimo concorso letterario in cui undici autori ci propongono un repertorio di racconti che spazia dal punk, al jazz, fino al blues.Undici tracce per un album dallo stile fresco, veloce e contemporaneo con brani di: Silvia Accorrà, Simone Brioni, Davide Cancarini, Nicola Fantoni, Luigi Filippelli, Mattia Filip...

This book explores Italian science fiction from 1861, the year of Italy’s unification, to the present day, focusing on how this genre helped shape notions of Otherness and Normalness. In particular, Italian Science Fiction draws upon critical race studies, postcolonial theory, and feminist studies to explore how migration, colonialism, multiculturalism, and racism have been represented in genre film and literature. Topics include the role of science fiction in constructing a natio...

Tired of being scrutinized, criticized, and fetishized for her black skin, Cameroon-born scholar Geneviève Makaping turns the tables on Italy’s white majority, regarding them through the same unsparing gaze to which minorities have traditionally been subjected. As she candidly recounts her experiences—first across Africa and then as a migrant Black woman in Italy—Makaping describes acts of racist aggression that are wearying and degrading to encounter on a daily basis. She also offers her ...

Growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel was immersed in the language and culture of Italy, Somalia’s former colonizer. Yet when she moved to Italy as a young mother in the 1970s, she discovered a country where immigrants and Muslims were viewed with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion–where, even today, she and her children must seemingly prove they are Italian.In Islam and Me, Fazel tells her story and shares the experiences of other Muslim women living ...

This multidisciplinary volume analyses key themes and topics related to the cultural encounters between Italy and its former colonies in the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia). The multi-faceted relations between the Horn of Africa and Italy were initiated during the colonial period but have also been shaped more recently through migration. In eleven chapters by experts in comparative literature, cultural studies, history, migration studies, political philosophy and postcolonia...