The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in ’Minor’ Italian Literature

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The Somali Within Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian Literature

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legenda  , founded in 1995 by the European Humanities Research Centre of

the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities, including works on Arabic, Catalan, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. An Editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies, the British Comparative Literature Association and the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain & Ireland.

The Modern Humanities Research Association ( ) encourages and promotes advanced study and research in the field of the modern humanities, especially modern European languages and literature, including English, and also cinema. It also aims to break down the barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization. The Association fulfils this purpose primarily through the publication of journals, bibliographies, monographs and other aids to research.

Maney Publishing is one of the few remaining independent British academic publishers. Founded in 1900 the company has offices both in the UK, in Leeds and London, and in North America, in Philadelphia. Since 1945 Maney Publishing has worked closely with learned societies, their editors, authors, and members, in publishing academic books and journals to the highest traditional standards of materials and production.

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italian perspectives Editorial Committee Professor Simon Gilson, University of Warwick (General Editor) Dr Francesca Billiani, University of Manchester Dr Manuele Gragnolati, Somerville College, Oxford Dr Catherine Keen, University College London Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford Founding Editors Professor Zygmunt Baran´ski and Professor Anna Laura Lepschy In the light of growing academic interest in Italy and the reorganization of many university courses in Italian along interdisciplinary lines, this book series, founded by Maney Publishing under the imprint of the Northern Universities Press and now continuing under the Legenda imprint, aims to bring together different scholarly perspectives on Italy and its culture. Italian Perspectives publishes books and collections of essays on any period of Italian literature, language, history, culture, politics, art, and media, as well as studies which take an interdisciplinary approach and are methodologically innovative.

appearing in this series 1. The Letters of Giacomo Leopardi 1817-1837, ed. by Prue Shaw 2. Nelle Carceri di G. B. Piranesi, by Silvia Gavuzzo-Stewart 3. Speculative Identities: Contemporary Italian Women’s Narrative, by Rita Wilson 4. Elio Vittorini: The Writer and the Written, by Guido Bonsaver 5. Origin and Identity: Essays on Svevo and Trieste, by Elizabeth Schächter 6. Italo Calvino and the Landscape of Childhood, by Claudia Nocentini 7. Playing with Gender: The Comedies of Goldoni, by Maggie Günsberg 8. Comedy and Culture: Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetry and Late Medieval Society, by Fabian Alfie 9. Fragments of Impegno, by Jennifer Burns 10. Contesting the Monument: The Anti-Illusionist Italian Historical Novel, by Ruth Glynn 11. Camorristi, Politicians and Businessmen, by Felia Allum 12. Speaking Out and Silencing, ed. by Anna Cento Bull and Adalgisa Giorgio 13. From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante, by Claire E. Honess 14. Orality and Literacy in Modern Italian Culture, ed. by Michael Caesar and Marina Spunta 15. Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre, by Lisa Sampson 16. Sweet Thunder: Music and Libretti in 1960s Italy, by Vivienne Suvini-Hand 17. Il teatro di Eduardo De Filippo, by Donatella Fischer 18. Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy 1969–2009, ed. by Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O’Leary 19. Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340-1520, by Rhiannon Daniels 20. Ugo Foscolo and English Culture, by Sandra Parmegiani 21. The Printed Media in Fin-de-siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers, ed. by Ann Hallamore Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns

Managing Editor Dr Graham Nelson, 41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2jf, UK www.legendabooks.com

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The Somali Within Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian Literature ❖ Simone Brioni

Italian Perspectives 33 Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing 2015

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Published by the Modern Humanities Research Association Salisbury House, Station Road, Cambridge cb1 2la and Maney Publishing Suite 1c, Joseph’s Well, Hanover Walk, Leeds ls3 1ab Maney Publishing is the trading name of W. S. Maney & Son Ltd LEGENDA is an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing ISBN 978-1-909662-64-3 First published 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or disseminated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system, or otherwise used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the copyright owner Disclaimer: Statements of fact and opinion contained in this book are those of the author and not of the editors, Maney Publishing, or the Modern Humanities Research Association. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, in respect of the accuracy of the material in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. © Modern Humanities Research Association and W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2015 Printed in Great Britain Cover: 875 Design Copy-Editor: Nigel Hope

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Contents ❖

1 2 3

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Acknowledgements Note on Translation and Alphabetization List of Figures Introduction: The Somali Italian Encounter Language Race Belonging Conclusion: Becoming Bibliography Index

ix xi xii 1 18 60 112 145 156 172

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in memoriam Giulio Debbia Stefano Ghidini Carla Macoggi

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

I would like to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the research institutions that provided support to the development and completion of this book. The PhD research that forms the basis of this study was funded by the Department of Italian at the University of Warwick, which also promoted the organization of research events that have enhanced my work substantially. I can never thank the Department and the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Warwick enough for welcoming me with such a stimulating and collegial research atmosphere. My grateful thanks goes to the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing and the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, for their professional help and support to my research during my Visiting Fellowship. I also want to thank my colleagues at the State University of New York at Stony Brook for their warm welcome in the Department of European Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. I am deeply appreciative of the financial support this book has received from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Research and Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund at Stony Brook University. There are so many who have provided me with vital information and excellent advice on the book, and it would be impossible to thank all of them. Jennifer Burns supervised my PhD thesis and I can never thank her and Loredana Polezzi enough for their guidance and insight. This book would not have been possible without their support and encouragement throughout these years. My heartfelt thanks go to Derek Duncan for his attentive reading and input on the thesis. I also would like to thank Simon Gilson and the editorial board of the ‘Italian Perspectives’ series for having welcomed the project of this book, Graham Nelson for his kind help in all stages of the publication process, Nigel Hope for his careful review of the text, and the external reader of the manuscript of the book for useful advice. I am grateful for insightful comments on unpublished sections of this book from Emma Bond, Giacomo Comiati, Maya Angela Smith, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi. The lively and thoughtprovoking dialogue about the documentaries La quarta via. Mogadiscio, Italia, and Aulò: Roma postcoloniale provided The Somali Within with an incredible source of inspiration. I offer very sincere thanks to those researchers, writers, friends, and colleagues who participated in this fruitful intellectual exchange: Ali Mumin Ahad, Franca Bimbi, Guido Bonsaver, Silvia Camilotti, Manuela Coppola, Giovanna Covi, Ellen DavisWalker, Alvise Del Pra’, Alessandra Diazzi, Federico Faloppa, Olivier Favier, Paola Giuli, Manuele Gragnolati, Cadigia Hassan, Cristoph Holzey, Tom Langley, Sabrina Marchetti, Sara Marzagora, Federica Mazzara, Malachi McIntosh, Francesca Minonne, Kombola Ramadhani Mussa, Giusy Muzzopappa, Carlo Nobili, Helena OikarinenJabai, Fulvio Pezzarossa, Davide Sforzini, Marina Spunta, Neelam Srivastava, Maddalena

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x

Acknowledgements

Tirabassi, and Piero Vereni. Grazie Graziella Parati for encouraging this documentary project and my research since its very beginning. Grazie Franca Sinopoli for our dialogue on migration literature and for giving me the opportunity of participating at seminars at La Sapienza-Università di Roma. Grazie Antonio Maria Morone for helping me sharpen my research on the historical aspects of Italian colonialism. Grazie Daniele Comberiati for sharing generously ideas on various aspects of migration literature. Grazie Fabio Camilletti for our conversations on the ‘Epica, Etica, Etnica, and Pathos’ in contemporary literature in Italian. Grazie Serena Bassi for keeping in check my ideas on gender identities. Grazie Cecilia Brioni, a sister, not only by birth. I would like to extend my gratitude to all those who have investigated the topics of migration and Italian colonialism throughout these years, in particular Giovanna Bellesia, Leonardo De Franceschi, Roberto Derobertis, Lorenzo Mari, Sandra Ponzanesi, Gabriele Proglio, Caterina Romeo, Grace Russo Bullaro, and Sonia Sabelli for their collegiality and for sharing information and constructive criticism. The Somali Within is also the result of intellectual support and conversations with Amara Lakhous, Carmen Andreana, Antar Mohamed, Andrea Barbieri, Gurminder K. Bhambra, Michele Bonera, Marco Bonera, Edoardo Chiaf, Isacco Chiaf, Simon Corn, Florence Ethel Dickens, Cristina Gamberi, Danyel Ghidini, Ermanno Guida, Kota Ito, Fred Kuwornu, Giacomo Mannironi, Sara Moyret, Peter Norton, Larisa Oancea, Francesca Piazza, Christian Postberg, Malaika Postberg, Zhomart Sarsenbay, Manolo Sciré, Ribka Sibhatu, Francesco Rombaldi, Umberto Rossi, Paolo Simonetti, Sun Liping, Cristina Viti, Kate Willman, Wu Ming 1, and Wu Ming 2. Parts of the section ‘Mixophobia, Islamophobia, and the Writing of the Body in Madre piccola’ in Chapter 2 appeared in a different form in my ‘Automutilazione e dermografia: Madre piccola di Cristina Ubax Ali Farah’, Trickster: Rivista del Master in Studi Interculturali, 9 (2010), and I thank the editors of Trickster for their advice in the writing of the paper. A special thanks goes to Matteo Sandrini for allowing me to use his Carmen: storie da un quartiere (2010) on the cover, and to the Carmine neighbourhood in Brescia — where these pictures have been taken — for filling the words ‘deterritorialization’, ‘multilingualism’, and ‘multiple belonging’ with meaning. I am also grateful to Sinnos Editrice, which kindly gave me permission to publish some of their book covers, and to Matteo Guglielmo, who generously provided fascinating pictures from Franco Granata’s private collection. I cannot thank my parents, Giuseppe and Lidia, my uncles Davide and Federico, and my whole family enough for their unwavering support, complete faith, and unconditional love. Mahadsanid KC, dude, for untangling my prose, showing me different perspectives on life and cultures, and bringing so much joy (and Ella!) to my days. Friends: you know who you are, you know that I love you. s.b., New York, May 2015

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Note on Translation and Alphabetization v

Translations in the text are my own unless otherwise stated. Somali, Eritrean, Ethiopian, and Arabic proper names are mentioned by referring to the first name, which is the most common practice in African Studies. This choice has been taken to avoid the ambiguity caused by the westernization of these names. For instance, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel is most frequently mentioned in scholarly literature as Fazel, but also as Ramzanali Fazel. However, both of these simplifications have no linguistic legitimacy, and they might create more problems than they solve. This decision is also connected to the importance of proper names in Somali Italian writings, which I will discuss at the end of Chapter 1. Cristina Ali Farah is referred to in the Bibliography and in the text where it is relevant as Ali Farah, Ubah Cristina, since her middle name Ubah appears in her most recent literary work, Il comandante del fiume [The Commander of the River] (2014). However, it should be noted that in most of her literary works, including her first novel, Madre piccola [Little Mother] (2006), she is referred to as Cristina Ali Farah and her middle name is spelled at times as ‘Ubax’.

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List of Figures v

Fig. 1. Signs of the Italian political presence in Somalia during the AFIS administration (1950–60): the Italian and the Somali flags are raised next to each other in an official ceremony. Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo Fig. 2. An Italian school in Kismayo during the AFIS administration (1950–60). Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo Fig. 3. The abandoned Somali embassy in Via dei Villini, Rome Fig. 4. Italian colonial building in Somalia Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo Fig. 5. The book cover of La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock. Ari raacato jecleeyd Alfred Hitchcock (2003). Courtesy of Sinnos Editrice Fig. 6. The book cover of Aulò: canto-poesia dell’Eritrea in its third edition (2009). Courtesy of Sinnos Editrice Fig. 7. The Triumphal Arch in Mogadishu in 1991. The arch is dedicated to Humbert I of Savoy.This monument is frequently evoked in Somali Italian literature, and it is one of the most visible signs of Italian colonialism in Somalia. Picture by Claudio Colombo. Courtesy of Guido Colombo Fig. 8. This Fascist monument marks the Equator near Kismayo. This photograph was taken during the AFIS administration (1950–60), and testifies to the fact that the occupation of space in Somalia was integral to the Italian colonial project. Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo Fig. 9. The book cover of Rhoda. Courtesy of Sinnos Editrice Fig. 10. Side view of the Mogadishu Cathedral during the AFIS administration (1950–60). Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo Fig. 11. Front view of the Mogadishu Cathedral during the AFIS administration (1950–60). Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo Fig. 12. The ruins of the Mogadishu Cathedral in 1991. Picture by Claudio Colombo. Courtesy of Guido Colombo

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Introduction v

The Somali Italian Encounter Colonial encounters disrupt the identity of the ‘two’ cultures which meet through the very process of hybridization — the meeting of the ‘two’ that transforms each ‘one’. But just as the conditions of meeting are not equal, so too hybridisation involves differentiation (the two cannot commingle to produce one). How others are constituted and transformed through such encounters is dependent upon relationships of force. (Sara Ahmed 2000: 12) [Being true to] Deleuze means walking with him, sometimes running ahead, sometimes following. And then — striking out on a new path. [His] well known concepts [...] are not fetishes or idols, they are just concepts, made to be stretched, changed, re-appropriated. That is how they are honoured. ( Janz 2012: 23–24)

Italy and Somalia share a common history that started with Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa. Beginning with the seminal historical research conducted by Robert Hess and Ioan Lewis in the 1960s, a considerable number of studies have critically analysed sources to trace the colonial relationships between the two countries (Tripodi 1999: 11). In Italy, critical historical research on colonialism in Somalia began only in the 1970s with Angelo Del Boca’s four volumes of Gli italiani in Africa orientale [Italians in Oriental Africa] (1976–84), while Fabio Grassi published the first monograph on this topic in 1980. However, Italian academic research about Somalia started during the occupation with Italian Africanists such as Mario Martino Moreno and Enrico Cerulli, who conducted ethnographic, linguistic, and historical studies in Somalia. Italian colonial power went hand in hand with ‘knowledge’ gained by studying colonized countries and peoples. Clearly the results of most of these studies were deeply inf luenced by the dominant colonial attitude and ideology. All of the above-mentioned research, together with that of Somali historians, such as Said Sheikh Samantar and Abdi Mohamed Kusow, allow us to gain a detailed picture of the historical relations between the two countries.1 The encounter between Italy and Somalia began in the 1880s, when Italian explorers investigated the possibility of expansion into East Africa, and Italy took part in the scramble for Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884. Subsequently, the harbours of Benadir were leased to Italian commercial companies from 1885 to 1905, when the Italian government bought the region from the British government after a slavery scandal involving the Benadir Company that was controlling that territory. The Fascist era in Somalia began in 1923, when Governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi

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2

Introduction

was sent to rule the colony by force, and throughout the 1920s the Fascists unified the colony. From 1936 to 1941 Somalia was part of the Italian Empire. Historical studies unequivocally demonstrate that Italy exploited resources, expropriated lands, and created internment and concentration camps in Somalia.2 Moreover, Italy enforced apartheid measures through Law 1019 of 1936, which denied meticci [persons of mixed race] ‘la loro italianità [...] cittadinanza [...] educazione e [...] formazione alla “cultura italiana” ’ [their Italianness [...] citizenship [...] education and [...] formation to Italian culture] (Giuliani 2013: 63), and Law 880 of 1937 (one year before the promulgation of the Racial Laws) that punished interracial unions with five years of imprisonment, thus creating a situation of segregation and discrimination against meticci and native women, who could not claim any family rights from Italians and were therefore abandoned.3 Despite the atrocities committed, at the end of the Second World War none of the Fascist war criminals was convicted; on the contrary, Italy received a mandate of trusteeship for its former colony from the United Nations — also known as the Amministrazione Fiduciaria Italiana in Somalia (AFIS) — from 1950 to 1960, after the British occupation of Somalia from 1941 to 1949 (Morone 2011b; Fig. 1). The task of the trusteeship administration was to begin a democratic process in Somalia. To fulfil this objective, the Italian government employed many former Fascist administrators of the colonies, as experts in Somali affairs. For instance, Guglielmo Nasi was appointed to become special commissioner of AFIS, although he was wanted in Ethiopia for war crimes. Italy maintained the former privileges of the Italian colonials and created an Italophone political class. Eritrea was commonly referred to as Italy’s colonia primigenia, in that it was the first country where an Italian commercial company bought property in 1869, it became an official possession of the Italian State in 1882, and then the first Italian colony from 1890 to 1947. By contrast, Somalia can be seen as the most peripheral Italian colony in Africa, and the one that lasted the longest. It should also be noted that Somalia was the African country to receive the most substantial Italian support from its independence in 1960 to the end of the 1970s, and one of the African countries to receive the heaviest Italian economic assistance afterwards (Tripodi 1999). The permanence of the Italian administration after the end of the Second World War had at least two visible consequences: the spread of the Italian language in Somalia and the migration of Somalis to Italy, which began in the 1950s. Although Italy did not have a consistent schooling policy across the colonies, during the trusteeship period in Somalia the Italian government provided education in the Italian language for the Somali elite (Morone 2011a: 87; Fig. 2), and scholarships for some Somali students to study at Italian universities (Laitin 1977: 65–67). The result was that many Somali politicians in the 1960s and 1970s could speak Italian. Although Somalis were among the first African immigrants to Italy, their demographic impact was far less significant from the 1980s onwards than that of immigrants from other African countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Senegal. Somalis in Italy number approximately 10,000 (Caritas 2014: 466), while most Somalis in Europe live in the United Kingdom (108,000), the Netherlands (34,500), Sweden (21,500), Norway (16,500), and, in the rest of the world, the United States (85,500) and Canada (45,000) (Abdi and Bjork 2007). Even when a civil war

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Introduction

3

Fig. 1. Signs of the Italian political presence in Somalia during the AFIS administration (1950–60): the Italian and the Somali f lags are raised next to each other in an official ceremony. Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo.

erupted in Somalia after the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre’s authoritarian regime in 1991, most Somali refugees moved to places where their status could be more easily recognized, such as those countries listed above, rather than Italy.4 Because of the civil war, Somalis no longer have diplomatic representation in Italy, and the Somali embassy in Via dei Villini in Rome, which was fully operative until 1990, is currently abandoned and in a run-down condition (Fig. 3).5 The disregard shown by Italy for Somalia can be seen in the violation of human rights as a result of the policy of repatriation and patrolling of the Mediterranean Sea promoted by the Italian government from 2009 to 2012, despite the maritime deaths of Somalis and other refugees (De Bruycker, Di Bartolomeo, and Fargues 2013).

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4

Introduction

Fig. 2. An Italian school in Kismayo during the AFIS administration (1950–60). Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo.

Fig. 3. The abandoned Somali embassy in Via dei Villini, Rome.

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Introduction

5

The fact that Italy did not receive as many immigrants and refugees from Somalia and, more broadly, from its former colonies in Africa as other European countries is just one among many reasons that could explain why many Italians are still unaware of their colonial history. Another reason is perhaps due to the fact that historical research on what happened during the colonial period has so far failed to adequately permeate the Italian public consciousness (Pergher 2007). Moreover, as Giovanna Tomasello argues in her study about the representation of colonialism in Italian literature (2004), few literary works from the 1950s to the 1980s exist that focus directly on the topic of Italian colonialism and its legacy. On the other hand, long-term and suppressed historical relations, linguistic education, and migration starting in the 1950s — as well as the interest paid to the tragic political situation of Somalia by the Italian publishing market — partly explains why literary works by writers with Somali origins are more numerous than those by any other groups of immigrant authors writing in Italian. This study analyses works by authors of Somali origins, which I will call for the sake of convenience ‘Somali Italian literature’, a term that requires further explanation. Sharing Jennifer Burns’s recent critical position, I have chosen the term ‘literature’ to indicate ‘a description of a written text which envisages a readership and not as a vehicle for the conferral of artistic or cultural merit’ (2013: 9). On the other hand, the label ‘Somali Italian’ defines a specific cultural encounter, which has been shaped by the uneven relations of power that exists between the two nations because of colonialism. Following Sara Ahmed’s consideration of postcolonial encounters at the beginning of this section, this term should not be interpreted as a collective designation that links together two monolithic concepts, but instead describes a transnational space that transcends two supposedly unchangeable and dichotomic categories. It does not aim to create a fixed and specific ethnic subgenre within Italian literature, nor does it indicate the presence, but rather the absence or the f luidity, of boundaries through which national literatures have usually defined themselves. Moreover, the use of this label does not suggest that these writers are interested merely in two national environments, or that they provide a description either of Italy or Somalia in their totality: while the families of all of these authors in fact come from the same city, Mogadishu, they settled in different parts of Italy, and describe a diverse social and cultural geography under the same national label. Drawing on Pellegrino D’Acierno’s discussion on his choice of the term ‘Italian American’ to indicate the experience of Italian emigrants in the United States, the juxtaposition of the terms ‘Somali’ and ‘Italian’ ‘marks a terminological conf lict [and] the gap between the two terms ought to be read as a full sign — not an empty or insignificant blank’ (D’Acierno 1999: xli). The choice of the term ‘Somali Italian’ does not suggest that works in Italian by authors of Somali origins are the only ones to provide a fictional gaze on Somali Italian relationships. Arguably, at least five other kinds of literary works can offer a glimpse into some aspects of this postcolonial encounter in literature and deal with similar issues to those at the centre of Somali Italian literature: the works by Somali writers in Somali, which at present are nonetheless difficult to study given the political crisis in the African country; those by the members of the Somali diaspora

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6

Introduction

in other European languages, such as those written in English by Nuruddin Farah or Nadifa Mohamed, or in Finnish by Nura Farah; those written by non-Italian and non-Somali authors, such as Warriors and Strangers (1971) by the British novelist and travel writer of Irish descent Gerald Hanley, or Virginia Lee Barnes and Janice Boddy’s Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl (1994); and those by authors writing in Italian, such as Enrico Emanuelli’s Settimana nera [Black Week] (1961), a novel that is set in the AFIS period in Somalia, and Mario Domenichelli’s Lugemalé (2005), which employs Somalia as a colonial setting for a novel that echoes Joseph Conrad’s 1909 novella Heart of Darkness.6 Wu Ming 2 and Antar Mohamed’s Timira. Romanzo meticcio [Timira. A Meticcio Novel] (2012) is perhaps the novel written in Italian that has the closest relationship to Somali Italian literature, as it presents a similar concern about the issue of racism and the use of a partly biographical form to describe broader social and historical issues. Timira tells the story of Isabella Marincola, the daughter of an Italian soldier and a Somali woman, who was one of the few people of African origins in Italy in the 1950s and worked as an actress and model. Isabella’s Italianness is not recognized because of her meticcio skin colour, despite the fact that her brother Giorgio was a partisan and died at age twenty-two fighting the Germans. Unlike the singleauthored texts analysed in this volume, this novel is the result of collaboration between Antar Mohamed, Isabella’s son, and a prominent Italian author, Wu Ming 2, member of a collective group of authors based in Bologna. According to Kate Willman, Timira recreates a female voice that ‘is not dependent on the gender of the writers, but the way in which they represent protagonists at the mercy of history which has traditionally marginalised and forgotten them’ (2013). It should also be noticed that this novel textually signals its inspiration from other postcolonial literature written by women of Somali descent within the text, including Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Nuvole sull’equatore [Clouds on the Equator] (2010) (Wu Ming 2 and Antar Mohamed 2012: 516) and Igiaba Scego’s ‘Dismatria’ [Exmatriates], when Isabella Marincola describes Somalia as ‘la sua matria’ [her motherland] (Wu Ming 2 and Antar Mohamed 2012: 282). However, the topic of the Somali diaspora is secondary in Timira as Isabella was raised in an Italian family in Italy and represents her identity as meticcio Italian rather than Somali Italian, in contrast to those portrayed in most works written by Somali Italian authors. Moreover, Timira has been published by one of the main Italian publishing houses, addresses a different audience than most Somali Italian texts, and is the result of a collaborative rather than single-authored writing process (Brioni 2013b). Going back to the expression ‘Somali Italian literature’ I would add that under this term I have grouped a rather heterogeneous corpus of texts, which have been written since 1994 by Cristina Ubah Ali Farah (born Verona, 1973), Garane Garane (born Mogadishu, 1959), Kaha Mohamed Aden (born Mogadishu, 1966), Shirin Ramzanali Fazel (born Mogadishu, 1959), Sirad Salad Hassan (born Mogadishu, 1962), and Igiaba Scego (born Rome, 1974). Somali Italian writers have diverse backgrounds: they belong to different generations, came to Italy under different conditions, or are Italian citizens who never experienced migration (Scego). They also have diverse linguistic educations: only Kaha learnt to write in Somali rather

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Introduction

7

than in Italian, as Somali has been written with a codified alphabet since 1972. Some writers like Ali Farah and Scego are native Italian speakers, some speak Somali but write in Italian (Shirin). Moreover, those who moved to Italy did so for different reasons and their permanence in Italy has varied: Shirin had to leave Somalia after Mohamed Siad Barre’s 1969 coup d’état, but came to Italy in part also to see how this country was compared to how she imagined it (Shirin 2013: 92). Her experience of migration did not stop in Italy, since she has travelled around the world, including to Rome, Milan, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and London (Shirin 2013: 173), and lived between Kenya and Italy from 1996 to 2004. Shirin at present lives in Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. Garane came to Italy because of an intellectual fascination for the country and is now teaching at the Department of Social Sciences at Allen University, in the United States. Sirad is a Somali developmental psychologist who lived in Italy in the 1990 and later moved to the United States. Kaha had to f lee Somalia in 1982 when her father was imprisoned as a political opponent to Mohamed Siad Barre’s dictatorial regime. She studied at the University of Pavia and has lived in that town since 1987. Ali Farah was born in Italy, left for Somalia when she was three years old, and studied in Italian schools in Mogadishu for fifteen years. She then moved to Verona and subsequently Rome, where she lived from 1997 to 2013, when she went to live in Brussels, Belgium. Igiaba Scego was born in Rome in 1974 to Somali parents who had moved to Italy for political reasons following Mohamed Siad Barre’s coup. Scego’s father had been a well-known politician in Somalia and had held posts such as ambassador and foreign minister. Somali Italian literature shares common features, including that it has a minor status with respect to the culture and the language in which it has been produced, and it provides a representation of the minor condition of subjects who are discriminated in terms of race, class, religion, and gender. Notably, women have written all of the works included in this study except those by Garane. A reason for discrimination against Somalis in Italy is the increased Islamophobia in the wake of September 11, 2001, which is just the most recent evidence of long-term discrimination of Muslims in Italy (Scarlini 2005). After the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States, much of the media and public life in Italy was dominated by discourses that connected Islam with terrorism (Kebati 2001: 167). Prominent journalists such as Oriana Fallaci and Magdi Cristiano Allam, as well as political scientists including Giovanni Sartori, described Muslims as a homogeneous group of fanatics, who were not merely afraid of progress and unfit for modernity, but also wanted to destroy Western civilization.7 In an official visit to Germany on 26 September 2001, the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi even claimed that ‘L’Occidente deve avere la consapevolezza della superiorità della sua cultura ed avviare un processo di crescita per quelle parti del mondo che sono ferme a 1400 anni fa’ [The West needs to be conscious of the superiority of its culture and start a process of development of those parts of the world that stopped evolving 1,400 years ago] (Berlusconi 2001). Islam was presented as a monolithic and nonsecularized religion, which permeates all aspects of public and private life in the countries where it is predominant. The derogatory description of the backwardness

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Introduction

of Muslims was generally connected to the affirmation of the lack of women’s rights in Muslim countries by claiming that infibulation and the use of the hijab (or its more extreme version, the burqa) had always been inherent in the practices of this religion. Somali Italian literature also addresses other forms of discrimination, including the marginalization of immigrants, diasporic subjects, and their descendants in Italy. In particular, most Somali Italian writers criticize the Bossi-Fini Law (or Law 189), which was approved on 30 July 2002, and presents immigration as a latent crime (Artoni 2005; Calavita 2005: 22–47). Law 189 has created derogatory distinctions between Italians and immigrants, as police officers are allowed to ask any person who does not look Italian for an identity card, and particularly penalizes immigrants of African origins (Dal Lago 2009: 53). Among the requirements of Law 189 is the obligation for all non-European Union residents in Italy to be fingerprinted. Moreover, the Bossi-Fini Law reduced immigration quotas and made it more difficult for immigrants to receive a residence permit, and in many cases be reunited with their families. In addition, this law has further confirmed the role of centres for identification and deportation (Centri di identificazione ed espulsione, or CIEs), in controlling and containing immigration. CIEs — prisons in which immigrants who do not have residence permits can be detained — were initially introduced in 1998 with the previous Turco-Napolitano Law under the name of CPTs (Centri di permanenza temporanea), and punished an administrative infraction with imprisonment, as if it were a criminal offence (Mellino 2006: 469– 70).8 Alessandro Dal Lago argues that the immigration laws in Italy have deprived immigrants not merely of many prerogatives of citizenship, but also of personhood (2009: 221). Despite the relevance of the themes addressed in Somali Italian literature, only a few of these works have been released by publishers with strong distribution networks, and most of them have limited access to the cultural market. This fact should not be taken exclusively in negative terms: small publishing houses have provided these volumes with a rather experimental format and allowed audiences to listen to the voices of non-native speaker (and mostly women) authors, which would not have been available in the cultural market otherwise (Comberiati 2010a: 81). If many of these writings are difficult to find or no longer on the market — such as Sirad Salad Hassan’s Sette gocce di sangue [Seven Drops of Blood] (1996a), which is currently out of print — it should be noted that the recent development of e-books has allowed some of these volumes to be widely circulated again. This is the case of Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s 1994 novel Lontano da Mogadiscio [Far from Mogadishu], which was republished in an extended, revisited, and bilingual format in Italian and English in 2013. The development of e-publishing partly eliminates problems of accessibility, but still poses questions about the possibility of this text reaching a general audience. Moreover, Somali Italian literature can be considered minor because the study of the colonial legacy in Italian culture has become a vibrant field of research only in the last twenty years. The introduction of Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo’s edited volume Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity

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(2012) offers an exhaustive literary review of the development of postcolonial studies in Italy, and so I will not reproduce it here. At the same time as this work was published a f lurry of new volumes came out, some introducing specific postcolonial encounters that involve Italy — rather than more general discourse about the postcolonial cultures of Italy — namely those between Italy and Albania (Bond and Comberiati 2013), China (Shirley Ann Smith 2012), and Somalia (Lori 2013). In addition, Italian colonialism has been the subject of novels by prominent Italian authors such as Enrico Brizzi, Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli, two of the members of the Wu Ming collective, whose works were produced ‘with four hands’, and many other less-known writers.9 Further to the aforementioned written works, a project which has attempted to bring the legacy of colonialism to light by bridging the divide between artistic practice and scholarly work comprises two bilingual booklets and the documentaries La quarta via. Mogadiscio, Italia [The Fourth Road. Mogadishu, Italy] and Aulò. Roma postcoloniale [Aulò. Postcolonial Rome] (Brioni 2012; Ribka 2012). These documentaries were written in collaboration with Kaha Mohamed Aden and Ribka Sibhatu respectively, and they are the result of a unique encounter between different cultures, experiences, and professional skills, which were joined by the common purpose of developing new communicative forms that could impact Italy’s collective amnesia of its colonial past and the negative representation of immigrants in the Italian media. These documentaries aimed to respond to one of the main paradoxes of postcolonial criticism, which bell hooks expresses as follows: [I]t is sadly ironic that the contemporary discourse which talks the most about heterogeneity, the decentred subject, declaring breakthroughs that allow recog­n ition of otherness, still directs its critical voice primarily to a specialized audience, one that shares a common language rooted in the very master narra­ tives it claims to challenge. If radical postmodernist thinking is to have a trans­ formative impact then a critical break with the notion of ‘authority’ as ‘mastery over’ must not simply be a rhetorical device, it must be ref lected in habits of being, including styles of writing as well as chosen subject matter. (1990)

The documentaries have given a new platform to narrate Italian colonialism within and beyond academia, and to hear the voices of writers whose works are usually the objects of critical analysis. Overall, the last twenty years have seen a ‘postcolonial turn’ in Italian Studies — as Sandra Ponzanesi calls it (2012) — which I would like to describe in relation to a picture (Fig. 4). The photograph was probably taken during the AFIS administration by an Italian settler who wanted to capture the Italian rationalist architecture in Somalia. In my interpretation, the photographer was attempting to depict an Italianized version of Somalia: the choice of these white, monolithic buildings as a symbol of the Italian presence in Somalia might foreground how he or she imagines the culture of his or her country of origin. However, a Somali figure suddenly enters that picture and introduces an element of motion, by disrupting the homogeneous representation. This is an unexpected event that the photographer cannot control and adds an element of instability and unpredictability to the picture. The focus of the viewer is now no longer centred on the white

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Introduction

Fig. 4. Italian colonial building in Somalia Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo.

buildings, but on the blurred figure that crosses the picture. Similarly, the outburst of ref lections on the postcolonial condition of Italy opened up enquiries about the intersectionality of gender inequality and racial discrimination, and questioned the relationship that a supposedly unified national culture has with alterity. Postcolonial literature in Italian occupies a minor role and developed later in the global context of the postcolonial established literature, which is dominated by novels written in French or English (Ponzanesi 2004: xiv). Nonetheless, Emma Bond is right to maintain that the later development of Italian migration and (post-)colonial studies [...] can be viewed as representing a potential supplementary insight [...] the Italian case can be seen to bring some­

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thing new to global enquiry into the trans-national in ways which have not to date been fully conceptualized. (2014: 421–22)

In spite of this interest in the cultures of postcolonial Italy, there is evidence that many Italians are still unaware of their colonial past, including the limited public debate about the neo-colonial Italian military operation in its former colony, Libya, in 2010, or the attempt to name a mausoleum at Affile, in the province of Rome, after the Fascist war criminal Rodolfo Graziani in 2012. The three chapters of this book aim to analyse Somali Italian literature in relation to its minor condition, which Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari identified with three criteria, namely ‘the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation’ (1986: 18). A second, but equally important, purpose of this volume is to assess Deleuze and Guattari’s model and its relevance to the specific Somali Italian case study. The assessment will include the model’s ability to grasp fully the complexity of these works because of its abstract reference to gender and race issues and its vague concern for the geographical, linguistic, and cultural specificities of literatures by minor authors. Following the three chapters, the Conclusion will discuss an overlying theme in Deleuze and Guattari’s theory, the notion of ‘becoming’, showing that the ‘minor’ Somali Italian literature might signal a major change in ‘Italian’ literature towards a transnational dimension. The choice of Deleuze and Guattari’s model as a tool to analyse postcolonial novels might be seen as problematic, since they consider Kaf ka as an exemplary case study to examine the writings ‘of immigrants, and especially of their children’ who ‘live today in a language that is not their own’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 19). Although the Czech author lived in a peripheral and marginal province of the dominant German culture at the borderland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and wrote in the minor German language of the Jewish community in Prague, his work cannot be taken as a universal paradigm when discussing mostly literature by women or people of non-European origins. Significantly, Paul Patton argues that Deleuze and Guattari ‘were interested in topics connected to exploitation and subjugation’, but ‘colonisation was not a topic that figured largely’ in their works (Patton 2006: 108). Christopher Miller has further supported this criticism by showing that Deleuze and Guattari’s assumptions about non-European cultures rely on orientalist literature, and they offer a rather generalist definition of minority groups (Miller 1998: 171–209). Miller also argues that ‘becoming-woman, becoming-animal, becoming-minoritarian and becoming “third world” is a masquerade invented expressly for white male majoritarian humans to play; it is a form of exoticism’ (1998: 192). Another potent criticism of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory comes from Rosi Braidotti, who accuses them of having ‘an inconsistent approach to the issue of the “becoming-woman” ’ and of reducing ‘sexual difference to one variable among many, which can and should be dissolved into a generalised and genderfree becoming’, by assuming a ‘symmetry in the speaking stances of the two sexes’ (Braidotti 1993: 48). Deleuze and Guattari represent differences in terms of gender and race as a de-essentialized, symbolical ‘becoming’, rather than in concrete terms: ‘Woman: we all have to become that, whether we are male or female. Non-white:

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Introduction

we all have to become that, whether we are white, yellow, or black’ (1987: 470). A similar criticism, with which I certainly agree, comes from Mrinalini Greedharry, who argues that in Deleuze and Guattari’s work the category of Woman, as distinct from real women, becomes a philosophical trope that men use for their own purposes on their way to enlightenment, or liberation just as the savage or the primitive functions as a trope on the way to civilization in Freud’s texts [...] it is not clear what place there is for women’s texts in a world where everyone is urged to become-woman, or for postcolonial writing in a world where everyone is urged to become-postcolonial. (Greedharry 2008: 132–33)

Connected to Braidotti’s and Greedharry’s criticism is the problem that Deleuze and Guattari gave little attention to the ideological bias inherent in their own privileged positioning as male Western intellectuals. Indeed, this is a crucial issue for my own work, which faces the risk of reproducing the very structure of power that Somali Italian literature challenges, with the white male scholar who takes as the ‘object’ of his studies the writings by authors of African origins. I have approached this issue by entertaining a close dialogue and collaboration with Somali Italian authors throughout these years, without which this publication would have simply not been possible. For instance, the above-mentioned documentary project was an attempt to ref lect upon postcolonial literature in Italian together with two protagonists in this field. Another attempt to respond to this risk — but at the same time an activity that has posed many ethical questions to my work — has been the collaboration with Shirin Ramzanali Fazel in editing the new edition of her novel Lontano da Mogadiscio (2013). Although it is the first novel ever written by an immigrant without the help of a translator and has received much critical attention in the last twenty years, this text was out of print (Brioni 2013a). In synergy and in a desire to bring her text to a larger audience, Shirin and I found a publisher and proposed a bilingual edition. Throughout the process our goal was to deliver the best product in the time available and with the resources available. This also meant discussing with Shirin some solutions that could mediate the suggestions of the proofreaders and her original translation, in order to retain the authenticity of Shirin’s voice and the complexity of her writing but at the same time provide to the English reader a f luid text, which could be also used as didactic material in courses of Italian Studies, Somali Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Transnational Feminist Studies. Questions concerning the position, the role, and the ethics of an academic researcher are impossible to avoid if one attempts to approach minor cultures critically, look beyond colour and gender divides, and face rather than escape contradictions. Wu Ming 2’s ref lection on his experience as co-author in the novel Timira finds appropriate words to summarize my position on this matter: Verrebbe da dire che l’unico modo per non essere colonialisti è quello di non sbarcare nemmeno, nella terra dell’altro, di non immischiarsi nei suoi affari: ma da qui a sostenere che ognuno deve stare a casa propria, il passo è breve, ed è un passo che la mia gamba rifiuta. (Wu Ming 2 and Antar Mohamed 2012: 345) [One can say that the only way not to be colonialists is not to step foot on the land of the other, not to get involved in other people’s business: but there is

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13

a short step from this position to say that everybody should stay at their own house, and it is a step that my leg refuses to take.]

I was fully aware of the ethical challenge that I was facing by starting this research six years ago. Nonetheless, I made the decision to run a risk in order to accept, as Daniela Brogi fittingly put it some years later, an invitation to consider migrant literature as an integral part of contemporary Italian literature, and not just a separate and inferior part of it (Brogi 2011). Although providing further evidence in the case against Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature, this volume shows that the f lexibility of this conceptual model might be useful when investigating a literature that strongly refuses categorization (Renza 1984). As the quotation at the beginning of this introduction suggests, Deleuze and Guattari’s theory provides a rich source of concepts for reconsidering literature, but it should be used as a ‘loose model for the creation of concepts in new areas’, rather than as a rigid framework that should be ‘ “applied” to new situations, [or] be used to “interpret” or “explain” existing phenomena’ ( Janz 2012: 23). In this book, Deleuze and Guattari’s model is employed in combination with a broader range of methodological and theoretical tools, including translation theory and theories found in the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Homi K. Bhabha, Hélène Cixous, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Paul Gilroy, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, among others, that are more sensitive to gender and race difference in order to produce a more densely textured reading of Somali Italian literature. Each chapter of the book is dedicated respectively to the three main issues of Deleuze and Guattari’s minor literature: language, political immediacy (which I will interpret as anti-racism), and the creation of a collective discourse. Nonetheless, these sections are closely connected to each other, and they cannot be considered separately. For example, political concern cannot be disjoined from the necessity of finding an original language through which to represent minor subjectivities. The interdependency and connection between the chapters of this study are demonstrated by the reading of the same text from different perspectives in different chapters. As the analysis in this book follows a specific focus and concentrates on how these Somali Italian writers negotiate their identity primarily within the Italian cultural context, my work cannot provide a complete picture of all the common themes, and the equally important differences, that their writings share. Somali Italian texts differ greatly and can hardly be grouped together as a unified whole. My study will focus mostly on three common themes of this literature, namely the use of some Somali words in the Italian text, their response to racism either in the colonies or in contemporary Italy, and the presence of an autobiographical dimension in most of these writings. As a consequence, I have inevitably paid more critical attention to some literary works rather than others. For example, I have not analysed in detail the novel Sette gocce di sangue by Sirad Salad Hassan, which offers a fundamental ref lection on infibulation and its psychological effects, and more generally about the imposition of Western norms in non-Western contexts (Ponzanesi 2004: 185–206). Sirad’s novel presents the alternate voices of two Somali woman who belong to two different

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Introduction

classes, and partly fictionalizes the real experiences of infibulated women that the author, a Somali doctor in Italy, has collected in her medical and sociological essay La donna mutilata [The Mutilated Woman] (1996a). Sirad’s focused attention on a specific topic distinguishes her novel from those specifically analysed in this book. Therefore, I will identify some themes that Sette gocce di sangue shares with other Somali Italian literary works, but this novel will not be the object of a close textual analysis. Although the book focuses on specific texts, I hope that the final section of each chapter might offer some indications for further reading of texts that have received a less detailed analysis in this study. Chapter 1 investigates the deterritorialization of language and linguistic hybridity in Somali Italian literature. Deleuze and Guattari are right to argue that employing language is useful when articulating a minor position, and that identity is the product of a multiple stylistic and linguistic choice. However, their abstract analysis fails to recognize the different defamiliarizing strategies through which a minor African language, for instance, is inserted in texts and interrupts the reading f low of the dominant European language. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari do not highlight how these linguistic choices situate minor literature in relation to each culture and language involved, and they do not investigate how the use of a standard language instead of a colloquial register and an average vocabulary might contribute to the creation of a different notion of the self. Following approaches that invite consideration of translation as a metaphor for interpreting Italian translingual writings (Adamo 2007; Polezzi 2008) and approaches that read Deleuze and Guattari’s minor literature in the context of translation (Bandia 2006; Venuti 1998), this section addresses the presence of Somali within the Italian text by applying the models of interlinguistic translation theory to analyse intercultural writing. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s, Jacques Derrida’s, and Eugene Nida’s theories of translation offer the main paradigms which explain the strategies used by writers of Somali background to express their multilingual identity. The chapter provides an account of these strategies: translating foreign lexical insertions with paratextual remarks, including an in-text explanation, or maintaining the specificity of the Somali signifier without acknowledging its meaning. The analysis is limited to a semantic level, and focuses on lexical patterns and the linguistic register, as people colonized by Italians have not created a distinctive idiolect or pidgin that systematically violates the grammatical and syntactic rules of the language of the colonizer, unlike their French or English counterparts, who employ locally created hybrid vernaculars. This chapter illustrates the linguistic inventiveness of Somali Italian authors, and how language functions to position these writers in relation to Italian and Somali cultures. Chapter 2 focuses on ‘the connection of the individual to a political immediacy’ in Somali Italian literature (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 18). Deleuze and Guattari do not specify how political commitment takes place in minor literature. Nonetheless, by remarking that Kaf ka is at once German, Czech, and Jew, they highlight his triple belonging to stigmatized ethnicities and his attempt to claim the rights of a racially discriminated minority: ‘In Prague, people reproached [the Jews] for not being Czechs, and in Saaz and Eger, for not being Germans’ (Deleuze and Guattari

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1986: 11). Following from this assumption, the chapter analyses how Somali Italian writers represent the condition of those who are racially discriminated against in Italy. First, it highlights how Somali Italian literature questions racial stereotypes, in particular those against meticci. Secondly, the chapter focuses on another common issue found in many Somali Italian texts, namely the internal division of their main characters and their feelings of simultaneous double belonging to Somalia or Italy (but not exclusively), which can be visualized in their rhizomatic rather than linear spatial and temporal settings or, to use Mikhail Bakhtin’s terminology, chronotope. Thirdly, it attempts to develop Alessandro Portelli’s (1999) invitation to employ African American literature as an interpretative paradigm through which to analyse Italian migrant writings, by interrogating the frequent reference to the African American condition in Somali Italian literature using Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness. Chapter 3 examines to what extent Somali Italian literature performs ‘a collective assemblage of enunciation’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 18). According to Deleuze and Guattari, minor literature conveys ‘a collective value’ thanks to which ‘the individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary, indispensable, magnified, because a whole other story is vibrating within it’ (1986: 17). JanMohamed and Lloyd express this concept more clearly, by recognizing that a shared political value derives from the generic categorizations imposed on minority individuals by the dominant culture: ‘minority individuals are always treated and forced to experience themselves generically. Coerced into a negative, generic subject position, the oppressed individual responds by transforming that position into a positive, collective one’ (1990: 10). The chapter challenges two core ideas of Deleuze and Guattari’s model. First, Somali Italian literature emphasizes the distance or the proximity of the characters to other groups by entertaining a close intertextual dialogue with other literary works. This dialogue questions Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that minor literature is ‘something other than a literature of masters’ (1986: 17). Secondly, the close textual analysis of the ways in which Somali Italian writers use a particular aspect of the autobiographical genre — autobiography is a genre that borrows from other genres — invalidates Deleuze and Guattari’s assumption that free indirect discourse is the most apt technique for envisioning this plural and multivoiced subjectivity, since it describes ‘single characters from the point of view of a received and anonymous language’ (1986: 17). My analysis extends Graziella Parati’s implicit criticism of Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘collective assemblage’ concept, and her demonstration that Italian migrant writers do not entirely dismiss the representation of their subjectivity for a collective identity since they need to be recognized as subjects (Parati 2005: 23). The chapter demonstrates that the identities of Somali Italian characters are formed by describing the distance not only from ‘the average adult-white-heterosexual-European-male-speaking a standard language’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 105), but also from other stigmatized groups. The inand out-groups that are outlined in Somali Italian literature will be referred to in this book as imagined communities, a borrowing of Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined community’ to indicate the construction of a social community whose members ‘will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear

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Introduction

of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (Anderson 2006: 6). Unlike Anderson, who analyses specifically national belonging, this chapter shows that the multiple imagined communities described in Somali Italian literature are transnational, constructed upon the lines of class, education, gender, language, race, and religion. The Conclusion of this study considers Somali Italian texts through Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of ‘becoming minoritarian’. While Chapters 2 and 3 respectively deal more closely with the issue of race and gender, the Conclusion focuses on the difference between these writers and the minor subjects portrayed in their works. The Conclusion also ref lects on the status of these texts in the context of the major changes that their presence has caused in the contemporary literary and critical discourse about Italy. It suggests different ways in which Italian literature can be reconsidered through texts that question the geographies of ‘Italian’ cultures. This may mean quite seriously asking: would it be possible to simply add a postcolonial perspective and a corpus of texts that describe the postcolonial condition of Italy and Somalia to the already existing studies of national literatures? How can the study of a national literature address the present and future challenges of writings that refer to a transnational space? The analysis of minor literature inevitably poses questions about the cultural structures that make the very condition of minority possible, and urge for their deconstruction. Notes to the Introduction 1. Many of the historical documents that testify to the relationship between the two countries are now available via an online archive, archiviosomalia.it, provided by the Centre for Somali Studies of the Third University of Rome. 2. The website campifascisti.it allows the identification on a map of the locations of these camps and offers an extended bibliography on the historical sources that allowed this visual reconstruction. 3. The Italian linguistic borrowing meticcio (plural: meticci) has been preferred to mestizo and métisse, which are the correct words respectively in American and British English. Given the centrality of meticci in Somali Italian literature, the use of the Italian version of this word seems more appropriate to indicate the sons and daughters of African and European parents. 4. The global diaspora of Somali refugees over the last four decades can be visualized on an interactive map on the website therefugeeproject.org. 5. In this regard see Fabrizio Rizzi and Carlo Ruggiero’s documentary Roma, i fantasmi dell’ambasciata somala [Rome, the Ghosts of the Somali Embassy] (2010). 6. There are other texts in Italian written both by migrant and by native Italian authors that are set in Somalia or feature Somali characters. Since some of them are difficult to find, it might be worth mentioning them and explain why they will not be objects of my analysis. Hassan Osman Ahamed’s Morire a Mogadiscio [To Die in Mogadishu] (1993) is an autobiographical account of the civil war in Somalia that was written by a Somali refugee in Italy. However, this text has a journalistic approach and does not describe Hassan’s life as an immigrant in Italy. Sandro Onofri’s short story ‘Samia’ (1997) features a Somali character, and denounces the living conditions of Somali refugees in Rome. Giovanni Porzio’s Cuore nero [Black Heart] (2002) is an autobiographic report about the humanitarian emergencies in the world, including Somalia. Stefano Rizzo’s Mohammed (2003) is centred on a meeting between a Somali adolescent and the native Italian author, who presents the story from his autobiographical perspective. Lina Unali’s Trilogia della Somalia musulmana [Trilogy of Muslim Somalia] (2004) is based on the author’s experience in Somalia as a professor in Mogadishu for the Somali National University.

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The second story in this volume narrates the migration of a Somali refugee to Rome. Fatima Ahmed’s Aukuí (2008) is partly set in Somalia, but it does not focus on the cultural encounter between Somalia and Italy, and it is not analysed in this volume since the author is a Vietnamese speaker of Somali origins. Maurilio Riva’s 2022. Destinazione Corno d’Africa [2022: Destination the Horn of Africa] (2010) is an alternative history, which is partly set in Somalia. However, Somalia is employed as a narrative ‘African’ backdrop for a story that explicitly refers to Arthur Rimbaud’s journey to Abyssinia. Giuseppe Catozzella’s Non dirmi che hai paura [Don’t Tell Me You Are Afraid] (2014) tells in fictional form the story of Samia Yusuf Omar, a young Somali athlete who drowned off the coast of Sicily in 2008 in an attempt to reach Europe to train for the London Olympics of 2012. The killing of journalist Ilaria Alpi and her camera operator Miran Hrovatin in Mogadishu in 1994 has been narrated in many fictional works, such as Gigliola Alvisi’s Ilaria Alpi. La ragazza che voleva raccontare l’inferno [Ilaria Alpi. The Girl who Wanted to Recount Hell] (2014), Francesco Cavalli’s La strada di Ilaria [Ilaria’s Way] (2014), Fulvia Degl’innocenti’s Il coraggio di Ilaria [Ilaria’s Courage] (2014), and Marco Rizzo and Francesco Rispoli’s comic Ilaria Alpi. Il prezzo della verità [Ilaria Alpi. The Price of the Truth] (2010). 7. For an insightful criticism of Oriana Fallaci’s, Magdi Cristiano Allam’s, and Giovanni Sartori’s assumptions see respectively Allievi 2004, Burdett 2010, and Rivera 2003: 60–77. 8. Along with CIEs there are two more types of centres that deal with the issue of immigration in Italy. CPSA (Centri di primo soccorso e accoglienza) are usually located near the shores of arrival of immigrants and provide the first assistance to immigrants and identify them. A similar function is also provided by CDA (Centri di accoglienza) and CARA (Centri di accoglienza per richiedenti asilo), although they are located in various areas of the country. The difference between CDA and CARA is that the latter is dedicated to refugees. 9. For a list of some of the films and texts that have dealt with this theme in the last twenty years see the video ‘Coincidenze’ [Coincidences], included as special content in the volume Somalitalia. Quattro vie per Mogadiscio/Somalitalia. Four Roads to Mogadishu (Brioni 2012). The list does not include more recent novels by the above-mentioned authors, such as Wu Ming 1 and Roberto Santachiara’s Point Lenana (2014) and Carlo Lucarelli’s Albergo Italia [Hotel Italy] (2014).

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Chapter 1

v

Language Af Somaaliga wa mergi. [The Somali language is sinuous.] (Somali proverb, quoted in Laitin 1977: 31) Minority takes translation on a creative line of f light. (Venuti 1998: 144)

Upon initial inspection, the most salient and distinctive visual trait of Somali Italian literature is the lexical insertion of Somali words, which provides a good example of what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as the deterritorialization of language. Deleuze and Guattari recognize that minor writers modify their own language and learn ‘to be a foreigner, but in one’s own tongue, not only when speaking a language other than one’s own. To be bilingual, multilingual, but in one and the same language, without even a dialect or patois’ (1987: 98). Minor literature attempts to make one become ‘a nomad and an immigrant and a gypsy in relation to one’s own language’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 19). In other words, deterritorialization refers to a deliberate operation through which a dominant language is deprived of its sense of national belonging. Using Kaf ka as an example, Deleuze and Guattari recognize a triple linguistic impossibility in his writings, namely ‘the impossibility of not writing, the impossibility of writing in German, the impossibility of writing otherwise’ (1986: 16). According to Paul Bandia, this ambivalent relation with language resembles that of African European writers, who have to confront ‘the impossibility of writing in the language of the oppressor with which he/she is intimately involved, as well as the impossibility of doing otherwise (i.e., of not writing in the language of the oppressor)’ (2006: 153). Although the concept of deterritorialization offers important insights with which to approach the writings by multilingual subjects, Deleuze and Guattari do not analyse in detail how deterritorialization might be performed, or how its concrete realization not only envisions a different notion of identity but also serves a political purpose. They write that Kaf ka ‘turns syntax into a cry that will embrace the rigid syntax’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 26), thus identifying a kind of linguistic deteritorrialization that is similar to the practices of code-switching between Creole or pidgin languages and the standard language, which are frequent in French and English postcolonial literature (Bandia 2008: 122, 147; Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2002: 65–71). This description does not entirely fit Somali Italian literature, where a foreign lexicon is most often introduced into the text, rather than modifying standard Italian.

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Paul Bandia provides a more useful indication on how to investigate linguistic deterritorialization in a postcolonial context, claiming that translation can serve as a metaphoric paradigm to be used in analysing postcolonial writings. Bandia argues that ‘while interlingual translation usually involves importing foreign language elements into one’s own culture, postcolonial intercultural writing as translation involves a movement in the opposite direction, an inverse movement of representation of the Self in the language of the Other’ (2008: 3). Although noting a difference between translation, ‘the movement of text from a source language to a target language’, and the ‘ “inner translation” that occurs when writers write in a second language’, Bill Ashcroft also recognizes that writings by postcolonial authors could be the intersection where ‘Translation Studies and Postcolonial Studies meet’ (2010: 25). Ashcroft argues that a metaphoric resemblance between postcolonial writings and translations is found in the fact that they both are interpretations of at least two cultures and present a specific viewpoint on each of them. Both translation and postcolonial writing identify the distinct position of both the translator and the translingual writer with respect to the two (or more) languages and cultures to which he or she belongs (Ashcroft 2010: 36). Like translators, translingual writers have often been considered passive inheritors of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and as neutral presences, thus negating their role as interpreters. However, they are not at all neutral, and must constantly engage in a creative adaptation and interpolation of their culture by putting into practice both a linguistic and cultural operation of interpretation (Tymoczko 2002: 20). Translingual writers position themselves in relation to both languages and cultures to which they belong through the choice of different strategies, which are related to translation processes and might range from glosses, explanations, paraphrases, and paratextual interventions. Analysing postcolonial writings through translation theory is a recent approach, made possible after the ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies, when translated texts started to be seen as the result of a negotiation between cultures and of a process of rewriting rather than a transaction between two languages or the restitution of a set of phrases (Bassnett 1998: 123). In other words, each language is culturally bound, but culture is in itself a permeable space of continual interaction, where concepts can be shared. The intercultural translation we encounter in Italian transnational and translingual writing challenges the traditional binary notion of translation, which relies on a dichotomy stemming from the monolithic categorization of origin and target. Intercultural writings negotiate between two or more culture-bound languages by creating a linguistic hybrid, in which non-related languages interact. Cultural plurality and the heterogeneity of postcolonial hybrid language could therefore be analysed through the theory of translation since it deals with matters of translingualism and transnationalism by its very nature. Working from these assumptions, this chapter analyses the presence of Somali lexical interventions in the Italian text, and demonstrates that they are the most evident trace of a broader and more complex translatorial process. In particular, I will follow Lawrence Venuti’s invitation to look at what Deleuze and Guattari consider minor cultures through translation, which has long been viewed as

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Language a minor use of language, a lesser art, an invisible craft [since] it aims to com­ municate what is by definition marginal in the translating culture: the foreign, the linguistic and cultural differences that demand radical rewriting in another language because they are not familiar or intelligible. (Venuti 1998: 135)

Moreover, this chapter identifies how different strategies through which foreign terms are present in the Italian text position the translingual writer in relation to the cultures and languages of which he or she is master. These strategies can be divided into three main categories whose theoretical models derive from Venuti’s translation theory, which he outlines in The Translation Studies Reader (2000): thick translation, foreignizing translation, and domesticating translation. First of all, approaches that are designed to show the distance between Italian and Somali through the use of paratextual remarks are analysed in correlation with Kwame Anthony Appiah’s concept of ‘thick translation’. Secondly, an account is given of those writings that present untranslated Somali signifiers. I will analyse in what sense non-translation might still be considered a form of cultural translation. This translatorial method is examined using Jacques Derrida’s foreignizing translation theory. Thirdly, texts that domesticate Somali language into Italian and limit the inf luence of heterogeneous linguistic presences are discussed by drawing a parallel with Eugene Nida’s concept of communicative translation. The division into these three categories follows a chronological model that illustrates a movement away from strategies that highlight the distance between Italian and Somali cultures towards strategies that show the proximity between the writer and the Italian readership. In this sense, the model of ‘thick translation’ is chronologically antecedent to the ‘foreignizing’ and the ‘communicative’ models, which represent the most recent outcomes of postcolonial Italian writings. As the analysis will demonstrate, these three strategies should not be considered mutually exclusive since they are often used in combination. For example, within the same work, Somali terms can at times appear with Italian translations, although most of the Somali terms are left untranslated. As the analysis will point out, even if these strategies are associated with the literary work in which they are prevalently used, they should not be generalized since they might entail completely different effects if applied to other contexts. Moreover, the analysis of hybridization should not be divorced from a broader analysis of linguistic and stylistic choices in these texts, since the linguistic format in itself does not determine the linguistic and identitarian position of each writer. The last part of the chapter aims to complete, expand, and speculate on Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of deterritorialization as inextricably related to political resistance. It takes its lead from Venuti’s assumption that acts of translation by minorities can be described as an act of violence against a nation [...] because nationalist thinking tends to be premised on a metaphysical concept of identity as a homogeneous essence, usually given a biological grounding in an ethnicity or race and seen as manifested in a particular language and culture. (2013: 116)

This chapter demonstrates that the insertion of foreign expressions enacts a process of dislocation which questions the supposed unity of the dominant Italian language and has the power to take readers away from the coded message of language, by detaching them from the language they regard as their own.

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Translating the Distance: Footnotes, Parallel Texts, Glossaries Early texts written by authors of Somali origins in Italian employed paratextual remarks to explain and justify the presence of foreign terms, such as footnotes, facing-page translation of the Somali text, and glossaries. For instance, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s autobiographically inspired text Lontano da Mogadiscio and Sirad Salad Hassan’s Sette gocce di sangue present italicized Somali expressions whose meaning is provided in a footnote. These paratextual elements might be explained by the fact that Sirad and Shirin are among the first immigrant authors to write in Italian without the help of a co-author.1 Footnotes were therefore necessary to accustom the Italian readership to the in-text insertion of foreign languages and to introduce Somali culture into the Italian literary scene. This aspect appears evident in Sirad’s ‘Breve storia della Somalia al tempo del nostro racconto’ [Short Story of Somalia at the Time of Our Narration], a paratextual remark at the end of Sette gocce di sangue (1996b: 113–21). Lontano da Mogadiscio and Sette gocce di sangue employ a standard form of Italian, which might be seen as a way to counter the prejudice of Italians towards immigrants as persons who are unable to speak their language. As Shirin clearly highlights, many Italians could not believe that a person of African origins could speak Italian, and sometimes they even answered her using the infinitive tense as if she were not able to conjugate Italian verbs (2013: 108). Igiaba Scego’s La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock. Ari raacato jecleeyd Alfred Hitchcock [The Nomad Who Liked Alfred Hitchcock] (2003; Fig. 5) also provides a good example of texts that employ paratextual remarks with the purpose of foregrounding Somali culture. The book is included in the collection I mappamondi [World Maps], a series that is characterized by three main features: a first-person internal narrator tells his or her experience of migration to Italy and the history of his or her country; each volume presents two versions of the same text both in Italian and in the author’s first language, and these texts have a clear didactic purpose that is signalled by the inclusion of glossaries, footnotes, illustrations, traditional fairy tales, recipes, and addresses. Many scholars have praised the cultural operation performed in these volumes and have focused in particular on Ribka Sibhatu’s Aulò: canto-poesia dell’Eritrea [Aulò: Song-poetry from Eritrea] (1993; Fig. 6), the first postcolonial text to use this specific format and the model of Scego’s text (Scego 2007: 71).2 The double title of the texts included in I Mappamondi series exemplifies the operation of cultural translation at work. According to Loredana Polezzi, in the I Mappamondi series the boundaries between target and source text are blurred since the two texts are inseparable, therefore writing and translation are conf lated (2008: 123). In other words, it is not always possible to understand in which language the texts included in the collection I Mappamondi were originally conceived and written. This linguistic characteristic distinguishes the bilingual novels in the I Mappamondi collection from other bilingual texts such as the anthology of short stories Il coccodrillo che prestò la lingua allo sciacallo e altre favole dalla Somalia [The Crocodile that Lent its Tongue to the Jackal and Other Stories from Somalia] (1997), which presents the original Somali text with Suad Omar Esahaq and Roberta Valetti’s Italian translation on the opposite page. Il coccodrillo conceptualizes translation as a

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Fig. 5 (above). The book cover of La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock. Ari raacato jecleeyd Alfred Hitchcock (2003). Courtesy of Sinnos Editrice Fig. 6 (below). The book cover of Aulò: canto-poesia dell’Eritrea in its third edition (2009). Courtesy of Sinnos Editrice

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one-way movement from Somali to Italian and presumes the existence of source and target texts. Il coccodrillo shows its readership the presence of a minor language that has generated the Italian text, but also foregrounds the figure of an Italian reviser, who guarantees the linguistic correctness of the Italian version. The presence of a minor language along with the dominant language in the series I Mappamondi can be seen as a political operation. According to Ponzanesi, the bilingual format of these texts reveals ‘[an act of dialogism and not only of resistance] against the ethnocentric appropriation of the Italian language and also a disconcerting way of responding to the white gaze, by literally facing the text in Italian’ (2004: 182). However, Ponzanesi may overestimate the political function of bilingual texts, since it is debatable whether a text that does not directly hybridize and change the dominant language might really have a strong political impact. The bilingual self-translated texts present two separate and yet intrinsically correlated versions. The distance between the two versions suggests a non-integration and unassimilability between the two languages, and implies a separate encounter with each of these texts. Cultural exchange passes more frequently through the implicit author who is able to master both languages than through the text, which is ideally usable in its entirety only by a potential reader who has mastered both Italian and Somali. The Somali text acquires the metonymic function of a silent cultural sign for the Italian readers who are not f luent in Somali. The cultural dialogue therefore seems to be conveyed only partially through language. The supremacy of the Italian over the Somali version seems apparent in La nomade, and many passages provide textual evidence that the Somali version was translated after the Italian version with the collaboration of a Somali native speaker (Scego 2007: 71). The Italian text frequently includes footnotes that suggest the need of additional explanations in order to approach another culture without knowing its linguistic background. In addition, gloss translations or in-text explanations of some words are used, which convert the Somali version into a decorative corollary of the Italian text, and indicate that the two texts are not correspondent. This fact is evident when the meaning of certain Somali words or expressions is clarified at length in both texts. For instance, the description of the five pillars of Islam might be found redundant by Somali readers, who already have an understanding of their meaning in Somali (Scego 2003: 118). The predominance of the Italian text is also apparent in a passage where both versions of the text explain the meaning of Somali words, and Somali words are listed in the same order as they are in the Italian version (Scego 2003: 112). Simply stated, the Somali version is presented not merely as a subsequent translation of the Italian text but also as subordinate and secondary to it. This disregard for the Somali version violates the principle of reciprocity that Tullio De Mauro recognizes as an essential condition of the volumes: ‘Questi testi bilingui [sono] in grado di favorire la conoscenza reciproca di ragazzi che vengono da tradizioni culturali diverse’ [these bilingual texts can favour the reciprocal knowledge of young adults who come from different cultural traditions] (2003: 7). La nomade seems to be slightly different from Aulò, since Ribka’s work has not been entirely conceived for ‘an audience of Italian native speakers’ but ‘one that instead belongs to the writer’s language of origin’ (Romani 2001: 373).

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The predominance of the Italian text over the Somali version in La nomade is perhaps not surprising, since Scego is an Italian native speaker who lived in Somalia ‘per un anno e mezzo’ [for one year and a half ] (Scego 2010c: 149). Significantly, she argues that: La Somalia è stata una meteora nella mia vita. Essendo nata in Italia all’inizio non riuscivo proprio a capire che cosa fosse questa Somalia e francamente ne avevo molta paura. Avevo sviluppato una fantasia personale sul mio paese d’origine: credevo fosse un paese rosso, una sorta di Marte terrestre. Fu grande la mia delusione quando, all’età di otto anni, mi accorsi che la Somalia non era rossa come Marte. (Scego 2003: 9) [Somalia has been a meteor in my life. I was born in Italy. I could not understand what Somalia was, and to be honest I was afraid of it. I developed a fantasy about my country of origin: I thought that it was a red country, a kind of terrestrial Mars. I realized with disappointment when I was eight years old that Somalia was not red like Mars.]

Rather than fully bringing into play her entire linguistic potential as a native speaker, Scego adopts an oversimplified style that recalls the non-elaborated standard language of the writings by immigrants that are included in I Mappamondi. The choice of the simple usage of the Italian language in this book series was justified by the pedagogical function of these books and by the linguistic difficulties in writing in Italian for non-native speakers. On the other hand, Scego’s first-person narration of her mother’s story of immigration to Italy through a simple language is a fictional construction since Scego was born and raised in Rome, and she is an Italian native speaker. The choice of dealing with controversial matters like religion, infibulation, colonialism and racism through a language that is ostentatiously childlike causes an evident discrepancy. For instance, Scego talks of her mother’s infibulation and refers to her vagina by using the term ‘patatina’ [little potato] (Scego 2003: 34), which is usually employed to address a child reader. La nomade also connects infibulation to communion, by claiming that both events are rites of passage, and implicitly suggests applying a Western cultural framework through which to interpret clitoridectomy (Scego 2003: 34). Moreover, unlike in Aulò, repetitions occur often, as does the moral of the story, which is frequently quite general: ‘il mondo è proprio piccolo e alla fine siamo tutti fratelli’ [the world is quite small and in the end we are all brothers and sisters] (Scego 2003: 28). In addition, the choice of translating into Italian some children’s phrases, such as ‘Ma rabta ina ila aiarti (vuoi giocare con me?)’ [Do you wanna play with me?] (Scego 2003: 112), might raise some questions about the target readership of this text. Young adults in fact might be reluctant to approach these stylistic choices, and a child might find it difficult to understand such complex topics. In short, Scego’s oversimplified style does not match the linguistic originality of her subsequent novels, and also confirms — and even invigorates — the perception of immigrants and their children as linguistically limited. The use of language in Aulò and La nomade is therefore opposite: Ribka translates into Italian a story that is conceived in her first language, Scego is an Italian native speaker who chooses to write ‘like an immigrant’ (assuming that immigrant writers

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speak simple Italian), and later translates the text into Somali. The presence of the Somali text in Scego’s bilingual book La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock. Ari raacato jecleeyd Alfred Hitchcock might be seen as a form of exoticization, as it presents the writer as an immigrant akin to the authors included in the series I mappamondi. Scego’s exceedingly rhetorical use of a simplified Italian clashes with the intention to talk of more serious matters such as infibulation, human rights, and racism. On the contrary, Ribka uses a formal correctness, but I do not think that — as Alessandro Portelli argues (2006: 477) — it might not appeal to most readers, because Aulò is thematically multi-layered and presents an easy but never self-indulgent or childlike language. Despite the correctness, Ponzanesi rightly points out that ‘[Ribka] targets the Italian audience, from children to adults, in order to make her history and that of her own country known in an attempt to make the Italians aware of a growing condition of multiculturalism’ (2004: 172). Another difference between the Aulò and La nomade lies in the way in which both texts delineate the story of a country through a personal experience. The didactic and introductory purpose of I mappamondi is evidenced on the cover of the book, which presents the name of the authors and their country of origin in large characters next to each other, thus implying a metonymic relation between these two terms and suggesting that these autobiographical short stories might explain the story of a country. The choice of intersecting stories and history emphasizes ‘the hybrid potential of these texts’, which ‘can become not just stories but also histories, diaries, or testimonies’ without distorting the ‘effect of the original narrative’ (Burns 2001: 162). Scego highlights this intention in the introduction to the text: ‘Somalia e Italia hanno avuto molti legami ed è triste vedere oggi come il Corno d’Africa ha così poco spazio nei media italiani. Spero che questo libro possa colmare, nel suo piccolo, questa lacuna’ [Somalia and Italy have shared many ties, and it is sad to see how the Horn of Africa today has such a limited presence in Italian media. I hope that this book, in some small way, can bridge this gap] (Scego 2003: 10). Like Ribka, Scego adopts an external standpoint, but frequently presents her mother as a possible spokesperson of Somali people. La nomade often employs the first-person plural when describing Somalis, mirroring the generalist labels through which some newspapers group immigrants. This can be seen in the following passage, which synthesizes the erasure of the difference between single and collective experience operated in Scego’s text: ‘Siamo un popolo ma all’interno siamo mille popoli. La Somalia è un po’ come il mondo uno e molteplice, siamo tutti esseri umani uguali e allo stesso tempo diversi’ [We are one people but there are thousands of populations among us. Somalia is like the world, one and multiple, we are all equal human beings, but at the same time different] (Scego 2003: 64). In another passage Scego drastically affirms that the Somali people are defined geographically, by creating a dichotomic spatial contraposition that does not take into account her personal situation as the daughter of Somali refugees in Italy: ‘Noi Somali siamo il frutto dell’unione di migliaia di persone che per un motivo o per l’altro hanno deciso di passare del tempo nel Corno d’Africa’ [We Somalis are the fruit of the union between millions of people that for one reason or another decided to stay for some time in the Horn of Africa] (Scego 2003: 114). The risk

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of this representation, however, is to set the community of ‘we Somalis’ against its counterpart, ‘you Italians’, which I will further discuss in Chapter 3. Unlike La nomade, Ribka’s partly autobiographical account avoids direct identification with her country, by placing herself in an external position: ‘L’Eritrea è un mosaico di etnie’ [Eritrea is a mosaic of ethnicities] (Ribka 1993: 7). Igiaba Scego’s second book, Rhoda (2004c), awarded the Eks&Tra literary prize dedicated to migrant writers and their descendants, uses a different strategy to introduce Somali words in the Italian text, namely glossaries. Rhoda is set in Rome, Naples, and Mogadishu, and tells a dramatic story of immigration using the voices of four different characters: Barni, a Somali refugee to Italy; her nieces, Rhoda and Aisha; and Pino, a Neapolitan social volunteer. While Aisha becomes Pino’s fiancée and happily integrates in Italy, Rhoda becomes a prostitute and returns to Somalia to die of an HIV-related illness, whereupon soldiers rape her corpse. According to Scego, the dichotomic representation of the main characters of her first novel — ‘Rhoda, che viene schiacciata dalla sua ricerca di identità, e Aisha, che invece è più “integrata” ’ [Rhoda, who is smashed by her quest for identity and Aisha, who is more ‘integrated’] — fictionalizes the two main approaches of second-generation immigrants toward Italy, who either ‘negano le proprie radici, oppure sviluppano una forte ostilità verso l’Italia e il modo di vivere qui’ [deny their roots, or develop a strong hostility towards Italy and its way of life] (2007: 75).3 These two contrasting viewpoints are present in a volume of interviews with second-generation immigrants in Rome, Quando nasci è una roulette: giovani figli di migranti si raccontano [When You are Born Is a Roulette: Children of Migrants Tell Their Stories] (2007), which Scego edited with Ingy Mubiayi Kakese. Rhoda seems to entertain a strong connection with Quando nasci è una roulette not only because it mirrors some of the hopes and fears of second-generation migrants, but also because the story of the main character is told in an interview-style fashion by Aisha, Barni and Faduma, Pino, and Rhoda herself. Glossaries are also used in Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Nuvole sull’equatore (2010), and Cristina Ubah Ali Farah’s Madre piccola [Little Mother] (2007c).4 Shirin’s second text is a Bildungsroman that focuses on the story of a meticcio young woman, Giulia, who is abandoned by her father during the AFIS period, grows up in a Catholic orphanage, and is rejected by both the communities to which she belongs. Madre piccola follows the stories of two cousins, Domenica Axad and Barni, who have to separate and leave Somalia when the civil war breaks out. After ten years they reunite in Rome and try to mend the wounds caused by the sorrowful experience of war and exile. The title of the novel originates from the Somali word habaryar, little mother, which indicates Barni’s kinship with Domenica’s son Taariikh. Taageere, the third narrating voice of the novel, is a Somali refugee in Italy, Domenica’s boyfriend and the father of her son, Taariikh. Although the meaning of Somali words in Madre piccola and Nuvole sull’equatore is explained in a glossary in the last few pages of the novel, many Somali insertions can be understood even without the glossary, since the novels provide the reader with in-text translations and in-text contextualization. The many processes of translation involved in these novels are signalled by the fact that Domenica Axad and Giulia are translators (Ali

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Farah 2007c: 185; Shirin 2010: 32). Like Domenica in Madre Piccola (Ali Farah 2007c: 233), Ali Farah has described herself in an interview as a translator, by suggesting that her writing enacts processes that are similar to those involved in translating as it aims to ‘creare dei legami, ponti tra una lingua e l’altra come [...] la traduzione’ [create links, bridges between two languages like a translation] (2010: 78). The main difference between these two texts and Rhoda is that Scego’s text also presents many foreign insertions that are different from Somali. While Shirin describes the fact that Italian settlers in Somalia spoke dialects (2013: 46), and Ali Farah accounts for the international dimension of the Somali diaspora (2007c: 26, 116), Scego lets us read foreign languages. For example, untranslated words in English are presented to describe Rhoda’s trip to London. In addition, Aisha occasionally uses Roman words, and Pino frequently intersperses his discourse with Neapolitan expressions. These insertions are remarkable for at least two reasons. First, they remind readers of the heterogeneous linguistic context in Italy, which preceded the arrival of immigrants. Somali contributes to the creation of a multilingual play together with other languages within and without national borders. Its presence should be evaluated in a broader process of linguistic hybridization that is aimed at disrupting the association between ethnic origins and language. Secondly, the linguistic insertions from languages other than Italian and Somali contribute to show the cosmopolitan cultural environment to which Rhoda and Aisha belong, despite their social class. In this regard, Piera Carroli notices that: intertextuality is an indicator of the cross fertilization of culture across geographical and temporal levels: in Somalia young people are passionate about Italian soccer and cinema; in Italy, young Aisha loves Brazilian music and Rhoda quotes extensively from classic and modern literature, music and film. (2009: 2119)

Leaving a closer textual analysis of the works presented above for the next chapters, I would like now to highlight similarities and equally illuminating differences between texts that employ explanatory supplements to define Somali words. Although Kwame Anthony Appiah’s model of ‘thick translation’ was not conceived to comment on translingual writings but to offer a model for translating texts from minor cultures into English, it provides a valid theoretical framework with which to analyse strategies of intercultural writing that seek ‘with [their] annotations and [their] accompanying glosses to locate the text in a rich cultural and linguistic context’ (1993: 817). According to Appiah, the fact that languages are able to convey meaning through translation from one language to another does not indicate that they can shed light on other cultures: heavy paratextual materials serve the pedagogical scope of foregrounding the distance between European and African sociocultural reality. The presence of an explanation is justified by a lack of terminological equivalence and underlines the untranslatable nature of some culture-bound concepts. Paratextual remarks show the complexity of the minor culture, and also account for the unequal relationships of power between languages. In other words, thick translation might be seen as a way to resist imperial and colonial cultural assimilation. However, Bandia criticizes ‘thick translation’ by claiming that ‘heavy paratextual

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material [draws] attention away from the story line and direct[s] it at sociological, anthropological or historical details, thus interrupting the smooth f low, or reading experience, of the text and minimising its literary aesthetic quality’ (2008: 165). Therefore, he claims that ‘in-text, or interlinear, translation has gradually become the preferred strategy over footnotes and glossaries, as the latter can sometimes become highly intrusive informational digressions’, since they are ‘located outside the main text, constituting a kind of parallel “sub-text” which forces the reader to constantly go outside the main text in search of cultural information’ (Bandia 2008: 109). The consideration of the paratext as a foregrounding explanation rather than an integral part of a process of intercultural translation might help explain why most critical analysis of Italian migration literature has not performed a close textual reading of these literary works. By keeping in mind Bandia’s criticism of Appiah’s theory, it seems appropriate to make some distinctions between different foregrounding strategies. Bilingual self-translated texts present two separate and yet intrinsically correlated versions. The double linguistic format requires the reader to have a less active role than that required by writings that present foreign terms within the Italian text, since he or she can choose to read one text or the other. Like bilingual texts, footnotes seem to offer a synergetic idea of the interaction between languages and cultures, although they also act as dialogical interventions within the Italian text. In other words, they allow Somali terms to enter the Italian text, but as ‘foreign’ and ‘intrusive’ elements. Footnotes highlight the divorce between the Somali signifier and signified: the signifier is included as a coexisting but non-assimilable presence, which should always be legitimized by the presence of an Italian translation. Somali words are signs that stand for Somali culture, which is the latent presence in the text. By highlighting the gap between the word and its referent, footnotes force Somali expressions to abdicate their function of carrying meaning and accord to the Italian translation the status of the ‘real’ and ‘significant’ (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2002: 60–61). The presence of a paratextual section outside the body of the text underlines the distance between Italian and Somali. Texts like Madre piccola, Nuvole sull’equatore, or Rhoda instead include Somali expressions and explain their meaning in a non-invading glossary. Unlike footnotes, glossaries presume a partial emancipation of the Somali signifier within the text, since translations of foreign terms are placed in a separate section at the end of the book. This physical separation leaves the decision to read the glossary up to the reader. The use of glossaries is a twofold strategy: Somali words are still presented as foreign interventions, which have to be legitimized by the Italian translation, but they are incorporated within the text and contribute to the hybridization of Italian. Translating Distance in Proximity: In-text Translations and Contextualizations Igiaba Scego’s third book, Oltre Babilonia [Beyond Babylon] (2008b), presents elements of both continuity and discontinuity with Rhoda. It has a complex structure and geography, which are mirrored in its composite linguistic interventions. Oltre Babilonia features five main characters, two couples of mothers (Maryam and

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Miranda) and daughters (Zuhra Laamane and Mar Ribeiro Martino) and a shared father (Elias), who recount their interrelated stories, alternating their voices in each chapter. Each character can speak at least three languages: Maryam and Elias, who are both Somali refugees to Italy, are able to speak their native language, that of the country in which they live, and Arabic; the Argentinian immigrant Miranda Riberio Martino and her daughter Mar can speak Spanish, Italian, and some Arabic, since they are learning this language in Tunisia; Zuhra Laamane, Maryam and Elias’s daughter can speak f luent Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Somali, and the Roman dialect, but occasionally insert English, Portuguese, and French words in their conversations. To go ‘beyond Babel’ in Scego’s book means to go beyond the rigid distinctions between languages to an idea of change, to the mutability and persistent mobility between languages. The linguistic analysis of this novel cannot therefore be limited to either Italian or Somali, or to the interaction of the two, but must encompass the complex multilingual play at work. Unlike Rhoda, however, Oltre Babilonia provides in-text translations or in-text contextualization of Somali, Arabic, and Spanish words, and often leaves expressions in Spanish and the Roman dialect untranslated in the Italian text. The translation of Somali words is often used to create multilingual wordplays. For instance, the final encounter between Mar and Zuhra, who are sisters but are unaware of this, also causes two different linguistic backgrounds to face each other (Scego 2008b: 385–86). In this scene, Zuhra calls her sister by using the Somali word for sister, abbayo, which sounds like the third-person singular of the verb ‘to bark’ in Italian, abbaiare. It should also be noticed that later Mar addresses her sister Zuhra with this Somali term and no further explanation about its meaning is provided (Scego 2008b: 389). Thus, once a Somali expression has been contextualized or translated into Italian it is no longer explained. Characters contribute to building up the definition of a Somali expression by collaborating with each other, as if their voices were undifferentiated, and readers are required to remember Somali words in order to understand the text fully. In-text contextualizations of Somali terms are also frequent in Oltre Babilonia. In this case, the reader is required to build up the meaning of a word from its context, by considering the information that is provided throughout the novel. For instance, Maryam defines the meaning of the Somali word ogeyisiis in these terms: ‘Poi con l’indipendenza si era messo a fare gli ogeyisiis. Tutti prima o poi in radio facevano gli ogeyisiis. [...] Dell’emittente nazionale l’ogeyisiis era il programma più seguito, si cercavano persone scomparse in città’ [After independence he did ogeyisiis. Everybody sooner or later on the radio did ogeyisiis. [...] On the national radio ogeyisiis [...] was the most followed programme, which looked for missing people] (Scego 2008b: 355). It takes almost one page for the external narrator of Maryam’s story to provide a definition of the term. Finally, she further clarifies the meaning of this term by explaining that ogeyisiis is the Somali version of the popular Italian television show ‘Chi l’ha visto?’ [Have you seen him/her?] (Scego 2008b: 355). However, the construction of the meaning does not always suggest a clear correspondence in Italian, and might more often indicate the semantic field to which the term belongs. For instance, the meaning of Somali terms that refer

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to specific cultural and artistic practices, food, and clothes should frequently be inferred from the context. Similarly, the Somali for ‘clan’, qabil, is one of the few words left untranslated, and it is unclear whether this word could mean clan or family, tribe, group, or faction (Scego 2008b: 119, 435–36, 438). In these cases, the term qabil does not refer to a precise meaning, but might inform the reader that in Somali culture social affiliation and agnatic membership is a more f luid concept than in Europe and is ‘often in the process of being redefined, split up, or merged’ (Laitin 1977: 25). The reader should therefore constantly negotiate and build up the meaning of Somali words through the following two options: either one creates a personal mental dictionary, or one accepts that one cannot understand everything that is written in this contemporary Italian novel. The translations of Somali terms suggest that cultural translators are interpreters. For instance, Elias’s explanation of the term ‘hurra’ with ‘la libertà, il sole’ [freedom, the sun] (Scego 2008b: 61) connects two unrelated Italian words and therefore further complicates rather than explains the exact meaning of the term. In Oltre Babilonia, Spanish plays a role as significant as Somali, as one of the two mothers, Miranda, is an Argentinian refugee who has escaped the military regime in her country. According to Susanne Kleinart, her nickname ‘La Reaparecida’ refers to Le reaparecide, an Italian book of interviews with Argentinian women who were prosecuted by the country’s military regime and which might have inspired Oltre Babilonia (Kleinart 2012: 208). Spanish words are introduced without translation as if they were not foreign words or their meaning has to be mostly inferred from their context, since direct in-text translations of Spanish words are infrequent. The choice to leave some Spanish terms untranslated in Oltre Babilonia might be due to their lexical similarity with Italian words, which makes them comprehensible to an Italian readership. Moreover, the meaning of words is often constructed by providing information to the reader. For instance, the meaning of the word picaña is defined through a subsequent series of interventions. In fact, Miranda informs the reader that the word picaña is a torture device (Scego 2008b: 94) that is used to burn (Scego 2008b: 241) sensitive parts of the body like genitalia (Scego 2008b: 96, 99). However, there are also several uncontextualized Spanish expressions that might not be understood by an Italian reader: ‘Quando stavo nel sotano c’era sempre una spalla su cui appoggiarsi’ [When I was on the sotano there was always a shoulder to lean on] (Scego 2008b: 414). Like Somali terms, Spanish insertions are usually re-elaborated and reformulated in Italian rather than being translated, by adding an additional meaning or emphasis to their original: ‘Con cara fea le han cortado su alma, su voz. No tiene voz, mí Flaca. Con una faccia cattiva le hanno strappato l’anima, la voce. Non ha più avuto una voce, la mia Flaca’ [With a nasty face they took her soul away, her voice. She no longer had a voice, my Flaca] (Scego 2008b: 415). The verb cortar in Spanish means ‘to cut’, but it is translated with the Italian verb ‘to tear’. The translation assumes that La Flaca ‘no longer’ has a voice, while the Spanish version means that she ‘does not’ have a voice. Similarly, the Spanish expression seguir adelante, ‘to keep going straight ahead’, is translated with the Italian expression ‘guardare dritto davanti a sé’, meaning ‘to look straight ahead’ (Scego 2008b: 395). The presence of untranslated Spanish expressions might also be designed to

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question the importance and status of Italian in a global context. Although Italian is linguistically quite similar to Spanish, it is far less globally widespread and left only a minor linguistic legacy in Italy’s former colonies. Secondly, the contamination between Spanish and Italian is similar to the lingua franca that has been created by the plurilingual generation of European students who, like Zuhra, took part in the Erasmus project and can appreciate the multiple foreign interventions of Oltre Babilonia (Scego 2008b: 26). Zuhra’s considerable use of Spanish expressions disrupts the direct relationship between language and biological origins that is implicitly contained in the term mother tongue. There are also a few Arabic words present in Oltre Babilonia: in Zuhra’s and, less frequently, in Mar’s (Scego 2008b: 79, 125, 331–32) and Miranda’s speech (Scego 2008b: 364), since they decide to learn this language in Tunis. For instance, Mar portrays Arabic as an incomprehensible language, which she associates with the process of language learning: ‘Abiad bianco, aswad nero, ahmar, rosso, rosso, rosso. Come i capelli di sua madre. Aswad come la pelle di suo padre, Abiad come il buco in cui era finito per sempre il suo bambino’ [Abiad white, aswad black, ahmar, red, red, red. Like the hair of her mother. Aswad like the skin of her father, Abiad like the hole where her baby ended up, forever] (Scego 2008b: 328). Similarly, Zuhra often places Arabic expressions in her speech, as if she deliberately wants to provide her readership with a basic overview of many useful examples of Arabic grammarin-use: synonyms and antonyms, such as the explanation of the different synonyms of the verb ‘to love’ in Arabic (Scego 2008b: 404) or the terms to say ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ (Scego 2008b: 37); the pronunciation of terms and words, such as kamsa (Scego 2008b: 131), ayn (Scego 2008b: 400), and mim (Scego 2008b: 405); negative adverbs and prepositions, such as abadan (Scego 2008b: 128), and bila (Scego 2008b: 174); Italian linguistic borrowings, such as ‘ciao’ (Scego 2008b: 232); and a glossary of the most common expressions, such as ‘buon viaggio. Safar salama’ [have a nice journey] (Scego 2008b: 42), ‘sba el kir, buongiorno’ [have a nice day] (Scego 2008b: 175), ‘shawarma, per favore’ [please] (Scego 2008b: 250), and ‘ “afuan”, scusi’ [sorry] (Scego 2008b: 280). Oltre Babilonia even presents technical terms related to language learning, such as ‘daballiu, traduzione dallo scritto all’orale’ [translation from oral to written] (Scego 2008b: 404). Reference to the mechanisms involved in language learning might make the reader sympathize with the characters of the novel: he or she is learning to deal with the foreign multilingual material of Oltre Babilonia and is experiencing the same feeling of estrangement and discomfort as the main characters. Moreover, Zuhra describes Arabic as a proximate language to Somali, and studying this language serves to reconnect her to the cultural origins of her family. This aspect is evident in a passage where Zuhra translates into Italian and Somali the Arabic lyrics of Tinariwen’s song ‘Oualahila Ar Tesninam’ (2004): ‘Oualahila, mi sembra il mio wallahi. Forse sono parole parenti’ [Oualahila sounds like my wallahi. Perhaps they are related words] (Scego 2008b: 23). Significantly, the word wallahi is the Somali adagio that introduces and often accompanies Zuhra (Scego 2008b: 7, 49, 403). In this regard, Zuhra also remarks on the proximity between Somali and Arab culture, by highlighting that Elias’s birthplace is the capital city of Somalia, whose name derives from Arabic: ‘Elias era nato a Mogadiscio, o Xamar

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come preferiscono chiamarla i somali. É un nome arabo Xamar, deriva da ahmar, significa la rossa’ [Elias was born in Mogadishu, or Xamar, as Somalis call it. Xamar is the Arab name, it comes from ahmar, and it means red] (Scego 2008b: 117). These references emphasize that the Arabic language has ‘permeated modern Somalia’ (Laitin 1977: 56) as far as, according to Ioan Lewis, it ‘is sufficiently widely known to be regarded as a second language’ (2002: 5). Tunisia is described as a Babelic linguistic environment, where most people not only speak Arabic but also mix together different languages. Remarkably, Zuhra’s, Miranda’s, and Mar’s experiences in Tunisia are introduced with the following multilingual passage: ‘Ahlan Wa sahlan, salve bambina, questa è Tunisi. Welcome to an unknown place’ [Ahlan Wa sahlan, hello girl, this is Tunis. Welcome to an unknown place] (Scego 2008b: 134). When Mar is walking in a suq in Tunis, vendors address her in French, English, Italian, and Bolognese dialect: ‘ “Bonjour” le dissero. “Do you speak English?” “Italian” rispose secca lei. “Naturale signorina, bella Italia, Parmiggggiano” disse in un finto Bolognese uno dei due’ [“Bonjour” they said. “Do you speak English?” “Italian” she answered. “Naturally, Miss, beautiful Italy, Parmiggggiano” one of the two said in a fake Bolognese accent] (Scego 2008b: 272). These untranslated passages successfully reproduce the linguistic confusion and chaotic surroundings of a suq for Western tourists and are set against Zuhra’s description of the monolingual closeness of European towns like Rome or Barcelona. The multiple languages of the postcolonial environment in Tunis mirror the variety of foreign linguistic insertions other than Somali, Arabic, Spanish, and the Roman dialect that occur in Oltre Babilonia. For instance, Zuhra normalizes many English expressions without providing an Italian translation, even though most Italian speakers might not understand all of them, such as in a passage where she refers to ‘un frenetico lindy hop. Lo dice la parola stessa, c’è di mezzo un hop’ [a frantic lindy hop. The words itself indicate it, a hop is involved] (Scego 2008b: 344). Zuhra argues that she is able to speak any language (Scego 2008b: 174): together with Somali, Italian, and Spanish, she also intersperses her discourse with untranslated foreign expressions from German (Scego 2008b: 129), French (Scego 2008b: 12, 399), and Portuguese (Scego 2008b: 85). These linguistic presences show the vast difference in acculturation of Zuhra compared to her immigrant parents, who can mostly speak in Italian and Somali, like Elias, or speak through the voice of an external narrator, like Maryam. Zuhra is called ‘Negropolitana’ by referring to the definition of ‘Afropolitans’ by Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu (Taiye Selasi) as the new generation of young and well-educated Africans and people of African descent with a very global outlook and multicultural sensibilities (Tuakli-Wosornu 2005). Moreover, Zuhra often moves from one language to another, by translating the same term in many languages. For instance, this passage is relevant for the fact that trans­lation for Zuhra involves many different languages and not just Italian or Somali: A me piace un sacco chiamarle così, mestruazioni. È un termine medico, normale, igienico [...] Non mi piace dire ‘ciclo’. Non mi piace dire ‘sono indisposta’, e nemmeno dire ‘le mie cose’. [...] a Roma i trasteverini parlano di un certo marchese, al mio paese d’origine, la Somalia, si aspetta Godude.

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Gli americani poi, mettono in campo le zie, è tutto un via vai di aunt Flo, aunt Rosie, aunt Martha. In Messico invece la buttano sul lugubre ed è un prof luvio di vampiritos, piccoli vampiri che ti succhiano — ma non si fa prima a dire assorbente? I più fantasiosi però sono i finlandesi. A me non verrebbe tanta fantasia in mezzo ai ghiacci. Ma i finlandesi ce l’hanno e le chiamano le giornate del mirtillo rosso. (Scego 2008b: 16) [I like it a lot to call it that, menstruation. It’s a medical term, normal, hygienic [...] I don’t like to say ‘cycle’. I don’t like to say ‘I’m indisposed’, or to say ‘I got my things’. [...] People from Trastevere, in Rome, talk of a marquess, in my country of origin, Somalia, you wait for Godude. Americans talk of aunts, and it is a coming and going of Aunt Flo, Aunt Rosie, Aunt Martha. In Mexico, they define it in grim terms, and it is a glut of vampiritos, little vampires who suck your blood — but isn’t it faster to say tampon? The most inventive are Finnish people. I would not have that much creativity in the middle of all that ice. Finnish people have it, and call them the days of red berries.]

According to Laura Lori this passage is also noteworthy since it aims to ‘enfatizzare l’universalità dell’essere donna, che, nonostante le innegabili differenze geografiche e culturali, alla fine si riduce a poche caratteristiche comuni, fra cui, appunto, l’eterna battaglia con il ciclo mestruale’ [emphasize the universality of being woman, which, regardless of cultural and geographical differences that are imposs­ ible to deny, can eventually be reduced to a few common features including the eternal struggle with menstruations] (2013: 163). Zuhra is not the only character that intersperses her discourse with languages other than her native language: Elias expresses himself in English (Scego 2008b: 261), Miranda in Portuguese (Scego 2008b: 187) and English (Scego 2008b: 186, 306, 368), and Mar in English (Scego 2008b: 215, 217, 325, 391–94), French (Scego 2008b: 74, 393), and Portuguese (Scego 2008b: 394). On the other hand, when Maryam’s speech is reported, she does not employ non-Italian linguistic interventions other than Somali. Her story is told by an external and multilingual narrator who often uses untranslated expressions in English (Scego 2008b: 54, 58–59, 417–18). Moreover, this external narrator enacts a linguistic process in which each word immediately starts a process of translation that emphasizes some connoted words: ‘puttana, shermutta, bitch, putain, puta’ (Scego 2008b: 107). This narrator uses language that resembles Zuhra’s, thus indicating that she is adopting a literary dissimulation to tell the story of her mother, just as Scego did in La nomade by telling the story of her mother. The similarities between these two texts might suggest that Zuhra’s story in Oltre Babilonia fictionalizes Scego’s own story. One last remark on Zuhra and Mar’s language concerns the use of swear words, which they — as well as the adolescent character of Somali origins in Rhoda and Scego’s short stories — use to show their distance from the adult community. Vulgar language emphasizes the class marginalization of immigrant’s children, who may have limited contact with speakers of standard Italian. These linguistic presences testify to the fact that ‘migrants settle in urban peripheries and in working-class areas, the Italian they learn is often the language spoken by labourers and marginalized people’ (Portelli 2006: 480). However, visual and vulgar expressions in Oltre Babilonia often seem to be used indiscriminately and

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unrealistically to characterize an older generation of Somalis. For instance, an old Somali person argues in favour of infibulation, by using a pejorative and colloquial term for ‘vagina’: ‘Quella carne pendula nella figa delle donne può uccidere la nostra virilità’ [that meat hanging loose on women’s pussies can kill our virility] (Scego 2008b: 206). The text underlines the ignorance of the Somali speaker, but does not recognize that, as Scego herself argues in an interview with Cristina Mauceri, sex is a taboo topic in Somali traditional culture (2004a). These linguistic presences distinguish Scego’s text from those by immigrant writers, who did not break the rules of linguistic and social correctness. Another Somali Italian literary work that incorporates Somali interventions within the Italian text through in-text translations or in-text contextualizations is Garane Garane’s Il latte è buono [Milk is Good] (2005). In this novel an omniscient narrator tells the story of a character named Gashan. Like Garane, Gashan left Somalia after Mohamed Siad Barre’s coup and travelled to Italy, France, and the United States. Il latte è buono can be defined as a Bildungsroman, since the character becomes increasingly aware of the psychological inf luence of Italian colonialism in his education when he reaches and lives in Italy. The novel ends at the beginning of the 1990s, when the character goes back to Somalia and finds out that Mogadishu has been completely destroyed by the civil war, and needs to be reconstructed. Like Igiaba Scego, Garane includes Somali terms in the text without any further explanation once they have been translated or contextualized. However, Il latte è buono uses far more untranslated Somali expressions than Oltre Babilonia. Garane seems more interested in showing the evocative force of the Somali signifier than in translating the meaning of Somali terms into Italian. The absolute predominance of the Somali signifier over the Italian translation is apparent in the following passage, in which Garane defines the term gorgor first as a kind of bird — ‘questo uccello è diverso dal nostro gorgor’ [this bird is different from our gorgor] (Garane 2005: 63), and later with the general term of the species, ‘l’uccello’ [the bird] (Garane 2005: 113). However, as Igiaba Scego points out, this word means ‘vulture’ (Scego 2008b: 133). The presence of many untranslated terms in Il latte è buono signals perhaps that this text is among the Somali Italian writings that envision a readership of Italian and Somali speakers rather than speakers of Italian only. The central role played by Somali in Il latte è buono can be measured by considering Garane’s translation in Italian of a Somali word play ‘Mogadiscio è diventata Muuqdisho, quella che uccide la vista, la visione, il futuro’ [Mogadishu has become Muuq-disho, the city that kills the sight, the vision, the future] (Garane 2005: 123). Garane changes the original meaning of Mogadishu, which derives from Arabic and means ‘the site of Shah’ (Maqad al Shah), into a new, homophonous word. The choice to translate this Somali wordplay into Italian underlines Garane’s nostalgic intention to write in the language he knows best. However, the massive presence of unglossed and untranslated words and expressions in the author’s native language might prevent readers from following the logical f low of the discourse. Because of the arduous intelligibility and limited readability of his novel, Garane seems to have partially failed to interpret his role as cultural translator. In this regard, Bandia notices that contextualization by inference (or in-text contextualization) is

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more effective than paraphrasing and direct translation (or in-text translation) in order to favour the reader’s participation in the construction of meaning (2008: 110). Chantal Zabus also warns about the risks of excessive use of vernacular words in writings by immigrants, which could frustrate and inhibit their readers (1990: 356). While the plentiful insertion of Somali terms in Il latte è buono might indicate the attempt of Garane to reconnect with the language that is spoken in the country of origin, Scego’s Oltre Babilonia fictionally represents the language of Somali diasporic subjects and implicitly emphasizes the link between this Italian writer and her parents’ country of origin. Although Il latte è buono is mainly a dual-language novel, other foreign languages are also present. For example, by exhibiting his French f luency (Garane 2005: 45, 86, 89–90), Gashan is underlining his ability to speak many languages while most Italians only pretend to speak French (Garane 2005: 80–81). The use of foreign terms with a critical purpose is also evident with the only English intervention in the text, ‘reservation’, which is employed to emphasize the racial segregation found in the United States (Garane 2005: 102). Foreign terms, however, are not as systematically present as they are in Oltre Babilonia. Another difference between these two texts is that Il latte è buono employs the standard Italian language, while in Oltre Babilonia the Roman dialect is frequently used. Like Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Garane Garane uses a standard form of Italian to show that he is able to master the standard form of a language that most Italians expect him not to speak properly, and so they often address him using the infinitive tense (Garane 2005: 82). He soon realizes that he is able to speak ‘l’italiano, quello di Dante’ [the Italian of Dante] (Garane 2005: 71) even better than a ‘napoletano’ [Neapolitan] (Garane 2005: 65), but this skill does not facilitate his integration in Italy, because of the colour of his skin. Moreover, he accuses people from Rome of talking a ‘strange dialect’, which does not resemble the language that he has learnt in school (Garane 2005: 71). These considerations are crucial to understanding that linguistic heterogeneity in Italy causes a dialect speaker to be immediately identified as more Italian than a standard speaker, since dialect is closer to everyday language and indicates a characteristic regional belonging. The use of Italian dialects to emphasize the characters’ belonging or integration to a specific native Italian linguistic community distinguishes Scego’s work from that by other Somali Italian writers. The previous analysis has indicated that Oltre Babilonia and Il latte è buono both place untranslated Somali words in the Italian text. It might sound paradoxical to consider the insertion of untranslated Somali expressions into the Italian text as acts of translation; however, the choice of avoiding the translation of some words operates a very peculiar act of translation that aims to preserve the plurality of cultures and to resist assimilation: Ironically, literary heteroglossia or polylingualism highlights the importance of translation by refusing to translate or assimilate vestiges of minority languages into the dominant idiom. Linguistic diversity is thus maintained through a deliberate resistance to translation, or the transfer of a language item to the domain of another language. (Bandia 2008: 149)

Therefore, the integration of the foreign signifier in the dominant discourse

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shows that ‘the refusal to translate is a refusal of being subsidiary’ (Ashcroft 2010: 41). In this regard, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin argue that to leave some words untranslated in the text ‘not only acts to signify the difference between cultures, but also illustrates the importance of discourse in interpreting cultural concepts’ (2002: 63). The insertion of foreign words in-context not only shows that the novel is informed by another language, but highlights that meaning is built-up in context. The authors of The Empire Writes Back maintain that this operation has political implications: The gradual discarding of glossing in the post-colonial text has, more than anything, released language from the myth of cultural authenticity, and demonstrated the fundamental importance of the situating context in according meaning [...] Ultimately, the choice of leaving words untranslated in postcolonial texts is a political act, because while translation is not inadmissible in itself, glossing gives the translated word, and thus the ‘receptor’ culture, the higher status. (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2002: 65)

As a consequence, in-text contextualization has gradually been preferred to ‘thick translation’ because the interruption of the f low of colonial language requires the reader to take an active role: ‘The reader gets some idea about the meaning of these words from the subsequent conversation, but further understanding will require the reader’s own expansion of the culture in which these terms have meaning’ (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2002: 64). Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s choice to write her first novel with footnotes, her second novel with a glossary, and to republish her first novel by inserting the definition of Somali words within both the Italian and the English texts, provides a remarkable example of this trend. Foreignizing approaches show the limits of Italian in describing alterity and, at the same time, they testify to the great linguistic potential that the interaction with another language can involve. Rather than solely carrying meanings, these strategies create a new materiality that ref lects the distance between the two languages and privileges the signifier over the signified by refusing the equal probability of ordinary communication. The texts that translate the distance in proximity can be described using Jacques Derrida’s theoretical approaches to translation. According to Derrida, the syntactical, semantic, lexical and lexicographical correspondences between languages are imprecise (1998: 66). Therefore, as Philip Lewis’s reading of Derrida’s theory suggests, the translator should deconstruct ‘the us-system, that is the chain of values linking the usual, the useful, and the common linguistic usage’ (Lewis 2000: 262). Instead of avoiding the peculiarity of a language through a semantic reduction that annihilates the differences and assimilates the translated text with the standard form of the target language, the translator should privilege the restitution of the connotations and semantic over-determinations over the mere meaning and denotations of a text in a foreign language. By doing so, as Philip Lewis notes, the translator should demand attention is given ‘to the chain of signifiers, to syntactic processes, to discursive structures, to the incidence of language mechanisms on thought and reality formation, and so forth’ (2000: 262), and suggest ‘a different set of discursive relations and a different construction of reality’ (2000: 259). The translator has the impossible and necessary role of reconciling languages. This

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operation is necessary to keep each language alive and vital: One could say that each language is as if atrophied in its isolation, meagre, arrested in its growth, sickly. Owing to translation, in other words to the linguistic supplementarity by which one language gives to another what it lacks, and gives it harmoniously, this crossing of languages assures the growth of languages. (Derrida 2002: 131)

The task of the translator is therefore to create a universal language which performs the role of ‘adjoining, coupling, marrying two languages like two parts of a greater whole’ (Derrida 2002: 130). Derrida also seems to suggest that every writer is a translator, since ‘in the very tongue of the original narrative there is translation’ (2002: 109). For Derrida, a translation should not merely testify (as those texts that translate the distance in proximity) that ‘un corps verbal ne se laisse pas traduire ou transporter dans une autre langue’ [it is impossible to translate or transport entirely a verbal body into another language], but also that a translation should restituir un corps [restore the body] of the original text (1967: 312).5 In the case of Somali Italian literature, the incorporation of untranslated Somali terms in Italian texts evokes the force and intensity of the Somali signifiers, by subverting the common and quotidian usage as well as the probabilistic order of the Italian language. Untranslated Somali terms invite the audience to go with the f low of the signifiers, and seem to put into practice what Derrida meant by ‘laisser tomber le corps’ [abandoning the body] (1967: 312). This strategy succeeds in reinstating the foreignness of foreign cultures and making the readers aware of cultural specificity. Foreignizing translation therefore requires the readership to negotiate linguistic identity and knowledge, by accepting that one cannot understand everything that is written in one’s own language. Texts like Il latte è buono and Oltre Babilonia transform Italian into an unusual language for Italian readers, who have to adopt an inferential, pragmatic, and contextual, rather than a literal, conception of meaning in order to approach them. While strategies that show the distance between the two languages underline the role of the author as cultural mediator, these strategies compel readers to become cultural mediators themselves. The recontextualization of Somali words into the Italian text maintains the distance between the two languages through a different legibility, even through a possible intelligibility, that enacts a hermeneutic process. The process of understanding the hybrid language of these novels might also be evaluated in relation to Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Although this model was not conceived with the purpose of commenting on written texts, it refers to ‘the interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech and action who establish interpersonal relations (whether by verbal or by extraverbal means)’ (1984–87: i, 86), so it might be useful to consider a linguistic strategy that asks the reader to negotiate his or her previous linguistic knowledge and to cooperate with the ideal author in order to reach understanding. In fact, in Il latte è buono and Oltre Babilonia, the insertion of foreign lexical choices exceeds the literal meaning of the Italian language. These texts envision language as a medium through which the most complex process of communication takes place, a process which is ‘coordinated through’ language itself (Habermas 1984–87: i, 101).

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Il latte è buono and Oltre Babilonia view meaning as an act of cooperation, in which participants aim to reach common understanding through an interpretative process rather than the application of a fixed set of linguistic rules (Habermas 1984–87: i, 113–15). Language here does not merely transmit cultural knowledge, but also is a means for socialization, cultural mediation, and social integration, which is useful for creating ‘an ideal communicative community’ (Habermas 1984–87: ii, 2) and ‘the emergence of a higher-level form of life characterized by a linguistically constituted form of intersubjectivity’ (Habermas 1984–87: ii, 10–11). Translating in Proximity: Modifying Italian and Foregrounding Somali Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s,6 Cristina Ali Farah’s, and Igiaba Scego’s short stories, Scego’s autobiographical memoir La mia casa è dove sono [My Home is Where I Am] (2010c), Kaha Mohamed Aden’s collection of short stories Fra-intendimenti [Mis-understandings] (2010), and Cristina Ali Farah’s Il comandante del fiume [The Commander of the River] (2014) adopt a conception of transcultural writing that is more interested in communicating with the Italian audience to whom they belong, rather than emphasizing the distance between Italian and Somali cultures and languages.7 Little linguistic translation is involved in these texts. They often describe the challenges of translation and intercultural communication, but they present few foreign words. However, translation theory can be useful to describe the strategy through which texts that feature multilingual main characters foreground the interaction between two different cultures and languages. For example, three main and partly autobiographical characters of Fra-intendimenti describe themselves as translators. In ‘Uno scialle afro-arabeggiante’ [An AfroArabian Shawl], Kaha reconfigures the problems of mutual understanding as a problem of translation. The main autobiographical character of this short story is an ‘interprete’ [interpreter] (Kaha 2010: 83), who finds herself in the difficult position of mediating between two languages and cultures that struggle to find a contact point. The main character has to create a bridge of communication between a Somali refugee and a Swiss policeman, who respectively believe they are involved in an interrogation and a conversation. The ‘interprete’ accuses linguistic translation of creating a misunderstanding between the two characters: ‘Interrogatori oppure colloqui? Misteri della lingua ...’ [Are they interrogations or interviews? Mysteries of language ...] (Kaha 2010: 83).8 Switzerland is envisioned as both a multilingual space, where three languages are officially spoken, and a liminal space, stuck outside the linguistic boundaries of three major national languages. Similarly, in ‘Che ore sono?’ [What Time Is It?] the main autobiographical character translates the measuring system of time of the Darood clan into that of the Hawiye clan: ‘Una ragazza del clan Hawiye avrebbe detto le dieci, una ragazza Daarood avrebbe detto le quattro (proprio come si usa qui in Italia). Essendo io una Daarood cresciuta in mezzo agli Hawiye posso dare entrambe le versioni’ [A young woman from the Hawiye clan would have said ten o’ clock, but a Daarood would have said four o’clock (just like in Italy). As I am a Daarood raised among Hawiye I can give both versions] (Kaha 2010: 68). The interlingual translation performed in

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this passage shows that cultures and languages are not monolithic or self-sufficient but result from a process of cultural mediation. The trouble with translation in ‘Che ore sono?’ is also connected to a problematic generational communication with the old Somali man who asks the main character for a favour. Remarkably, she underlines that translation never restores the meaning of an expression: ‘È tempo che ti portino via le dita, letteralmente dal somalo. In italiano invece: è l’ora di dare le impronte digitali’ [It is time that your fingers are taken away, literally from Somali. In Italian instead one says: it is time to give one’s fingerprints] (Kaha 2010: 74). In this case, the Somali version underlines the violent action that is imposed on the person who has to give his or her fingerprints, while the Italian translation describes the same verb as a voluntary act. This passage emphasizes that translation is strictly related to hermeneutics and politics. Hermeneutics also play a central role in ‘Apriti sesamo’ [Open Sesame], a short story that describes the invasion of the main autobiographical character’s house by a group of racist people. Rather than taking the intruders away, the police arrest the main character since her residence permit in Italy has expired. The main character later realizes that what was her nightmare is a reality for many immigrants in Italy during the time of the Bossi-Fini Law. The main character tries to translate the Somali expression that literally means in Italian ‘aprire il sogno’ [to open up a dream] from the perspective of immigrants in Italy who do not find legal recognition (Kaha 2010: 65).9 The confusion between nightmare and waking life highlights the contradictions of the Italian laws on immigration.As this analysis has pointed out, Kaha’s short stories share so many common features that Fra-intendimenti cannot be seen simply as a collection, but as a text centred around common themes, including intercultural translation, which are developed in different stories. The constant presence of an internal first-person narrator and the recurrence of interrelated themes suggest reading the short stories of Fra-intendimenti as a unified whole (Brioni 2014c: 26). Kaha’s Fra-intendimenti is almost entirely in Italian and presents few paraphrased or footnoted Somali words. Rather than adopting linguistic hybridity as a practice of intercultural translation, Kaha is therefore more interested in experimenting with the possibilities of the Italian language to reach her Italian audience. For instance, she often employs a colloquial style that involves the use of direct questions to her readership (Kaha 2010: 66, 116). These phatic elements are often used as a rhetorical artifice of captatio benevolentiae to get the attention or the sympathy of her readership, but also underline the lack of self-confidence in translating herself in a language of which she is not a native speaker: ‘Perdonatemi come cantastorie sono alle prime armi’ [I am sorry, I am an absolute beginner storyteller] (Kaha 2010: 25). The justification of her incapability to write a great tale in Italian is often employed to create wordplays. For instance, the main character of ‘Il dizionario’ [The Dictionary] does not understand the metaphorical meaning of the term ‘scomparire’ [to disappear] in Italian, and looks for a definition in the dictionary (Kaha 2010: 113). This term is immediately associated with the Arabic (and Somali) word for spirits, ‘ginn’ (Kaha 2010: 114). The meaning of the Italian verb ‘scomparire’ is constructed through a process, which compels the autobiographical character to move away from Italian: ‘Sotto la voce “scomparsa” di fronte ad un euf. c’era la

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parola Morte. Che sarà mai euf.? Non lo so!’ [On the entry ‘disappearance’ in front of a euf. the word Death was written. What does euf. mean? No idea!] (Kaha 2010: 114). The direct reference to language-learning practice emphasizes that readers should adopt a different approach when dealing with the language and culture that are presented in the novel. A similar ref lection about language is present in ‘1982. Fuga da casa’ [1982: Escape from Home], a short story whose title might refer to two dystopic artistic works that describe the collapse of a democratic state, John Carpenter’s 1981 movie Escape from New York, set in 1997, and George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell 2010). The main autobiographical character of ‘1982. Fuga da casa’ describes her move to Italy after her father was imprisoned as a political opponent of Mohamed Siad Barre’s dictatorship. In this passage, she refers to the difficulty of using subjunctives and the formal singular pronoun ‘Lei’: Di solito mi concentro sulla mia vicina di stanza e parlo di lei: ‘Lei’ come sta, cosa fa, ecc. ecc. Ma la faccenda si complica quando si arriva ai congiuntivi. Questa formula — aggiustare i congiuntivi su un’amica immaginaria — il più delle volte strappa il vestito linguistico e non si capisce niente, non funziona. (Kaha 2010: 95) [Usually I concentrate on my neighbour and talk to her: How are you doing, madam? What are you doing, madam? Etc. Etc. However, things get compli­ cated when you get to subjunctives. This formula — to use subjunctives as if I were talking to an imagery friend — most of the time tears off the linguistic costume, and one can’t understand anything, it doesn’t work.]

The frequent questions about the Italian language in Fra-intendimenti and the ref lections on the translatability of Somali concepts into Italian are designed to show non-native speakers’ difficulty in translating their own language. Cristina Ali Farah’s Il comandante del fiume also presents few Somali insertions, which are usually translated within the text. A plot summary is present in the back cover of the novel, and it explains that the novel narrates the story of Yabar, an eighteen-year-old man of Somali origin living in Rome with his mother. He is then sent to London to his aunt as a punishment for failing a course in school. Once in London, he discovers that his idolized father — who left the family to go and fight in Somalia during the civil war — has killed his mother’s younger brother. The plot description immediately provides an ethnic identity to the main character, while the novel does not disclose it until the third chapter (Ali Farah 2014: 30) and mentions the name of the main character only in the fourth chapter (Ali Farah 2014: 42). These choices help us to envision Yabar’s experience of life in Italy as very similar to that of other young people who were born in Rome. Like Kaha Mohamed Aden’s Fra-intendimenti and Cristina Ali Farah’s Il comandante del fiume, Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono aims to create a confidential and direct communication with the readership by presenting a limited use of Somali interventions. This memoir shows the relationship of Scego’s life and the common history between Italy and Somalia by remapping the city where she was born, Rome, with the memories of Mogadishu, which was destroyed by the civil war. As Chapter 3 will analyse in detail, the story of Scego in this memoir partly resembles that of Zuhra in Oltre Babilonia. Although Scego often describes Somalia

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as her motherland (2010c: 129), or the place where she can find her roots (2010c: 26), and even refers to Somalis with the first-person plural (2010c: 22–23, 88, 127, 132), she is presented as an Italian writer, and it is unsurprising that Somali words are relatively absent from the text. One of the reasons for the avoidance of Somali words in this text might be connected to its ideal audience: La mia casa è dove sono has been published by a major publishing house, Rizzoli, for a general readership, which might not have appreciated foreign interventions. In 2012, this volume was turned into a didactic book, which includes footnotes to provide further linguistic and historical information about the subject of the texts, and an appendix with exercises and research material. As we have seen, paratexts play an important role and contribute to framing the text. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the appendix to the 2012 version of La mia casa è dove sono — a memoir that powerfully challenges misconceptions about Italian colonialism — actually confirms some of the most common and distorted ideas about Italian colonialism. For instance, this paratext minimizes the role that the Catholic Church played in the Italian colonial enterprise in Somalia (Merosi 2012: 178), which historical research has clearly evidenced (Ceci 2007). The title of one of the texts in the appendix presents Italian colonialism in Somalia as an unhappy marriage, which had ‘poche conseguenze’ [little consequences] for Italy and ‘danni decisivi’ [decisive damages] for Somalia (Merosi 2012: 178), thus denying that colonialism and its legacy had relevant effects not only in the colonized but also in the colonizing country (Giorgi and Morone 2011). Scego also employs relatively few Somali terms in her short stories, and attempts to modify the Italian language, as well as creating new wordplays and neologisms. The short story ‘Dismatria’, included in the collection Pecore Nere [Black Sheep] (Capitani and Coen 2005), is significant in this regard.10 Like Igiaba Scego herself, the narrator of the short story is torn between Italian and Somali cultures. She has a complex relationship with her mother and her family, who hope to return to their native country and keep their most precious possessions in suitcases. The narrator feels like an Italian citizen and would like to be able to live in the country where she was born. The end of the story sees a partial reconciliation of the main characters thanks to the intervention of a transvestite, Angelique, who encourages the main character to talk to her mother and express her wish to settle in Rome. In representing the language of the second-generation narrator of the story, Scego employs peculiar patterns of verbal communication, such as repetitions. For instance, the Italian term for ‘suitcase’, valigie, which is the central object of the short story, is repeated in three subsequent short phrases: ‘Solo quella [valigia] però. Il resto della famiglia delle valigie per me era solo spazzatura. Le stramaledette valigie per me erano solo tormento, strazio, sofferenza’ [That one [suitcase] only though. The rest of the suitcase family was rubbish as far as I was concerned. Goddamned suitcases, they were nothing but torment, agony, misery for me] (Scego 2005a: 8). Repetitions frequently underline key issues of the short story, such as the main character’s reverence for her mother, which borders on fear: ‘Da quel che ho detto sembra quasi che odi mia madre. Io la amo invece. L’adoro. La venero. La riverisco. La ossequio. Ciò non toglie che a tratti la tema. E quel pomeriggio era uno di

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quei tratti’ [From all I’ve said it must sound like I almost hate my mother. Instead I love her. Adore her. Worship her. Revere her. Take my hat off to her. Which doesn’t stop me from being scared of her too, at times. And that afternoon was one of those times] (Scego 2005a: 7). Dialogues are recurrently employed, and the narrator also directly refers to her readers: ‘Il mio problema, amici, era costituito dalle valigie’ [My problem, my friends, was suitcases] (Scego 2005a: 7). Along with imitating real life, the use of questions and dialogues allows the reader to participate in the main character’s emotions and gives a quick and intense rhythm to the narration. Moreover, capital letters are used to reproduce the different volume and tones of vocal expression: ‘INCONCEPIBILE! DISDICEVOLE! INAMMISSIBILE!’ [Inconceivable! Unladylike! Inadmissible!] (Scego 2005a: 6). On a lexical level, Scego deliberately aims to break with the conventions of standard language by combining slang, dialect, neologisms, aulic words, and foreign interventions. For instance, colloquial expressions and swear words are recurrent. On the other hand, the hostile relationship of the main character with her family is underlined through refined lexical choices, such as ‘genitrice’ [female parent] (Scego 2005a: 6, 10, 16) and ‘parentado’ [family] (Scego 2005a: 14). Although ‘Dismatria’ does not present many Somali words, English terms are instead recurrent and emphasize the main character’s belonging to a young generation of Italians, such as the re-elaborations of English words in Italian slang ‘zero humor’ (Scego 2005a: 8) and ‘soft’ (Scego 2005a: 9), which is used to indicate the versatile attitude of the main character. The keyword of this short novel is its title, the neologism ‘dismatria’: Il nostro incubo si chiamava dismatria. Qualcuno a volte ci correggeva [...] ‘In italiano si dice espatriare, espatrio, voi quindi siete degli espatriati’. Scuotevamo la testa [...] Eravamo dei dismatriati, qualcuno — forse per sempre — aveva tagliato il cordone ombelicale che ci legava alla nostra matria, alla Somalia. (Scego 2005a: 11) [Our living nightmare was dismatria. At times someone would correct us and say: ‘No, in Italian we say espatrio, the state of expatriation, of being far from your patria, your fatherland, just as you are all expatriates, espatriati.’ We would shake our heads [...] We’re exmatriates, not expatriates. Someone had severed — perhaps for ever — the umbilical cord attaching us to our matria, our mother country of Somalia.]

This word is formed by the negative prefix dis- and the suffix -matria, which in Italian indicates a motherland, the feminine version of fatherland and is identified both with Somalia and later with Italy. Dismatria might refer to the ambivalent relationship that the main character entertains with her mother. The unnamed progenitor in fact embodies traditional Somali values and constitutes the only actual link of the narrator with the idealized promised land of their origins. Moreover, dismatria refers to the nostalgic absence of the motherland (Somalia), which has been destroyed by the civil war (Scego 2005a: 13). This term might also refer to the troublesome reconstitution of a new motherland in Italy, the country where the narrator was born but which she cannot perceive as maternal. Italy cannot be a matria since most Italians have a stereotypical and discriminatory idea of women of

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African origins. This aspect is apparent when the main character misinterprets the words that her friend Angelique addresses her with, since she is aware of the racist stereotype that associates black women with prostitution: Mi guardò e mi chiese: ‘fica aberta toda noite’ con quel ‘noite’ (pronunciato ‘noici’ alla Pelè) molto marcato nel finale. Io gli diedi un sonoro ceffone [...] Credevo volesse una puttana, una ‘figa’ aperta. Morii di vergogna quando mi spiegarono che ‘fica’ in brasiliano significa ‘restare’. (Scego 2005a: 14–15) [He looked me over, then asked in his own language: ‘Fica aberta toda noite?’ with that last word pronounced ‘noy-she’, Pelè-style, heavily accentuated on the last syllable. All he wanted to know was whether the place stayed open all night. But I gave him a massive clout which almost took his right ear off. I thought he [...] took me for a whore, fica being ‘cunt’ in Italian. I almost died of shame when someone finally explained to me it just means ‘stay’ in Brazilian and nothing like what I thought.]11

In this bitterly ironic passage, the phonetic mispronunciation of a Portuguese false friend, the third person of the verb ficar in Brazilian, creates a translingual joke with the Italian slang word for vagina. In order to understand the complexity of the term dismatria it might be useful to interpret it in the light of the term dispatrio, which Luigi Meneghello introduced in his eponymous autobiographically inspired text (1993: 8–9). The prefix disindicates a painful decision to separate from the culture Meneghello belongs to but does not perceive completely as his own, rather than an experience of physical separation from the fatherland, as in the word espatrio. As Franca Sinopoli and Silvia Tatti point out, dispatrio entails dispersion and uncertainty as well as the chance of new cultural possibilities: Il prefisso dis- rispetto al più tradizionale e- (espatrio, esilio, prefisso che indica in modo esplicito l’allontanamento), ha un valore separativo oltre che negativo; unito a ‘patria’, termine fortemente connotato in senso affettivo, suggerisce una lettura dell’esperienza come qualcosa di lacerante e che provoca dolore, frammentazione, incertezza. In dispatrio è implicita dunque l’idea della perdita, ma anche della dispersione e della molteplicità: il passaggio della frontiera, il superamento del confine comportano una sottrazione (la lingua, l’identità, la memoria) ma anche un’apertura a nuove esperienze linguistiche e culturali. (2005: 15) [The prefix dis- with respect to the more traditional e- (expatriate, exile, a prefix that explicitly indicates a distancing), has a negative and separative value. If it is put together with ‘fatherland’, a term that is strongly connoted affectively, it suggests a reading of this experience as something that produces a piercing pain, fragmentation, incertitude. Therefore the word dispatrio implicitly suggests the idea of loss, dispersion, and multiplicity: the crossing of a frontier, the overcoming of confinement that implies a subtraction (of a language, an identity, a memory) but also an opening towards new linguistic and cultural experiences.]

Moreover, this term designates a critical act of contestation. In this regard, Peter Carravetta analyses the use of the prefix dis- and argues that it implies a latent decision to protest:

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Language Dis-patrio implica [...] un fuoriuscire da un luogo o condizione [...] [un] movi­ mento che implica a sua volta un atto critico [un] atteggiamento contestatario [...] induce a pensare a uno storcere [...] la (propria) patria, o luogo/lingua nativo. (2005: 49) [Being a dispatriate involves [...] coming out from a place or a condition [...] a movement that implies a critical act or a contestation [...] it makes us think of a displacement from one’s (own) fatherland, or native place/language.]

Carravetta argues that dispatrio should apply to postcolonial writers since they provide a critical view of Italian history. The term dismatria could also refer to ‘la soglia della doppia appartenenza. Ma anche di una possibile doppia assenza: essere qui e là contemporaneamente, e non essere mai davvero in nessun luogo (inteso come luogo mentale), restare sospesi tra il paese d’origine e quello d’arrivo’ [the threshold of double belonging. But also of a possible double absence: to be here and there at the same time, and not to be really in any place (intended as mental place), to be suspended between the country of origin and that of arrival] (Očkayová 2005: 25). The term dismatria is therefore only partly assimilable to dispatrio: while Meneghello contests Italy, the country that he has left, Scego implicitly describes her critical position towards the country in which she lives. The literature discussed in this section frequently evokes Somali culture but makes it explicit through language only occasionally. Its focus is on Italian language, which it attempts to deconstruct by creating wordplays and neologisms. The translatorial strategy of those writers who present few Somali expressions within the Italian text might be described by referring to the theories of one of the prominent advocates of communicative translation, such as Eugene Nida. The communicative method tries to recreate the effect of the source text in the target language by reaching the maximum grade of meaning and communicability. Moreover, it aims to create a comprehensible message, by simultaneously annihilating the exceeding value of the signifiers. As Nida puts it: The role of the translator is to facilitate the transfer of message, meaning and cultural elements from one language into another and create an equivalent response from the receivers. The message in the source language is embedded in a cultural context and has to be transferred to the target language. (1964: 13)

Rather than showing the distance between the readership and the non-related cultural and linguistic background, the translator should therefore communicate to his or her audience from an internal standpoint, by domesticating the source text for the receiving culture. Nida’s theory of translation has been criticized by Venuti. Nida developed his approach to establish the relevance of the Bible in the target culture, by envisioning the translator as a missionary who has to spread a ‘transcendental concept of humanity as an essence that remains unchanged over time and space’ (Venuti 1994: 22). Nida argues that ‘the [...] relationship between receptor and message [...] should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message’ (1964: 159). In Nida’s theory of translation, the stress on f luency of communicative translation excludes the minor cultural constituencies and it ‘seems

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less an exchange of information than an appropriation of a foreign text for domestic purposes’ (Venuti 1994: 22). While Nida proposed this as a method to convert more people to the Christian religion, Cristina Ali Farah, Kaha Mohamed Aden, Igiaba Scego, and Shirin Ramzanali Fazel assert through a communicative model their internal position to Italian society. Although they strategically attempt to domesticate their linguistic competence in another language so as to reach the maximum degree of communicability with the reader, their political goal is not to confirm the hegemonic role of the dominant language/culture, as Nida’s theory of translation advocates, but to challenge it. In other terms, by applying a communicative model to postcolonial migrant writings, the direction in which the translation and the domestication are travelling is reversed. The fact that writers as diverse as Kaha and Scego — one is the only Somali Italian writer to have been educated in Somali, the other never experienced migration and was born in Italy — employed the same strategy to express themselves requires further ref lection. The analysis of Somali Italian literature through intercultural translation has highlighted a move­ment from models that emphasized the distance between Italian and Somali cultures into models that gradually showed the proximity between the two cultures and lan­ guages. The representation of the proximity or distance with respect to Italian and Somali cultures through the choice of different translation strategy is not connected to the identity of the writer, but rather results from a process of mediation between the writers, the readers, and the cultural industry. Early Somali Italian literature adopted a standard Italian language and Somali interventions were presented as foreign presences, which had to be legitimized by paratextual remarks. On the other hand, texts written more recently respect the linguistic specificity of the signifier and employ a more colloquial register, characterized by linguistic patterns originally present in dialects or substandard or neo-standard register varieties. Early migrant writers ‘have often felt that they needed to establish their right to use the Italian language by proving their proficiency in it’ (Portelli 2006: 472). Their systematic demonstration of the ability to write in Italian might be seen as a reappropriation or constitution of an identity that was not recognized, ‘to define their differences from the fictive unified ethnicity that “standard” Italian represents’ (Parati 2005: 48). For the same reasons, a younger generation of authors started to use non-standard Italian language expressions, usually employed in verbal communication. These authors want not only to show that they are able to speak, but actually to demonstrate through linguistic inventiveness and colloquialisms that they are active within Italian society. The gradual contravention of the rules of standard language, either through the use of non-standard forms of Italian or through the insertion within the text of foreign terms, might be seen as a way to break the non-written rules of hypercorrection that an immigrant has to follow. According to Abdelmalek Sayad, an exemplary politeness that is not required even of natives is required of immigrants, since they often have to prove themselves to be different from what they are accused of being (2004: 286). The choice to write in Italian might be seen as a way to infringe the non-written rule that requires the foreigner to be silent, reserved, and neutral, and excludes him or her from political

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participation (Abdelmalek 2004: 285). Therefore, the linguistic choices of these writers and the strategies through which they have translated the Somali language and culture throughout time have set their position as internal, although critical, with respect to Italian society. The massive use of paratextual remarks in early Somali Italian literature ref lected the niche readership they addressed, presumably people interested in literature written by immigrants who did not know much about Somalia. Similarly, the fact that most recent novels avoided them indicates that readers and the editorial market have become more aware that Italian writers might not have Italian origins. Early texts by Somali Italian authors envisioned the two languages and cultures as separate, while most recent ones require the reader take a more active role through glossaries, and partly emancipate the Somali signifiers from the mere function of carrying the meaning of words which is delivered in Italian elsewhere. However, the chronological model presented above does not suggest a progression from less to more complicated texts, nor — as Venuti maintains in relation to intercultural translation — that the foreignizing model is better than thick translation and communicative models since it ‘seeks to restrain the ethnocentric violence of translation’ (1994: 20). Although the insertion of foreign expressions in most Somali Italian texts entails a political strategy of recursivity that seeks to interrupt the reading f low for the native speaker and requires his or her active and collaborative role, this practice should not be considered a political or liberating approach in itself. Each of these strategies shows dissatisfaction with a hegemonic and monolingual conception of Italian. The previous analysis has also argued that the position which each writer assumes towards Italian and Somali cultures depends on a stylistic choice. The identities of Somali Italian writers are constructed in and through language. The most noteworthy example of this affirmation is Igiaba Scego’s use of different strategies and labels when presenting herself. Since the beginning of her literary career, Scego has been frequently presented or has presented herself as either an immigrant or a second-generation Italian writer. For instance, the presentation of Scego (and Ali Farah) as representative of Somalia was employed in the column ‘Nuovi Italiani’ of the magazine Internazionale, which publishes articles written by ‘New Italians’. From 2007 to 2008 the names of Scego and Ali Farah were associated with the national f lag of Somalia, as if they were immigrants. However, they were both born in Italy and only spent a relatively short time in Somalia. This choice contributed to enforcing the connection between the country of origin and the writer, as if his or her writings could explain the country itself. Scego gradually dissociated herself from the label ‘immigrant writer’ by presenting herself as a ‘second-generation’ (2004b) or ‘Black-Italian’ writer in the eponymous radio programme that she directed for Radio 3 in 2010. Scego also defined herself as ‘afroitaliana’ (Scego 2010c: 175), using the prefix afro- that specifically refers to the African American culture of the 1960s and 1970s, although this label is debatable, since it connects an entire continent to a single Western country. Moreover, on 30 April 2010 Scego wrote a letter to the president of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, and published it in the newspaper for which she works, L’Unità

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(2010a: 2). In this, she presented herself as part of the generation of precarious Italian workers who are thirty years old. Scego’s heterogeneous choices show that although she often calls herself — or is called — an ‘immigrant’, ‘afroitaliana’, or ‘secondgeneration’ writer, her identity is difficult to contain within essentialist labels. As Scego recognized in an interview, different publishers (Donzelli, Laterza, Rizzoli, and Sinnos) conditioned the author’s decision to present herself as a foreigner or an Italian, through the choice of inserting Somali vocabulary within the Italian text (Scego 2013b). These publishers in fact respond to a different target audience: small publishers like Sinnos cater to an audience that is interested in migration literature, while Laterza and Rizzoli address a broader audience. With regard to the different labels through which Igiaba Scego has been presented, she was described as ‘la prima generazione di figlie di immigrati, nate o cresciute in Italia’ [the first generation of immigrant’s daughters, born and raised in Italy] on the back cover of Pecore Nere (Capitani and Coen 2005). Armando Gnisci dismisses the label ‘second-generation writers’ as a marketing strategy, introduced by publisher Laterza for commercial reasons to promote this collection of short stories, which includes Scego’s short stories ‘Dismatria’ and ‘Salsicce’ [Sausages]. Gnisci accuses Laterza of passing immigrant writers off as second-generation and employing the ‘black mark’ to identify these writers in terms of race, by disrespectfully associating non-white writers with the traditional stigma of the shameful outsider in the community, or the ‘black sheep’. In particular, he argues that ‘due delle quattro [autrici] non sono nate in Italia, e [...] una delle due, l’indiana Laila Waida, non vi è nemmeno cresciuta’ [two out of the four authors are not born in Italy, and [...] one of the two, the Indian Laila Waida, did not grow up there either] (Gnisci 2006: 30). Gnisci is right, but I disagree with some of his reasons. First, he still maintains the existence of a biological and geographical criterion through which it is possible to determine identity and to distinguish Scego from other writers included in this collection. Gnisci takes the essentialist label ‘second-generation immigrant writers’ for granted, without questioning its controversial presentation of immigration as a genetically inherited attribute. The label ‘second-generation’ stresses the writer’s biography rather than his or her work, by confirming the sociological approach that has often been applied to writings by immigrants to Italy. Moreover, this term does not account for the linguistic choices of each text, which place each writer in a different position within the Italian context. Gnisci attributes full responsibility for the label ‘second-generation’ to the publisher Laterza. However, Scego recognizes that she has defined herself as a second-generation writer, although this term is problematic (2007: 75). In this regard, Scego admits that the label ‘immigrant writer’, ‘è servita per emergere, perché in Italia non è facile pubblicare’ [was useful to gain recognition, because it is not easy to publish in Italy] (2007: 48). In other words, the publisher Laterza made use of this commercial label with the complicity or the direct engagement of the writers themselves. Similarly, Cristina Ali Farah, who has been presented as both an immigrant and second-generation writer, points out that the label ‘migrant’ has helped her to achieve visibility (2010: 78). Moreover, I believe that it is difficult to draw a defined line between these ‘migrant’ and ‘second-generation’ experiences in postcolonial writings, because of

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the familiarity of these writers with Italian language and culture. The majority of the Somali diasporic characters in these writings share a common feature, namely familiarity with Italian culture and language, which they have studied in Italian schools in Mogadishu (Ali Farah 2007c: 14; Garane 2005: 44, 47; Kaha 2010: 23; Scego 2003: 46; Scego 2004c: 155; Shirin 2013: 65). For instance, Shirin’s selfpresentation in Lontano da Mogadiscio is striking since she identifies Italy as her new home, and asks for her rights to be recognized: Io sono cittadina italiana, partecipo e vivo i problemi, le sofferenze che tutti gli italiani quotidianamente affrontano. Contribuisco alla vita e allo sviluppo di questo Paese. Ora che entrambi i miei genitori sono sepolti qui, mi sento ancora più legata a questa terra. L’Italia è la mia casa, qui ci sono i miei affetti, i miei amici; anche se c’è sempre qualcuno che mi ricorda che sono un’intrusa, una diversa. (Shirin 2013: 319–20) [I am an Italian citizen; I participate in and experience the problems, the suffering that all Italians face every day. I contribute to the life and the evolution of this country. Now that both my parents are buried here, I feel even more tied to this land. Italy is my home; my relationships are here, my friends. Even so, there is always someone who reminds me that I am an intruder, an anomaly.]

In this passage Shirin not only claims the need for recognition, as most immigrant writers do, but also for cohabitation, just as Scego, a second-generation writer, will do ten years after. In this sense, it is noteworthy that Lontano da Mogadiscio can be considered not only as one of the first texts ever written by an immigrant without the help of an Italian co-writer, but also as a self-aware example of transnational literature in the Italian language. Significantly, the text was republished in 2013 in a bilingual edition in Italian and English, and testifies to the fact that it is not possible ‘to trace a progression or evolution from first-person migration narratives of the early 1990s to more complex fictions in the 2000s and 2010s’, or strictly to divide Somali Italian writers into different generations (Burns 2013: 196). Unlike its first edition the text is now written by ‘translating the distance in proximity’, as it presents respectively Somali and English words in the Italian version, and Italian and Somali words in the English version without footnotes. The 2013 translation of the novel in English by the author adds another layer of cultural and linguistic translation that was already involved in the first edition of Lontano da Mogadiscio. Deterritorialization and the Position of the Intercultural Translator The previous linguistic analysis has shown the ambivalent and conf licting relation­ ship of authors of Somali origins with the language of the former colonizers. Italian and Somali do not coexist in an equal relationship free of hierarchy: they facilitate dialogue between two or more cultures, but are also places of struggle, resistance, and rupture. A further example of the potential subversive force of deterritorialization in Somali Italian literature is the systematic insertion of Somali calques of Italian words and the emphasis on Somali proper names. Somali calques of Italian words testify to the indelible legacy of Italian colonialism and provide evidence of the creative manipulation of the Italian language by the colonized.

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This concept is beautifully summarized by the Somali expression ‘magacà cidlà ka ma dhalan’, which means ‘every name comes from somewhere’. For instance, Il latte è buono underlines that after the colonial period Somali children played ‘kalscio’ with a ‘ballooni’, which sound like the Italian words calcio [football] and pallone [ball] (Garane 2005: 43). Moreover, Somali calques of Italian words are often connected to food, implying not merely a corporeal but also a cultural nutrition of colonialism (Ali Farah 2007c: 269–72; Ali Farah 2014: 168; Scego 2003: 112; Shirin 2010: 32). More remarkably, some terms evoke the Italian colonial past, such as ciyaal mission, literally ‘the children of the missions’. This term refers to the 1937 prohibition of interracial union and to Catholic missions, where the abandoned children of interracial unions were rescued. As a consequence, ‘l’appellativo aveva una valenza negativa, legato com’era all’idea della paternità negata’ [that term had a negative connotation, tied as it was to the idea of a denied paternity] (Ali Farah 2007c: 227). Significantly, both Rhoda in the eponymous novel and Maryam in Oltre Babilonia fall in love with a meticcio person (Scego 2004c: 37; Scego 2008b: 109), subverting their racist representation by Fascist colonialists. An interesting Somali linguistic intervention is boyeeso (Ali Farah 2007c: 218; Shirin 2010: 32), which is ‘femminile di boy, dal nome con cui venivano chiamati i collaboratori domestici nelle colonie inglesi’ [feminine of boy, derived from the name used for male household help in British colonies] (Ali Farah 2007c: 269). The use of the word boyeeso testifies to ‘the paternalistic attitude of Italians towards Somalis’ (Hess 1966: 188), and it is a way to allay the fear that the ‘wild’ and ‘uncivilized’ African men would rape white women. Moreover, this word configures the hypermasculinity of the Western colonizers as opposed to the passivity, irrationality, and emotionality of the natives. Oltre Babilonia also features a word that is related to the Italian colonial past, dubat, which literally means in Somali ‘white turban’ and indicates Somalis who fought with Italians (Scego 2008b: 151). Igiaba Scego’s Rhoda also acknowledges of the use of the expression ‘Reer Napoli’, which means ‘prostitute’ in Somali (Scego 2004c: 97, 102). This expression reveals that internal prejudice and racist stereotypes against people from the south of Italy were exported to the colonies, and its use in Rhoda creates an implicit connection between the condition of immigrants and southerners, who are both victims of racism. The presence of the Somali word ‘stascinka’ — a phonetic variation from the Italian word stazione to indicate Rome’s central train station, Termini — in Oltre Babilonia is also significant (Scego 2008b: 55), since this station is a recurring location in Somali Italian literature (Ali Farah 2014: 144; Bianchi and Scego 2014: 49–69; Shirin 2010: 201; Shirin 2013: 183–85; Sirad 1996b: 88). Termini was one of the main meeting places for the Somali community from the 1950s (Balsamo 2003: 33) until it was invaded by the shops of corporations like Benetton, Nike, Intimissimi, Levi’s, and Sisley (Ali Farah 2007c: 28). Gashan in Il latte è buono argues that this place resembles the Parliament in Mogadishu (Garane 2005: 81), and Igiaba Scego describes it as ‘ “meta finale” o “fine del viaggio” [...] un messaggio dato a noi viandanti isterici, figli della modernità’ [the ‘final destination’ or the ‘end of a journey’ [...] a message given to us hysterical wanderers, children of modernity] (Scego 2010c: 93). Termini is often described as ‘a place of belonging’ (Burns 2013: 128) and ‘the hub of the city’

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(Burns 2007: 147), by contributing ‘to a collective project of re-mapping the spaces — particularly the urban spaces — of Italy, by means of subverting conventional, tourist-style explorations of its cities and sights’ (Burns 2007: 147). The geographical concentration of immigrants without documents around a specific place, such as a station, recalls the situation of apartheid and rigid ethnic separation of the colonies (Balibar 1999). The use of a Somali word to refer to Italian landmarks responds to the fact that many places in Somalia were given Italian names during colonialism and the act of naming was crucial to the Italian colonial project (Labanca 2002: 235; Sestigiani 2014: 65–80). Renaming places in Somali is a way of repudiating Italian names and the colonial project behind them. The emphasized and frequent presence of Somali proper names also merits further comment. For instance, in Madre piccola, Taagere takes his name from a word in the Somali national anthem (Ali Farah 2007c: 189) and calls Domenica Axad by her Italian name (Ali Farah 2007c: 129), because he is attracted by her whiter skin (Ali Farah 2007c: 202) and by her Western looks (Ali Farah 2007c: 132). In another passage of this novel, Barni warns the journalist who is interviewing her to write her name correctly by choosing either the Italian or the Somali way of codifying names (Ali Farah 2007c: 13). Garane also employs the praise name ‘geesiga aan naxeeynin’ (2005: 8), an untranslated Somali expression that means ‘the brave without fear’, to define a Somali warrior. This expression refers to a typical feature of the African oral tradition, which is the use of epithets (Bandia 2008: 40–49). Similarly, Scego’s Oltre Babilonia explains the meaning of some secondary characters’ nicknames, such as ‘Falley’ [the witch] (2008b: 164), ‘Ebleey’ [the libertine] (2008b: 158), and ‘Gor Gor’ [vulture] (2008b: 107), a nickname of an old Somali man who admires Benito Mussolini and knows by heart all his speeches (2008b: 311). Reference is also made to the translation of Mohamed Abdulle Hassan’s proper name, respectively translated in English as ‘mad mullah’ and in Somali as ‘il Signore, Saydka’ [the Lord] (Scego 2008b: 420). Somali Italian literature often features immigrant characters with names that are difficult to pronounce. For instance, Cristina Ali Farah’s ‘Kuulla’ features a homeless Somali character called ‘Indhokuusha’, and people find it hard to say his name (Ali Farah 2005: 86). This story narrates the diaspora from Somalia to different countries of Europe, and Indhokuusha’s challenge in finding a place to stay in Rome, where he has to seek refuge from the wind and cold in rubbish bins. Similarly, Igiaba Scego’s ‘L’igienista verbale’ [The Verbal Hygienist] describes a Somali man with ‘un cognome impronunciabile con tante J, tante K, tante Z, tante U [...] Era un uomo senza nome e cognome’ [a surname impossible to pronounce with many J, many K, many Z, many U [...] He was a man without name and surname] (2005b: 67). Although this man has no name, he is very careful about the words that he uses and political correctness. The man falls in love with a Somali woman, who once asks him his name. He replies by telling her ‘il suo nome dimenticato’ [his forgotten name], thereby reappropriating his identity (Scego 2005b: 71). Somali Italian literature also highlights that immigrants and colonized subjects often had to change their names. Igiaba Scego, whose first name means ‘fortuna provvidenziale’ [providential luck] in Somali (Scego 2003: 78), explains in La mia

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casa è dove sono that her original name was Igiaba Alì Omar Scego, and that the name of her mother was turned into Kadja Hussein from Khadigia Jama Hussein (Scego 2010c: 69). Similarly, Scego narrates the story of a Somali refugee called Moha, who told his proper name only to his partner, since ‘É tutto quello che [gli] è rimasto della Somalia’ [it was the only thing left of Somalia] (Scego 2010c: 109). Scego also calls one of her cousins ‘cugino O’, implying the loss of his name (2010c: 13). She states that ‘nei nostri documenti i nomi somali sono stati ridotti, scambiati, omessi’ [in our official documents Somali names have been reduced, mixed up, omitted] (Scego 2010c: 68). Scego’s short story ‘Il disegno’ [The Drawing] offers a good example of the significance of names in Somali Italian literature. As in most works by Igiaba Scego, a conf lict between a Somali mother and her Italian daughter is at the centre of the short story. The daughter has a son and wants to call him Andrea. The mother accuses her of Westernization, and first suggests calling him by the name of her grandfather, Tereq, then keeps calling him with the Somali name, Aden (Scego 2010b: 28), and finally calls him Nader (Scego 2010b: 25). The choice of the name ref lects the split identity of the main character, who would like to please her mother but at the same time does not like ‘Somali traditions’ such as the use of the veil. The main character ironizes about the clash of the two names by claiming that their etymological origins refer respectively to penis or virility (Andrea), and purity (Nader). The association between masculinity and Italianness seems to allude to the sexual exploitation of Somali women in the colonies, which is a central theme in most of Scego’s works including Rhoda and ‘Identità’ [Identity], as I will describe later. At the end of the story, the main character, her brother, and her cousin — significantly called Ali Tessile, ‘un nome così buffo, mezzo arabo e mezzo italiano’ [a very weird name, half Arabic and half Italian] (Scego 2010b: 28) — start to draw a map of the main places of Mogadishu for Andrea/Nader, who wonders whether this city is real. While drawing the map of Mogadishu, the main character concentrates on toponymy, and shows her that her parents’ town is full of places that recall colonial domination, including the elementary school Guglielmo Marconi, the hospital Forlanini, and restaurants and bars such as La Pergola, Bar Fiat, La Croce del Sud, Il Caffè Nazionale, Hotel Juba, Azan, and the House of Italy (Scego 2010b: 36–38). These places testify to the appropriation of space during colonialism through the construction of monuments like the Triumphal Arch dedicated to Humbert I of Savoy in Mogadishu (Fig. 7) or a monument marking the Equator near Kismayo (Fig. 8). The modification of Somali landscape — or, to stick with Deleuze and Guattari’s language, the transformation of a ‘smooth’ or ‘nomad’ into a ‘striated’, codified, and gridded space (1987: 474–500) — took place both on a substantial and a narrative level (Polezzi 2014; Sestigiani 2014: 11–24; Wu Ming 2 2012). Moreover, these presences mirror the remnants of the Italian colonial past found in the toponymy of the African neighbourhood in Rome with street names including Viale Libia, Via Migiurtina, and Viale Somalia (Scego 2010b: 37). Kaha’s ‘Nadia’ also provides a remarkable example of the loss of name of a Somali refugee in Italy. The main character of this story decides to drop her original name ‘Nadifa’ and chooses the name Nadia in order to be accepted and recognized in Italy:

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Fig. 7 (above). The Triumphal Arch in Mogadishu in 1991. The arch is dedicated to Humbert I of Savoy. This monument is frequently evoked in Somali Italian literature, and it is one of the most visible signs of Italian colonialism in Somalia. Picture by Claudio Colombo. Courtesy of Guido Colombo Fig. 8 (left). This Fascist monu­ment marks the Equator near Kismayo. This photograph was taken during the AFIS administration (1950–60), and testifies to the fact that the occupation of space in Somalia was integral to the Italian colonial project. Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo

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‘Cosa vuol dire il tuo nome?’, oppure ‘quale nome italiano corrisponde al tuo nome?’ [...] domande del genere arrivano a frotte quando si percepisce che non sei padrona del contesto, che sei nuova al gruppo. Così il nome Nadia per lei è stato un modo per non sentirsi estranea, per essere in qualche modo omogenea a tutte quelle facce che potrebbero guardarla con un punto interrogativo in attesa di una risposta [...] Nadia, un nome ‘simile’ al suo Nadifa, bello e orecchiabile! (Kaha 2010: 134–35) [‘What does your name mean?’, or ‘What is your name in Italian?’ [...] many questions like these come up when people perceive that you do not belong to a particular context, that you are new in a group. So the choice of the name Nadia was for her a way not to feel excluded, to be somewhat similar to all of the questioning faces which look at her, waiting for her answer [...] Nadia was similar to her Nadifa, beautiful and catchy!]

The erasure of the letter ‘f ’ cancels the meaning of Nadia’s original name, ‘pulita’ [clean], and ironically refers to Nadia’s job as a housekeeper. The explanation of the Somali term and its translation into Italian entails another translation into Russian, which adds to the main character’s name the new meaning of ‘hope’ and suggests a happy ending for the story (Kaha 2010: 135). Nadia envisions the loss of the name not merely as a deprivation of her identity, but also as the possibility to create a new life. This short story is autobiographically inspired, since Italian officers changed the original name of the author, Kaaha, which means ‘la luce del sole’ [the light of the sun] (Kaha 2010: 10), into Kaha, claiming that the double ‘a’ does not exist in Italian. The correct form of her name, however, appears in her ‘Autoritratto’ [Selfportrait] (Kaha 2010: 10). Significantly, many Somali characters of Fra-intendimenti are referred to with simple letters, such as ‘nonno Y’ (Kaha 2010: 11), ‘anziano F’ (Kaha 2010: 19), ‘mr. A’ (Kaha 2010: 24), ‘mr. D’ (Kaha 2010: 24), ‘mr. F’ (Kaha 2010: 68), and ‘signora N’ (Kaha 2010: 72). It should be noted that the original versions of Kaha Mohamed Aden’s short stories never feature a main character who calls herself ‘io’, as in the volume published by Nottetempo, but a character called ‘K’. The decision of the publisher might have been intended to underline the partly autobiographical nature of these short stories. However, this choice erases the fact that the author did not express her subjectivity with the first-person singular, but preferred an impersonal form, which recalls the main character of Franz Kaf ka’s 1925 novel The Trial (Kaf ka 2005). In a private conversation, Kaha maintained that this intertextual reference was chosen on purpose, to highlight the unjust invasion of the domestic space by the authority of short stories like ‘Apriti sesamo’ and ‘1982: fuga da casa’. This emphasis on names might perhaps be related to the fact that in the African oral tradition names ‘are loaded with information and rich in semantic and semiotic significance’ (Bandia 2008: 40). Although they might be ‘meaningless in a semantic sense’, names are ‘dense signifiers, signs of essential structures of human societies [...] and at the same time the most problematic to translate, in part because their semiotic significance is so often culturally specific and dependent on cultural paradigms’ (Tymoczko 1999: 223–24). The stress on the untranslatability and referential uniqueness of these terms might offer grounds for ref lection upon the project of Western imperialists, which was to give a new name to people and places

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in the colonies. Therefore, Maria Tymoczko argues that in a postcolonial context names should receive more attention, since they take us deep into the heart of issues having to do with fundamental patterns and practices of culture; with cultural difference, cultural strength, and cultural prestige; with knowledge of the self and the other; with paradigms of identity and assertion of self-determination; and with the legacy of colonialism in the modern world. (1999: 239)

As names highlight the possession of identity and ‘[bring] the new individual inside the cultural system’ (Ragussis 1986: 8), the lack or the modification of names might indicate the loss of the heritage of one’s parents, and the chance to find that one has had ‘an identity foisted upon him or her by [some] more powerful “other” ’ (De Angelis 1999: 79). In blunt terms, both calques of Italian words and untranslated Somali names are signifiers loaded with a clear evocative force. On the one hand, Somali calques of Italian words ‘uncannily’ bring back to the original linguistic environment words that the colonial experience has slightly modified. To quote Venuti, they evoke a history of domination and remind us that ‘translation has been compulsory, imposed first by the introduction of colonial languages among regional vernaculars and later, after decolonization, by the need to traffic in the hegemonic lingua franca to preserve political autonomy and promote economic growth’ (Venuti 1998: 137). On the other hand, the presence of untranslated proper names shows the limits of translation and the resistance to linguistic assimilation by the dominant language. Calques and untranslated Somali names unequivocally show that linguistic choices in Somali Italian literature are located within a broader political context. Although perhaps misinterpreting Kaf ka’s ideas,12 Deleuze and Guattari recognize the uneven relationship of power between languages and assume that minor language is ‘that which a minority constructs within a major language’ (1986: 16). In other words, they maintain that a specific hierarchy between languages exists, and that minor writers create a different version of the hegemonic language. In this regard, Cristina Ali Farah argues that the insertion of Somali words clearly has a political purpose since it might challenge the cultural hegemony of Italian: Esiste un rapporto di potere tra le lingue: le lingue economicamente e politica­ mente più forti invadono altri linguaggi. Con il restituire all’italiano queste parole rimasticate e destrutturate, mi pareva di suggerire anche un’inversione di potere. (2008b) [There is a relationship of power between languages: languages that are econ­ omically and politically more powerful invade other languages. By giving back to Italian these words that have been chewed and destructured, I felt like I was suggesting an inversion of power.]

Cristina Ali Farah is right to emphasize that the insertion of Somali vocabulary in Italian texts and the consequent disruption of the distinction between natural (or national) and foreign language has a political function, namely to urge reconsideration of the idea of national space and the imagining of a translingual space beyond it. Moreover, Ali Farah reveals that Somali interventions in Madre piccola do not merely

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hold a symbolic value, but they have been chosen for their strong poetic potential and untranslatable meaning, which could create the same rhythm and syntactic construction of Somali in Italian (2008b). In other words, these interventions within the text are functional since they foreignize the dominant Italian language, ‘una lingua con una struttura sintattica e un’organizzazione del pensiero assai diversa’ [a language with a syntactical structure and a way of organizing thoughts that is different] from Somali (Ali Farah 2007c: 232). They might be described by using Carmine Chiellino’s notion of ‘parole erranti’ [wandering words], words that disrupt the notion of monolingual national identities (2001: 63). By assuming that language is not only world-disclosing, but also worldconstructing and world-regulating, deterritorialization disrupts the model that presumes a mutual exclusiveness between national languages and might be considered an act of cultural resistance. Somali Italian literature — to different extents — breaks the rhythm of Italian discourse, and creates a new hybrid style that shakes Italian readers from their linguistic complacency. The intervention of Somali indigenous words and expressions foreignizes Italian and transforms it into — to refer to Françoise Lionnet’s ref lections on intercultural writings — ‘a vehicle for expressing a hybrid, heteroglot universe’ (1995: 13). In a similar vein, Bandia argues that: ‘given the tendency toward a dominant monolingual practice, polylingualism becomes an aesthetic means of resistance and contestation, a means of projecting alterity’ (2008: 137). Intercultural writing produces a compromise between Italian and Somali that accounts for the transnational, intercultural, and multilingual processes of the postcolonial world. Linguistic hybridity is not only a linguistic event, but entails a broader cultural transformation, since it questions the Italian glossocentrism and the ethnocentric determinism that indissolubly links not merely a culture to a language, but also a language to the concept of nation. The intercultural encounter between two apparently divorced entities in terms of culture, geography, and language revitalizes and renews the Italian language and culture. However, intercultural writing is not a one-way process, as it adds new meaning and connotations to Somali as well. Somali Italian literature creatively employs Somali words outside the cultural, spatial, and linguistic terrain of tradition in order to express new values and aesthetics. In this sense, the Somali proverb cited at the beginning of this chapter — a saying that refers to the poeticity of Somali language, intended as a timeless entity — can be recontextualized in the present by claiming that the diaspora has compelled Somali to be reterritorialized in other languages. The hybrid language therefore presumes a cultural interaction in which Italian borrows from Somali and enters into dialogue with it, although in an uneven relationship of power. The linguistic political potential of Somali Italian literature might be better understood in relation to Jacques Derrida’s criticism of the natural ownership of a language on which concepts like national belonging and identity are based (1998: 14). Thus, native speakers perform a continual negotiation and modification of an ‘imaginary’ standard language through personal linguistic variants. Language is ‘a system whose unity is always reconstituted’, and it is open ‘to deformations, transformations, expropriation, to a certain a-nomie and de-regulation’ (Derrida

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1998: 65). Every language is plural, divided, and already multilingual in itself; ‘we never speak only one language’ (Derrida 1998: 10), since there is always something that precedes and exceeds the speaker, and is ‘a site always referring elsewhere, to something other, to another language, to the other in general’ (Derrida 1998: 29). Even if all ‘native’ speakers communicate intelligibly to one another through the same language, no language really belongs to those who use it because nothing could actually be communicated if the possibility of ownership of a language existed. In particular, Derrida focuses on the colonial imposition of a ‘homohegemony of dominant languages’ on ‘certain people’ who ‘must learn the language of the masters’ and ‘must lose their idiom in order to survive or live better’ (1998: 30). Notably, he claims that ‘mastery begins, as we know, through the power of naming, of imposing and legitimating appellations’ (1998: 39). Although there is no ‘natural, national, congenital, or ontological property’ of a language, the colonizer imposes his language ‘as his own’ (Derrida 1998: 23). However, when the colonial subject appropriates the colonial language, he or she invents within the language of the master a language different enough to disallow its own reappropriation within the norms, the body, and the law of the given language — or by all the normative schemas constituted by programs of a grammar, a lexicon, a semantics, a rhetoric, speech genres or literary forms, stereotypes or cultural clichés. (Derrida 1998: 66)

He or she shows the illusion that stands beyond the conception of monolingual hegemony, which imagines its boundaries as coinciding with those of a nation. Derrida’s postulation that the monolingual national culture tends to exclude any exocentric inf luences and imposes its supremacy on minorities is apparent in the contemporary Italian political and linguistic context, and might be seen as the main target toward which the hybridity of Somali Italian literature could be addressed. Immigration to Italy has had two noticeable effects on the level of language. First of all, local and national homogeneous linguistic identities have been reaffirmed by some ministers of the Berlusconi government (2008–11), claiming that the Italian language or the local dialects have been menaced by a foreign invasion. Members the xenophobic party the Northern League — Umberto Bossi, the founder of the Northern League and former Minister for Reforms, and Luca Zaia, the former Minister for Agriculture — proposed the compulsory study of dialect in schools and the insertion of dialect subtitles in some TV shows in July 2009. In a similar vein, on 20 October 2008 and 14 September 2009, the former Minister of Education, Mariastella Gelmini, used multilingualism as a scarecrow in order to propose the creation of segregated classes for immigrant students in the state school system. Later, Gelmini suggested introducing a minimum number of immigrants, estimated at 30 per cent for each class, to facilitate the acquisition of the correct Italian language. In this regard, Orton and Parati argue that: the inscription of the other in the Italian context has created general debates on education, employment, and health issues, often confronted through a dichotomy: the right of a majority against that of a minority, the superiority of a native culture vis-à-vis incoming cultures. (2007: 12)

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Secondly, new expressions to refer to immigrants have been introduced, which are often offensive. For instance, immigrants are defined as extracomunitari, ‘a term literally applicable to people from outside the European Union, but used in practice as a euphemism for blacks, who are perceived by definition as outsiders’ (Ponzanesi 2000: 17). A frequent expression used in the 1990s was vu cumprà, which is ‘a dialect or regional distortion of the standard Italian “vuoi comprare?” (do you want to buy?) [...] a derogatory term used by the media and public opinion to indicate immigrant street salesmen’ (Lombardi-Diop 2005: 226). Alessandra Di Maio recognizes the resemanticization of some Italian words with a clear derogatory purpose: Particular nationalities have become the repository of associated characteristics. Marocchino is not only somebody from Morocco, but every immigrant with a darker complexion. Filippina refers not only to a woman from the Philippines, but to any maid who is not a native Italian. Even the term immigrato [...] has been subjected to a semantic shift, referring to every newcomer, independent of their juridical status. Thus, refugees, asylum seekers, seasonal migrant workers, and naturalised citizens are frequently and indiscriminately referred to as immigrati. (2009: 124)

These expressions, whose inherent discriminatory logic is overtly criticized in most writings about migration in Italian, should not only be seen as a way to exclude or discriminate against newcomers, but also as a linguistic strategy adopted by the supposedly monolingual culture to preserve itself through language. In light of Derrida’s analysis, these practices can be seen as an attempt by the monolingual national culture to impose standard linguistic models. However, the monolingual concept of language has also been preserved and perpetuated by two different critical approaches to hybridity in Italian contemporary literature. On the one hand, some readers have considered foreign linguistic insertions as a sign of immigrant writers’ incapability of dealing with the national monolanguage. This underestimates the role of editors who, regardless of the importance of the publishing house or of the ability of the writer to use Italian, tend to modify texts to make them appeal to the target audience. Instead, these insertions could be viewed as a testimony of the writers’ ability to enrich the linguistic potential of Italian by transforming it into a language capable of hosting further heterogeneous linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Linguistic hybridity in fact renews and revitalizes Italian culture, by contaminating and deconstructing its linguistic boundaries. The intervention of foreign languages testifies to the ability to manipulate a dominant and colonizing language in order to transfer within it a minor sociocultural reality. On the other hand, some critical positions have enthusiastically welcomed a vague and indefinite linguistic hybridity, which might counter the monolingual Italian national model, without explaining or describing any further these strategies and their effects. Gnisci even uses the term ‘creolization’ (2003: 150–54), which is certainly inappropriate for the Italian context since the foreign linguistic interventions are merely lexical and do not involve a complete subversion of the structure and the grammar of Italian as in Creole or pidgin languages. The praise of multilingualism cannot account for the differences between more recent models and early strategies of self-translation, since the latter tend to confirm the dominant

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status of Italian. By envisioning Italian culture as a monolithic entity that needs to be creolized, Gnisci seems to identify a binary model, in which hybrid migrant writings are opposed to monolingual Italian writings, as hybridity is supposed to be an exclusive feature of migrant writings. This analysis, however, seems to envision cultures as closed, homogeneous, and fixed rather than seeing them as entities which are never unitary in themselves and endlessly in transition and in translation. As Homi Bhabha points out, hybridity is a process that is inherent to the concept of culture itself: The importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the ‘third space’ which enables other positions to emerge. This third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom. (1990b: 211)

The literal meaning of the term hybridity is therefore misleading since it presumes the existence of a ‘pure’ culture. However, the controversial and incongruent encounter between different cultures mirrors a previous interaction that shapes the concept of culture in itself. In other words, hybridity bears the traces of those feelings and practices which inform it, just like a translation, so that hybridity puts together the traces of certain other meanings or discourses. It does not give them the authority of being prior in the sense of being original. (Bhabha 1990a: 211)

Although all cultures are already hybrid in themselves, postcolonial writings are able to show that ‘the meanings and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity [and] even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew’ (Bhabha 2012: 55). They are able to envision a ‘third space’, beyond the concept of nation, ‘in which cultures interact and give birth to new meaning and new strategies of identification’ (Bhabha 1990a: 34). As such, the ‘third space’ replaces the two monolingual and apparently antithetical realities that have generated it. Somali Italian writers assert their linguistic difference by creating a language which displaces the literary forms of the dominant culture and challenges the hegemonic linguistic representations. The disruption of the linguistic ‘purity’ of Italian, the implicit critique of the logocentrism of Italian, and the partial disturbance of the unequal power relation between languages opens Italian up towards a transnational, polycentric, and polyphonic perspective. The hybrid negotiation performed by cross-cultural language is no longer related to a monocultural or national idea. The displacement and relocation of the Somali language, culture, and aesthetics in Italian literature challenge the notion of a monolingual standard language and homogeneous national culture by resisting the dominant literary and linguistic conventions. Before moving on, we should keep in mind that the deterritorialization of language cannot be dissociated from the political immediacy and the creation of a collective assemblage in minor literature. Venuti underlines this point concerning interlingual translation in a minor context, which I will apply to intercultural translation in Somali Italian literature. On the one hand, intercultural translation of minor cultures ‘is often a calculated political move designed to preserve them,

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to enhance their expressive capacities, and to stimulate cultural development’ (Venuti 1998: 138). On the other hand, translation ‘puts to work forms that are tradition-bearing, socially affiliated, depersonalized by the cultural hierarchy in which they are situated’ (Venuti 1998: 137), thus creating new cultural and linguistic communities: ‘translating that builds minor cultures simultaneously creates identities for them, however much hybridized, reinforcing their social presence and challenging the majority that defines their marginal position’ (Venuti 1998: 138). The following two chapters address these linguistic issues more closely, through the political commitment against racism and the representation of multiple belongings in Somali Italian literature respectively. Notes to Chapter 1 1. For a critical reading of early collaborative texts see Burns 2003, Wood 2006. 2. For a critical review of the different studies of Ribka Sibhatu’s work, see Brioni 2014a. 3. I use the term ‘second-generation immigrants’ for the sake of convenience and clarity, although it is a problematic expression especially if referring to people who come from former colonies, as I will argue afterwards. For an insightful and convincing discussion of this term see Thomassen 2010. 4. Hereafter I refer to Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria Offredi Poletto’s English translation of Madre piccola, Little Mother (Ali Farah 2011). 5. I have chosen to quote the original French version of this passage since the English translation by Alan Bass is misleading and suggests the opposite idea: ‘The materiality of a word cannot be translated or carried over into another language. To relinquish materiality: such is the driving force of translation. And when that materiality is reinstated translation becomes poetry’ (Derrida 2001: 264). In this regard see Venuti 2013: 32–57. 6. For further information about Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s oeuvre, see Brioni 2013a. 7. For additional bibliographical information about the works by migrant authors in Italian see the database Basili. I have compiled a complete bibliography of Igiaba Scego’s fictional works on the website of the Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London. 8. Hereafter I refer to my English translation of ‘Uno scialle afro-arabeggiante’, ‘An Afro-Arabian Shawl’ (Kaha 2013a). 9. Hereafter I refer to my English translation of ‘Apriti sesamo’, ‘Open Sesame’ (Kaha 2013b). 10. Hereafter I refer to Hugh Shankland’s English translation of ‘Dismatria’, ‘Exmatriates’ (Scego 2011). Shankland’s translation does not maintain a lexicographical equivalence with the original text in some places. However, I refer to this translation since it is available for those who might be interested in reading the English translation of this short story. 11. Shankland’s translation features a deliberate insertion of a passage that is not present in the original text. In fact, Angelique is not ‘after a one night stand’ with the main character of the short story (Scego 2011: 236). It is also significant to note that, the narrator of Dismatria employs the terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘transvestite’, as if they were synonyms. This inaccurate use of the words might have caused Shankland’s mistranslations of the personal pronoun in the English translation of the short story, which refers to Angelique by using the pronoun ‘he’ (Scego 2011: 235). 12. Stanley Corngold criticizes Deleuze and Guattari’s assumption that, for Kaf ka, minorities write literature in a minor language within a dominant language (Corngold 2004: 277). Instead, he argues that Kaf ka’s ‘literature is, therefore, as such less a medium for preserving foreign differences than for producing unity, solidarity and the assimilation of the foreign within an intimate circle, mirror or hearth’ (Corngold 2004: 279).

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Race The discourse of the minority reveals the insurmountable ambivalence that structures the equivocal movement of historical time. How does one encounter the past as an anteriority that continually introduces an otherness or alterity within the present? How does one then narrate the present as a form of contemporaneity that is always belated? In what historical time do such configurations of cultural difference assume forms of cultural and political authority? (Bhabha 1990a: 308) Striving to be both European and black requires some specific forms of double consciousness [...] where racist, nationalist, or ethnically absolutist discourses orchestrate political relationships so that these identities appear to be mutually exclusive, occupying the space between them or trying to demonstrate their continuity has been viewed as a provocative and even oppositional act of political insubordination. (Gilroy 1993: 1)

The deterritorialization of the dominant language, Italian, in Somali Italian literature has a political function, and it therefore responds to ‘the connection of the individual to a political immediacy’, which is the second main characteristic of the concept of minor literature (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 18). Deleuze and Guattari do not detail how commitment manifests itself in minor literature, instead creating a model that is open to interpretation. For example, Azade Seyan is right to claim that political engagement ‘is not readily discernible in Kaf ka’s work’ and that Deleuze and Guattari arguably dismiss ‘any claim that major literature may have on social engagement’ (Seyan 2000: 28). Nonetheless, by remarking that Kaf ka is at once German, Czech, and Jewish, Deleuze and Guattari seem to highlight his triple belonging to stigmatized ethnicities and his attempt to claim the rights of a racially discriminated minority: ‘in Prague, people reproached [the Jews] for not being Czechs, and in Saaz and Eger, for not being Germans’ (1986: 11). Although Deleuze and Guattari seem to indicate racial discrimination as a possible feature connected to Kaf ka’s condition of minority, they do not further investigate how race might be relevant to identify a minor condition. They significantly talk of African American writings as examples of minor literature, but they do not explain to what extent their being minor has a different political charge than the writing of white writers. Deleuze and Guattari contend that certain African American authors have deterritorialized Standard English as the Czech author did with German, by suggesting this model might be applied also to other contexts, but they do not provide any further indication of how this analysis might be performed (1986: 30, 37).1

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Like Kaf ka, who used a substandard version of ‘the German of the Germans’, the ‘ghetto languages’ of African American authors ‘set American English in varia­tion’ and deterritorialize the hegemonic language (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 103–04). This chapter responds to Deleuze and Guattari’s vague definition of political concern in minor literature, by interpreting it in Somali Italian literature as a response to racism. In particular, it focuses on Cristina Ali Farah’s Madre piccola, Kaha Mohamed Aden’s short stories, Garane Garane’s Il latte è buono, Igiaba Scego’s Rhoda, Oltre Babilonia and ‘Salsicce’, and Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Nuvole sull’equatore in order to demonstrate that the frequent evocation and reference to Italian colonial history and colonial stereotypes — particularly regarding the issue of interracial union or meticciato — tracks the origins of the uneven relationship between Italy and the African ‘other’. Moreover, it creates an implicit link to the present, which shows that the exclusion of colonized subjects within Italian colonies is reduplicated in the present discrimination against immigrants, especially those of Muslim background. This dialogue with history and its legacy in the present is ref lected in the settings of Somali Italian literature, which are located in at least two geographical and chronological locations: the present in Italy and the past in Mogadishu. Following from Paul Gilroy’s quotation at the beginning of the chapter, my aim is to analyse here the splintered representation of time and space in Somali Italian literature to see how it expresses a profound identitarian fragmentation. The organization of Somali Italian literature creates an unstable structure, open to transformation or, to stay with Deleuze and Guattari’s terminology that will later be explained in detail, a ‘rhizomatic’ discourse (1987: 21). The Split Somali Italian Identity in Il latte è buono Garane Garane’s Il latte è buono denounces not only the crimes of Italian colonialism by mentioning the battle of Adwa, the use of gas and cannons, and the clouded Italian political agenda that led Somalia to chaos, but also the psychological effects of colonialism. The main character, Gashan, has been educated in Italian schools and idealizes Italy as the Promised Land. Gashan divides the world into Manichean oppositions: on the one side Somalia and its backward pastoral and nomadic culture, on the other Italy and its superior civilization, which he loves (Garane 2005: 63). This strict binary categorization ref lects the tendency of Western colonialism to suppress ambiguous or interstitial spaces between two conf licting categories, such as black and white, colonizer and colonized, civilized and primitive, human and bestial. Each of these pairs is organized hierarchically in which the first term is considered better than the second. For instance, initially Gashan considers Italians as ‘simili’ [similar] to him (Garane 2005: 63) and Somalis as ‘stranieri’ [foreigners] (Garane 2005: 61), whom he despises (Garane 2005: 48). By reduplicating the Fascist representation of Italy as heir of the Roman Empire, Gashan argues that Somalis resemble Huns (Garane 2005: 113), while the Casa d’Italia is ‘un passaporto per la civilizzazione’ [a passport to civilization] (Garane 2005: 47). Gashan is unable to accept who he is and defines himself as ‘somalo ma bianco dentro [...] un bianco dalla maschera nera’ [a Somali, but white inside [...] a white

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man with a black mask] (Garane 2005: 65). These words echo Frantz Fanon’s 1952 seminal work Black Skin, White Masks, in which he argues that the aspiration of a black person is to become white, since ‘what is often called the black soul is a white man’s artefact’ (Fanon 1993: 16). According to Fanon, the most debilitating effect of colonialism is to make colonized peoples see the culture of colonizers as great and civilized and their own as worthless and primitive. In these cases, colonized peoples suffer from an ‘inferiority complex’, which makes them feel ‘elevated above [their] jungle status in proportion to [their] adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. [They become] whiter as [they renounce their] blackness, [their] jungle’ (Fanon 1993: 18). In other words, Fanon recognizes that the black man and woman’s ‘only destiny’ is to desire to become white (1967: 32), since he or she ‘lives in a society that makes his inferiority complex possible, in a society that derives its stability from the perpetuation of this complex, in a society that proclaims the superiority of one race’ (1993: 100). The mask is the symbol of the dehumanization and interiorization of the hierarchies, as well as the hatred of black people. Il latte è buono embodies Fanon’s ambivalent feelings, as Gashan clearly feels inferior because of colonialism (Garane 2005: 149). Within the story, as soon as the military regime is installed in Somalia in 1969, Gashan’s father becomes Minister of Transport and sends his son to study in Italy. Upon his arrival in Italy, Gashan realizes how mistaken his idea of this country is: Italians are ignorant and do not even know where Somalia is (Garane 2005: 67), they are interested only in football (Garane 2005: 67, 68), they are reverent to authority (Garane 2005: 76), and they discriminate against poor people (Garane 2005: 79). Like most Somali Italian literature (Ali Farah 2007c: 179; Shirin 2013: 100–02), Il latte è buono acknowledges that, unlike Mogadishu before the civil war, Italy did not become a multiethnic country until the 1990s: Era cresciuto in una città in cui il multietnicismo era di norma: a Mogadiscio ce n’erano di tutti i colori, dall’indiano al cinese, dall’egiziano al siriano allo yemenita. E poi c’erano i cenci bianchi, gli italiani. C’erano, anche se in minor numero, americani, sovietici, canadesi, francesi. Indho yar, indho weyn, san yar, san weyn, migdaan, maryooleey, gaal, gibil cad... Erano tutti a Xamar Cadde. (Garane 2005: 64) [He grew up in a town in which multiethnicism was the rule. Mogadishu was a colourful town, where Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Syrian, and Yemeni people, among others, lived. And then there were the whites, the Italians. There were, although to a minor extent, Americans, Russians, Canadian, French. Indho yar, indho weyn, san yar, san weyn, migdaan, maryooleey, gaal, gibil cad... They were all in Xamar Cadde.]

Gashan also accuses two central figures of Italian unification, Vittorio Emanuele and Garibaldi, of having caused the disruption of the social environment of Mogadishu (Garane 2005: 84), and he criticizes the myth of imperial Rome and the cult of romanità, which is central to the Italian nationalist ideology that spans from unification to colonialism (Ben Ghiat 2006: 382; Labanca 2002: 154–56). While Gashan is living in Somalia, he believes in the myth of Rome as the centre of the world, but once he arrives there he realizes that the capital city has little to do with the imperial city of the past, since it is a noisy city (Garane 2005: 76), ‘povera,

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sporca, brutta e arretrata’ [poor, dirty, ugly and underdeveloped] (Garane 2005: 69), which looks like a catacomb (Garane 2005: 75) or a cemetery (Garane 2005: 71) because it is made of ruins (Garane 2005: 67). The double setting of Il latte è buono, both in the time of colonialism in Somalia and in the 1990s in Italy, shows that racism is not generated from ignorance, but from an idea about African people that has been constructed throughout history. This description of racism might be analysed using Sara Ahmed’s assumptions that prejudice originates from a misconception of the ‘other’: the stranger is not any-body that we have failed to recognize, but some-body that we have already recognized as a stranger, as a ‘body out of place’ [...] The stranger is produced as a category within knowledge, rather than coming into being in an absence of knowledge. (Ahmed 2000: 55)

To paraphrase Sara Ahmed, Garane shows that ‘colonialism operated in different times in ways that permeate all aspects of social life, in the colonized and colonizing nations’, and that postcolonial Italy grew from ‘the relationship between the past and present, between the histories of European colonization and contemporary forms of globalisation’ (Ahmed 2000: 11). Racism brings the strangers to life before they are visible and fetishizes them, since they are considered as abstract presences rather than as people who have realistic and material bodies. In this regard, to paraphrase Karen Pinkus this time, Garane shows that in Italy ‘the meanings of blackness center around broader questions of national identity and the (fascist) colonial legacy, even where these questions may seem to be effaced, literally “whitened” in everyday consciousness’ (Pinkus 1997: 135). Gashan initially accepts the notion of identity imposed by the Fascist legacy in Somalia. Gashan also identifies with Mussolini, who unlike most Italians was ‘un vero uomo’ [a real man] (Garane 2005: 81), and he even attempts to talk ‘come il Duce’ [like Mussolini] in order to gain respect among Italians (Garane 2005: 80), but he does not succeed in this endeavour. When Gashan pretends to be Italian, he often seems ridiculous. For instance, Gashan speaks in Italian even when girls do not understand it (Garane 2005: 48); he attempts to impress an Ethiopian young woman by eating with his mouth tightly closed, because Somalis eat with their mouths wide open, but he is not able to perform this action (Garane 2005: 59); he says ‘Petracco Petracchi’ instead of ‘Francesco Petrarca’ (Garane 2005: 59); he also sings Romina Power’s song at the custom house, but rather than bonding with a policeman he is derided and called ‘marocchino’ [Moroccan] (Garane 2005: 65). However, Gashan’s identification with Mussolini as well as his reduplication of the colonizers’ cultural habits should not be interpreted as ridiculous behaviour, but rather as a way to challenge the construction of a ‘pure’ Italian identity promoted by Fascism. For instance, Gashan accuses Mussolini of having made him an artificial subject and recognizes that he has internalized and reproduced the Fascist model of Italianness (Garane 2005: 82). The representation of Gashan suggests that colonialism deprives the colonized subjects even of the awareness of being exploited. To some extent, Il latte è buono shows a clash between the voice of the narrator, who directly criticizes Italian colonialism, and Gashan, who sees colonialism as such a substantial part of his education that he is initially unable to reject it.

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Gashan’s rebellion against Italian culture might be better understood through Homi Bhabha’s concept of ‘mimicry’, in which Bhabha assumes that colonial hegemony, as well as the subordination of immigrants in postcolonial societies, is exerted not merely through physical imposition but also by applying stereotypes over minor subjects. These stigmatized labels fix individuals or groups in one place, negating their own sense of identity and presuming to understand them on the basis of prior knowledge: The stereotype is not a simplification because it is a false representation of a given reality. It is a simplification because it is an arrested, fixated form of representation that, in denying the play of difference (which the negation through the Other permits), constitutes a problem for the representation of the subject in significations of psychic and social relations. (Bhabha 2012: 107)

Stereotypes are justified only by prejudice and by the practical means of controlling and discriminating against colonized subjects, but they have often been supported by Western scientific and institutional discourse (Bhabha 2012: 118). Stereotypes show the insecurity of the Western hegemonic power with regard to its sense of selfidentity: the negation of the alterity is functional to affirm the dominant identity. Therefore, the identity of minor subjects is split, as they cannot entirely recognize themselves in the stereotypes and have to negotiate their identity beyond the representation which is imposed on them. As the hegemonic rules would be unable to operate if the colonized were equal to the colonizers, the appropriation of Western culture by minor subjects is ‘at once resemblance and menace’ and disturbs the existing authority (Bhabha 2012: 123). Minor subjects are required to learn dominant languages, habits, and values, but the more similar they become to their colonizers or majority European ethnic groups, the more the Western identity is threatened. Minor subjects do not only suffer these stereotypes or imitate Westerners: they ‘repeat with a difference’ and actively manipulate the solemnity of the hegemonic discourse, which presumes to educate and improve the ‘others’. Bhabha calls this form of resistance ‘mimicry’, which is ‘the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite [...] the discourse of mimicry is constructed around ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference’ (2012: 122). Mimicry is a strategically insurgent practice that often borders on mockery and challenges the self-representation of the dominant culture as coherent, stable, and meaningful (Bhabha 2012: 86). Gashan alienates and estranges the Italian people whom he meets, since he uncannily re-envisions culture as a shifting idea, which always acquires new meanings. Significant examples of mimicry in Il latte è buono are passages in which Gashan provides an ethnographic depiction of Italians, by mocking the epistemic violence of European explorers in Africa, whose supposedly direct observation of people’s ways of life often confirmed Western stereotypes or compared Africa to Europe in negative terms. For instance, Gashan describes the ability of Italians to lie (Garane 2005: 81), and notices that people in Rome do not stop at traffic lights like most donkeys in Mogadishu (Garane 2005: 76). By defining the former colonizers through fixed categories, Gashan also interrogates

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the essentialist terms through which Italians define immigrants as a homogeneous group. When Gashan’s uncle listens to his nephew’s negative impression of Italy, he laconically comments: ‘È strano, [...] dicono la stessa cosa di noi’ [that is odd, [...] they say the same thing about us] (Garane 2005: 69). This comment shows that the perceptions of native Italians towards immigrants are based on prejudice. In addition, Gashan compares Italy to Africa and often represents Italians as Africans, challenging and reversing the dominant stereotypical and racist repre­ sentations of immigrants as well as the Fascist idea of Italian ethnic purity: ‘Non riusciva a spiegarsi come mai gli eredi di Scevola fossero tutti bassi, tarchiati e “neri” ’ [he could not understand how Scevola’s descendants were all small, chubby and ‘black’] (Garane 2005: 73). Gashan shows that Italian cultural heritage and genetic patrimony is mixed with African blood and culture, as a consequence of Roman imperial history: ‘Chi ha detto che i bianchi non parlano, e che non sono ricchi di parole? I fiorentini parlano. Forse sarà perché hanno l’aria di arabi? Ma Scipione l’Africano non era un africano?’ [Who said that whites do not speak, and are not rich of words? Florentine people speak. It is perhaps because they look like Arabs? But wasn’t Scipio African?] (Garane 2005: 86). Gashan refers to the fact that Hannibal’s invasion of Italy has inevitably left an African mark on Italian genealogies. This is highlighted not just in Garane’s novel, but also in many Italian works of art in the 1990s that compare Italy to an African country. For instance, Mario Fortunato and Salah Methnani offer an example of this leitmotif in the following passage of their novel Immigrato [Immigrant]: ‘Appena sono uscito dalla stazione centrale di Napoli, di nuovo quella sensazione di trovarmi a casa, in Tunisia. Nordafricani dappertutto, e dappertutto il caos’ [As soon as I walked out of Naples’ train station, I had the feeling of being home, in Tunisia. Northern Africans everywhere, and everywhere chaos] (1997: 37). The 1993 song ‘Figli di Annibale’ [Children of Hannibal] by the Italian rap band Almamegretta also centres on the fact that Italians have African descendants. Similarly, Il latte è buono and other Somali Italian writings (Scego 2010c: 158; Ali Farah 2007c: 81) suggest that the borderline between Italy and Africa is not clearly defined for historical reasons. Once Gashan arrives in Europe, he misses his hometown, which has been destroyed in the civil war (Garane 2005: 114–15). He lives in a condition of double absence and double presence, whether in Italy or Somalia: ‘Si sentiva a Shabelle senza esserci. Era laggiù ed era qui. Diviso con un corpo liscio. La sottile linea italica era di nuovo in lui. Ma, di colpo, la linea sottile diventò due linee sottili’ [He felt as if he were in Shebelle without being there. He was there and here. His smooth body was divided. The thin Italian line was in him once again. However, this thin line all of a sudden became two thin lines] (Garane 2005: 71). To paraphrase Bhabha, Gashan’s ‘doubling, dissembling image of being in at least two places at once’ is the symbol of a divided self-consciousness (Bhabha 2012: 64). Significantly, Gashan’s friend Sankara tells him that he would never be able to come back to his village and live with other Somalis, but at the same time he would always be a foreigner in Europe (Garane 2005: 96). This split identity is mirrored in the opposition of coffee and milk. As Ali Mumin Ahad points out, Il latte è buono implies an unconscious refusal of Gashan’s Africanness and blackness (2006: 251). The symbolic interaction

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between milk and coffee shows the ambivalent relationship between colonizers and colonized, which is expressed in this passage: Bevevano il caffè importato ed etichettato ‘italiano’ o ‘francese’, per non dire che il buono viene sempre dall’altrove. Soprattutto se questo altrove è una neocolonia! ‘Si assapora l’altro, il colonizzato. Si beve alla sua salute. Non è forse cannibalismo?’ Gashan cominciava ad analizzare le cose in un paese dove non si vuol vedere. ‘Ma bevendolo non si rischia anche di assomigliare all’altro? [...] Non sarà per questo che a Roma tutti i bagni sono guasti? Come in Etiopia, dove si piscia fuori nella strada!’ Era felice di trovare un nesso tra le due. (Garane 2005: 72) [They drank coffee imported and labelled as ‘Italian’ or ‘French’, as they did not want to say that all good things come from elsewhere. In particular when this elsewhere is a neo-colony! ‘We drink the other, the colonized. We drink to his or her health. Isn’t this cannibalism?’ Gashan started to analyze things in a country where nobody wanted to see. ‘Don’t you start looking like the other, when you drink it? [...] Is it because of this reason that bathrooms in Rome are all broken? As in Ethiopia where people piss outside in the streets!’ He was happy to have found a connection between the two.]

According to this passage, as Italian and French people enjoy drinking exotic coffee by implicitly wishing to look a bit more African, Gashan finds white milk delicious and wishes to become similar to European people. This mutual contamination symbolizes the ambivalent relationship between colonizers and colonized, which is not exclusively determined by a one-way process and involves a double movement of repulsion and attraction. Moreover, Garane reverses the stereotype of the cannibal that Western movies have frequently applied to African tribes (2005: 68). Il latte è buono might be seen as a Bildungsroman, in which the main character gradually realizes that he will never feel at home either in Somalia or in a Western country, and therefore is condemned to an ever-present exile (Garane 2005: 96). Moreover, he learns not to consider Italian and Somali cultures in dichotomic terms but as a dialogue (Garane 2005: 107). The dialectic reunion of Gashan’s Manichean categorization is symbolized by the image of cappuccino and caffè macchiato. At the beginning of the novel, Gashan does not like cappuccino because it is ‘amaro e sporco’ [bitter and dirty], as milk is spoiled with black coffee (Garane 2005: 72), although cappuccino might be improved when it is drunk in Italian cups, because they are made of white porcelain (Garane 2005: 64). At the end of the novel, Gashan argues that ‘il latte è più buono se bevuto con un nero’ [milk is better when you drink it with a black person] (Garane 2005: 102), describing his mediation between African and European culture. Gashan also argues that he has learned to reconcile his split Somali Italian identity in the United States: ‘Da Shakhlan a Devil, sono diventato un caffè macchiato’ [From Shakhlan to Devil, I have become a caffè macchiato] (Garane 2005: 106). Chapter 3 will further problematize this

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reconciliation considering the cultural references that are present in Il latte è buono. Before moving forward with the analysis, I want to conclude by highlighting that the split cultural identity of the central character, which is divided between his present life in Italy as an immigrant (although Italy is not the final destination of his journey) and his past in Somalia, is useful when ref lecting upon the connection between the minor condition of colonized subjects and African immigrants in Italy. This feature of Il latte è buono is in fact central, as I will soon demonstrate, in other Somali Italian texts. Mixophobia, Islamophobia, and the Writing of the Body in Madre piccola The inf luence of the colonial past over the present and the double cultural belonging and unbelonging that it might generate for people of Somali origins in Italy is also crucial in Cristina Ubah Ali Farah’s Madre piccola. Domenica Axad, the main character of Madre Piccola, might be seen as the author’s fictional representation: like Ali Farah, she is the meticcio daughter of a Somali father and an Italian mother. Moreover, Domenica Axad, like Cristina Ubah, has a double Italian and Somali name. The two origins of her name, which mutually translate Italian and Somali, empha­size her division between Italian and Somali cultural identities. In Italian, in fact, this name means ‘Sunday’, the holy day of the week for Catholics, and has been given to her by her mother who is ‘cattolica praticante’ [a practicing Catholic] (Ali Farah 2007c: 237). The Catholic identity inscribed in Domenica’s Italian name con­trasts with her second name, Axad, which refers in Somali culture to the second day of the week, Sunday. Domenica Axad lives an internal division and struggle: her two names underline her bilingualism, her double national belonging, and her meticcio skin. Significantly, she calls herself ‘italosomala, iska-dhal, nata-insieme, nata mescolata’ [An ItalianSomali, iska-dhal, born-together, born-mixed] (Ali Farah 2007c: 95). She cannot choose one or the other name ‘perché prediligere uno dei due nomi era anzitutto optare per un’essenza’ [because favouring one of the two names means, above all, meant choosing an essence] (Ali Farah 2007c: 132). As a consequence, she describes translation as an impending responsibility in her life. She connects not merely between cultures but also between different generations since she has to translate Somali for her mother, who is not encouraged by her husband to learn this language: Le numerose mansioni relative al mondo femminile che [mia madre] si trovava a risolvere da sola fecero sì che, crescendo, il mio ruolo di interprete diventasse sempre più incombente, fino a trasformarmi in una grande dissimulatrice, pronta a compiacere l’interlocutore adulto che di volta in volta mi trovavo davanti. Vivevo la traduzione come un divertimento, a tratti, ma più spesso con un forte senso di responsabilità, soprattutto quando si trattava di limare le asprezze, di non lasciar trapelare sentimenti negativi. Ero alle prese con voci [...] consegnate a me traghettatrice senza che l’emittente si sforzasse di adattarle al destinatario. (Ali Farah 2007c: 233) [The numerous domestic tasks that she had to take care of herself meant that, as I got older, my role of interpreter became more and more demanding, until I

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Race turned into a great dissimulator, ready to please the series of adult interlocutors that I had to regularly deal with. I lived translation as an entertainment sometimes, but more often with a strong sense of responsibility, especially when I had to tone down harshness, to hide negative feelings. I was dealing with [...] voices that were entrusted to me to ferry across without the speaker making any effort to adapt them to the receiver.]

The translational activity becomes for Domenica a daily exercise that makes her ‘una bambina ansiosa, sempre in pena per le possibili ripercussioni dei discorsi malriportati’ [an anxious child, always worried about the possible repercussions of badly relayed words] (Ali Farah 2007c: 233). Moreover, Domenica explains that she has to justify to her Somali classmates the fact that she is a native Italian speaker: ‘Essere per metà somala divenne un’enorme scocciatura per la quale mi trovavo sempre a dover “giustificare” padronanza linguistica e carnagione, senza godere di nessun vantaggio alternativo’ [Being half Somali became an enormous headache for which I always had to ‘justify’ my linguistic competence and my skin colour, without reaping anything in return] (Ali Farah 2007c: 243). One of the reasons for this fear and anxiety is that Italian and Somali do not overlap in the same way in Domenica’s language: she was perfectly bilingual for nine years (Ali Farah 2007c: 239), but after two months in Italy she forgot Somali (Ali Farah 2007c: 237), an event that recalls Ali Farah’s own experience (2007a: 58). Domenica embodies this ambiguity of the role of the translator: her double linguistic competence is so strictly bound up with her identity that what gets ‘lost in translation’ might cause a loss of her identity. Domenica speaks in a very sophisticated and controlled register in Italian to show that, despite her ethnic origins, this language belongs to her: Parlo difficile, uso costruzioni contorte. Lo faccio soprattutto in principio di discorso, perchè voglio dimostrare fino a che punto riesco ad arrivare con la lingua, voglio che tutti sappiano senz’ombra di dubbio che questa lingua mi appartiene. È il mio balbettio, è il soggetto plurale che mi ha cresciuto, è il nome della mia essenza, è mia madre. (Ali Farah 2007c: 253–54) [I use difficult words, I employ convoluted sentences. I especially do it when I start talking, because I want to demonstrate how far I can stretch my language. I want everyone to know, without the shadow of a doubt, that this language belongs to me. It is my childhood babbling, it is the plural subject that raised me, it is the name of my essence, it is my mother.]

Since the notion of language and race are so strictly entwined, Italian cannot entirely express her bilingual identity. Domenica therefore perceives her language as an imperfect stammering: her sense of guilt manifests her frustration for not being recognized and accepted by Italians, but also to have forgotten her father’s language. Domenica feels a double inadequacy regarding her role as a translator, which she dramatically expresses physically by cutting herself.2 The cuts on Domenica’s body represent a way to modify her relationship with how her double linguistic competence and meticcio skin is perceived both in Somalia and in Italy into affirmative self-expression. Domenica significantly wonders whether the cuts are

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a way to ‘dichiar[si]’ [to make a statement] (Ali Farah 2007c: 246). The painful affirmation of her bilingual and bicultural Somali Italian identity passes through a troublesome, although transitory, stage, which is identified by a series of oppositions that represents well the two opposite and yet complementary meanings of the word pharmakon, namely poison and medicine (Derrida 1981: 119). The cuts are described as a ‘piacere morboso’ [a morbid pleasure] (Ali Farah 2007c: 245), which Domenica describes to her psychologist (Ali Farah 2007c: 223–59), but they also might be seen as a dermographia, a new language to translate her identity as a meticcio woman and to heal Domenica from the discomforts of multilingualism. They originate from a ‘silenzio volontario, consapevole’ [a conscious, voluntary silence] (Ali Farah 2007c: 253), but they are also a non-verbal form of communication through which she affirms her right to be socially recognized for a cultural — the act of writing — rather than corporeal trait, the colour of her skin. As Domenica’s life is characterized by the experience of migration, she belongs to a group of individuals that the media often present as voiceless beings who can express themselves through the only means that they own entirely: the body and its physical lexicon. The corporeity of immigrants is usually set against the loquacity (and higher rationality) of the natives, by implying that their skin speaks instead of them (Abdelmalek 2004: 207–15). The cuts silence the meaning that Domenica’s skin speaks to many of those who surround her. The attempt to resignify her being meticcio can also be seen as a way to expiate a sin — that of mastering and simultaneously betraying two cultures and languages — according to the Catholic idea of the mortification of the body. Significantly, Domenica identifies completely with her mother and conforms to her Catholic models before cutting herself (Ali Farah 2007c: 244–46). Domenica argues that her mother’s reasons for not learning Somali and her adherence to Catholicism were ‘un tentativo di custodire la propria identità, di preservarla dalla confusione’ [attempts to protect her identity, to preserve it somehow in the middle of that confusion] (Ali Farah 2007c: 237). Therefore, she tries to safeguard her Italian identity by becoming a churchgoer: ‘per non perdermi, avrei dovuto mantenere la bussola puntata su quei modelli cattolici con cui lei stessa era stata educata da sua madre una generazione prima. Fu la mimesi’ [to avoid getting lost, I should keep the compass needle pointed towards those Catholic models used by her own mother to educate her a generation before. It was a mimesis] (Ali Farah 2007c: 246). In other words, the affirmation of an Italian, white, and Catholic identity passes through a religious-like erasure of her stigmatized meticcio skin as if it were impure and inherently associated with sin. Therefore, integration in Italy initially implies Domenica’s partial acceptance of discriminatory representations of blackness and meticciato that have inf luenced the colonial experience and still inform contemporary Italian imagery concerning black immigrants. From this perspective, Ali Farah provides a new meaning to the running theme in the Western perception of stigmas, namely the punishment of the traitor with a recognizable bodily sign: Stigma [...] refer[s] to bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor — a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided. (Goffman 1968: 11)

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The reasons for Domenica’s cuts might be better understood in relation to Hélène Cixous’s ref lections on the writing of minor subjects, which she sees as a resistance against the dominant male and Western symbolic order. In ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, Cixous argues that the hegemonic male discourses are organized by following a binary logic that identifies women as lacking and thus negates their rights for self-representation. This man/woman opposition presumes not only a difference but also the subordination of women to men. Cixous suggests that women must move away from established forms of communication and express their identity through a writing that is interrupted, multiple, f luid, and disseminated: ‘Writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures’ (1997: 350). She claims that ‘there has not yet been any writing that inscribes femininity’ and urges women to ‘write their bodies’, representing their identities as inseparable from the body (Cixous 1997: 349). To write of and from the body through a hybrid language and literary genre — ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ is an essay, but also presents Cixous’s autobiography — means to disrupt the phallogocentric symbolic order. Therefore, the reconnection of the signifier ‘woman’ to the signifier ‘I’ through writing not only asserts her gender identity and different corporeality, but also transforms the structure of society and creates ‘a new kind of relation between female bodies and language’ (Cixous 1997: 347). In the essay Stigmata, Cixous also describes writing as an anticolonial practice by people who were born in former colonies. Cixous accounts for the wounds inf licted by European colonialism on the minor subject and describes the heritage of colonialism as a wound on the colonized body: I did not lose Algeria, because I never had it, and I never was it. I suffered that it was lost for itself, separated from itself by colonization. If ever I identified it was with its rage at being wounded, amputated, humiliated. (2002: 168)

In other words, Cixous’s ‘writing of the body’ tells of the indelible scars that the colonial imposition has left on her body: The wound is what I sense. The wound is a strange thing: either I die, or a kind of work takes place, mysterious, that will reassemble the edges of the wound. A marvellous thing also: that will nonetheless leave a trace, even if it hurts us. It is here that I sense things taking place. The wound is also an alteration. Breaking, for me, remained in the domain of a less f leshy material. I see a stick being broken... of course, one can also break one’s bones, but then the sticks of the body repair themselves, and there is no scar... I like the scar, the story. (Calle-Gruber and Cixous 2003: 16)

This passage underlines that colonialism is the most evident form of phallogocentrism, since it is inf licted upon subjects who are placed at the margins of power positions in terms of gender and race. Interestingly, Cixous draws a parallel between writing the body and translating the wounds into writing: ‘What we are able to do as an exercise in translation with our body or as a translation of our affects in terms of the body is unlimited’ (Calle-Gruber and Cixous 2003: 28). For Cixous, the act of ‘writing the self ’ ‘is never simple or linear or objectified, generalized’, but entails a broader process that ‘draws her story into history’ (Calle-Gruber and Cixous 2003: 351).3

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Cixous’s consideration on the writing of the female body in the postcolonial context might be relevant when analysing Madre Piccola. Domenica’s ‘writing of the self ’ through self-cutting might be seen as a way to translate the metaphorical wounds of Italian colonialism into writing. For instance, Domenica refers to the Somali nomadic and pastoral culture, which has been destroyed by the male Italian invader: ‘Sono la pelle tagliata, tagliata mentre pascolavo gli animali, chi l’ha tagliata è quell’uomo, ma il marchio è rimasto uno solo, è rimasto il dovere dell’unità, soomaali baan ahay’ [I am the slashed skin, slashed while I was shepherding my animals, the one who slashed me is that man, but only one branding remained, the duty of unity remained, soomaali baan ahay] (Ali Farah 2007c: 12). As a Somali woman who suffered both colonial domination and a patriarchal society, Domenica urges Somali people to unite. By reading Madre piccola in the light of Cixous, Domenica’s decision to circumcise her son bears a double-faceted meaning, which successfully reinterprets within the postcolonial context the cultural significance of a long-established practice and collective ceremony that expresses belonging to the Somali community (circumcision is not a common medical operation in Italy) (Ali Farah 2007c: 257). On the one side, this lifelong cut mirrors the traces of the history of colonialism that are inscribed on Domenica’s body. Significantly, Domenica names her son Taariikh, a Somali name that means ‘history’ and the same name of her father, a person who experienced Italian colonialism. On the other side, Taariikh’s circumcision continues the Somali tradition. However, to paraphrase Renata Salecl, the decision to circumcise her son in Italy cannot be seen as a ‘submission to the symbolic law represented by the paternal authority’ which makes socialization possible in Somalia (2001: 25), but as a way ‘to find some stability in today’s disintegrating social universe’ within Italian society for a Somali diasporic subject (Salecl 2001: 24). By having this practice performed on her son, Domenica Axad aims to reconnect to a culture that has been destroyed by the civil war but also responds to the insecurity of no longer having lives regulated by traditions. In other words, Taariikh’s circumcision ‘is not the answer to the big other, but rather the subject’s answer to the non-existence of the big other’ (Salecl 2001: 25).4 Since the relationship between mother and child during pregnancy exceeds biological and identitarian boundaries, childbirth in Madre piccola might indicate the crossing of the geographical borders that are imposed on the bodies of immigrants. In this regard, Donna Gabaccia argues that: key to diasporic identities is a sense of loss [...] shared loss can also create a communal commitment to reproducing that identity and passing it along to future biological generations — both to accommodate them to life in exile and to help them dream of ending it. (2000: 11)

Moreover, Domenica’s motherhood allows her to generate, incorporate, and collect the speech of another being. As the etymological proximity between the words partizione and partorire seems to suggest, the act of giving birth might be strictly connected to a partition of voices, the duplication of the mother’s voice through her child (Parenzan 2009: 74–75). According to Cixous, the feminine can be described in terms of plurality, since the womb allows women to be simultaneously

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themselves as well as ‘other’ and to produce themselves as ‘other’: There is hidden and always ready in woman the source; the locus for the other [...] (the child that she was, that she is, that she makes, remakes, undoes, there at the point where, the same, she others herself ). (1997: 352)

Childbirth symbolizes the initiation of a plural identity, which is envisioned in Madre piccola thanks to the three alternate voices of the narrators (Domenica, Barni, and Taageere). However, Domenica’s motherhood symbolizes the origin of a bilingual, meticcio, and transnational genealogy, whose integration within Italian society might be possible, but only to the extent to which the two cultures coexist separately. Domenica conceives a clear split between Italian and Somali linguistic education for Taariikh, which entails only a partial affirmation of a bilingual identity. In fact, she wants to teach him Somali only when he gets older (Ali Farah 2007c: 259). Domenica therefore describes Somali as a trouble or an interference that might confuse Taariikh’s linguistic identity, which should be expressed in Italian: ‘Quando crescerà un poco io e Barni gli insegneremo il Somalo. La circoncisione, intanto, segna la sua appartenenza a questa storia’ [when he gets a little older Barni and I will teach him Somali. Circumcision, in the meantime, marks his belonging to this story] (Ali Farah 2007c: 259). Domenica conceives cultures in dichotomic terms by relating Somaliness to Taariikh’s body through his circumcision and Italianness to his culture and ‘main’ language. While Domenica’s multiple belongings painfully clash with one another, she envisions an education for her son in which the Italian and Somali languages and cultures might be reconciled, although they are set in a specific hierarchical order. Domenica’s painful mediation between her two linguistic and cultural identities might also be visualized in the colour of her meticcio skin, which she is not able to accept. Significantly, she wonders how she would look if she were completely black or completely white (Ali Farah 2007c: 244). In fact, she feels privileged in Somalia because of her whiteness while feeling coloured in Italy: I miei cugini mi consideravano bianca come il latte e, rivedendomi dopo la guerra, la prima cosa notata quasi da tutti è stata che sembravo loro molto più scura rispetto a come ricordavano. Poichè è assai improbabile che il sole d’inverno abbia potuto più dei perenni raggi equatoriali, si capisce come sia il contesto intorno a modificare la percezione della realtà. (Ali Farah 2007c: 243) [My cousins considered me as white as milk, but seeing me again after the war, the first thing everyone noticed was that I looked much darker than they remembered. Since it is quite improbable that the winter sun in Italy had a stronger effect than the constant equatorial rays, it becomes apparent that it is the surrounding context that modifies the perception of reality.]

This description is remarkable because racial identity is not portrayed as an essentialist human trait but as a feature that changes according to the context. Concurrently, this passage highlights that, even if the concept of race is arbitrary, it inf luences the relationships among human beings. Domenica accepts her ‘imperfect’ skin colour thanks to her cousin Barni, who exhorts her to keep on being ‘bella di quel chiarore’ [beautiful in my lightness] (Ali Farah 2007c: 244). Elsewhere in the

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novel, Barni makes clear that the acceptance of meticciato is not merely related to skin colour but symbolizes a more complex mediation between two cultures: ‘siamo spugne noi mescolati. Mescolati viaggiatori. Quante lingue ho dovuto, ho voluto imparare, qua e là, per entrare dentro la gente’ [those of us of mixed blood are like sponges. Mixed travellers. There were so many languages I had to learn, that I wanted to learn, in one place or another, to get inside people] (Ali Farah 2007c: 97). In this passage, Barni argues that racial and cultural boundaries are interconnected. She claims that meticciato is the bodily signifier for reclaiming a double identity and embodies the multiple, intersecting, and discontinuous stories of a mixed person, in contrast with the monolithic, monological, linear, and uniform representation of a dominant identity. Moreover, she seems to suggest that — to quote a passage from Ali Farah’s second novel, Il comandante del fiume — ‘la storia di una persona è molto più complessa del colore della sua pelle. Ognuno di noi ha qualcosa di diverso dentro, gli occhi da soli non bastano, si fermano all’apparenza, non vanno in profondità’ [the story of a person is much more complex than the colour of his or her skin. Every one of us has something different inside, the eyes alone are not enough, they stop at appearances, they do not go deeper] (Ali Farah 2014: 252). The link between race and culture is also significant in this passage, where Taageere argues that the racialized preconceptions about meticci annoy Domenica: Questa storia che le mulatte sono delle poco di buono l’ha stufata. Io le dico che quello che so è che le mulatte sono famose per essere belle, non poco di buono. Perchè siete razzisti, dice lei, essere chiari deve essere per forza bello. (Ali Farah 2007c: 202) [She is fed up with this story that mulatto women are all trash. I tell her that what I know is that mulatto women are famous for their beauty, not for being trash. Because you are all racists, she says, being light-skinned must necessarily be beautiful.]

Domenica is referring here to the fact that light-coloured skin and not white skin in particular is more beautiful for racists, and that the whole continuum of light to dark is used among people of colour to create racial hierarchies. Light-skinned colouring adds to Domenica’s privilege in some contexts but to resentment from those darker in other contexts. The preconception to which Domenica refers might be traced back to the colonial laws against meticciato, which created discrimination against meticci both by black and by white people. In this regard, it is noteworthy that when Domenica goes to Italy, she affirms that she has to ‘riaggiustare le cose che avevo lasciato in sospeso’ [fix the things that I had left unfinished] (Ali Farah 2007c: 252). The writing of unspoken truths concerning race is signalled by one of the three epigraphs at the start of Madre piccola, which is taken from Toni Morrison’s Beloved (Morrison 2005 [1987]). This novel explicitly talks of the haunting presences of the past slavery over the contemporary condition of African American subjects. Similarly, meticciato in Madre piccola might be interpreted as the haunting presence of the colonial laws against interracial unions, which Ali Farah’s novel evokes — as Chapter 1 has pointed out — by referring to ciyaal mission. However, it might be misleading to see meticciato in Madre piccola exclusively in the context of the legacy of Italian colonialism, since it is also connected to the

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present fear of intercultural encounters that produces similar situations of segre­ gation. In particular, the fear of Domenica’s meticciato in Madre piccola might be connected to the discrimination against Muslims in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Madre piccola provides a representation of Islam that challenges Islamophobia and the stereotyped and derogatory representation of Muslims in Italian newspapers. For instance, Domenica went to church with her mother and to the Qur’anic school with her cousins, but expresses a negative commentary concerning both religions, by claiming that ‘la storia è sempre quella’ [the story is always the same] (Ali Farah 2007c: 237). Madre Piccola also shows that Islamophobia criminalizes the victims and discriminates against people who are members of a marginalized underclass such as immigrants, many of whom are Muslims. Domenica tells of two Egyptians who have been arrested on terrorism charges because they had a map of Rome with strategic points circled with a red pen, which are later found to be lunchrooms where Caritas, a Catholic charity organization, delivered free food for immigrants (Ali Farah 2007c: 36). Domenica therefore criticizes ‘the stereotypical representation of the migrant in the press, which often deals with criminal activities and emergencies’ (Orton and Parati 2007: 15), by arguing that ‘un trafiletto su un quotidiano [...] costruisce e distrugge’ [a short column in the daily paper can build and destroy] (Ali Farah 2007c: 20). Another example of Islamophobia is the story of a Somali man, Muxamed X, who is suspected of being a terrorist and is imprisoned with massive media clamour, since he is found in the proximity of a burning car parked close to the Somali embassy. However, in actuality, Muxamed was trying to save a baby who lay on the back seat of the car (Ali Farah 2007c: 36–54). These passages ably represent the media’s acknowledgement of the existence of immigrants only when they contravene a law, since the laws on immigration recognize immigrants as ‘persone’ [persons] only when they commit a crime (Dal Lago 2009: 246). Significantly, Taageere refers to the Bossi-Fini Law in these terms: In quel paese non ti danno proprio niente, nessun welfare. Quando ci stavo io non c’era lavoro e quando c’era che lavoro! [...] L’Italia all’epoca era uno snodo che toccava a tutti, ora invece non ci vuole rimanere più nessuno. (Ali Farah 2007c: 219) [In that country they don’t give you anything, no welfare. When I was there, there was no work, and when there was, what terrible work it was! [...] At that time everybody had to go through Italy. Now though, nobody wants to stay.]

Domenica also denounces the marginalization of immigrants in Italy. For instance, she recounts that a number of immigrants were gathering in a public piazza, but the police arrested some of them because they were too many (Ali Farah 2007c: 130), and that immigrants have to provide their fingerprints and often risk being sent to the CIEs (Ali Farah 2007c: 29). By aligning the discrimination of Muslims in contemporary Italy and the marginalization of immigrant subjects with the discrimi­nation against meticci in the colonies, Madre piccola implicitly creates a link between these two events and further denounces the difficult living conditions experienced by diasporic subjects and immigrants in Italy.

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The Use of Irony in Fra-intendimenti Like Il latte è buono and Madre piccola, Kaha Mohamed Aden’s short stories are set in Italy in the present and Somalia in the past, as the author herself recognizes in an interview: ‘Quello che scrivo ha prevalentemente due sguardi: uno verso la Somalia ed uno verso l’Italia, il paese in cui ormai vivo da tanti anni’ [My writings combine two gazes: one towards Somalia and the other towards Italy, the country where I have lived from many years] (2011: 166).5 In particular, three short stories included in the collection Fra-intendimenti describe explicitly the legacy of Italian colonialism and its relationship with the perception of immigration in contemporary Italy: ‘Nonno Y e il colore degli alleati’ [Grandpa Y and the Colour of Allies], ‘Eedo Maryam’, and ‘Un tè serio bollente’ [A Seriously Boiling Tea]. In line with Sara Ahmed’s views on cultural encounters between immigrants coming from former colonies and native European citizens, we could say that Fra-intendimenti clearly shows that ‘encounters are meetings, then, which are not simply in the present: each encounter reopens past encounters’ (Ahmed 2000: 8). ‘Un tè serio bollente’ offers a good example of the structure of Kaha’s short stories and how they link the past and present. The main character wants to follow her grandmother Halima’s traditional tea recipe, but she is missing an essential ingredient, cardamom. Therefore, she goes to a shop to buy this spice. The remem­ brance of Somali cardamom tea is abruptly disturbed by the hysterical and racist accusations of cannibalism by an Italian customer, who misunderstands ( fraintendere, in Italian) ‘cardamomo’ [cardamom] for ‘carne d’uomo’ [human f lesh] (Kaha 2010: 93). The reference to ‘human meat eaters’ is significant because it alludes to the myth of African cannibalism that helped to justify the European civilizing mission. Moreover, it might refer to the uncontrolled and animal sexual hunger that Italian colonial propaganda attributed to African women. The stereotype of la bella abissina — a ‘beautiful, docile, but mostly sexually available’ woman from Abyssinia (Ponzanesi 2004: 124) — was crucial in encouraging Italians to populate the colonies before the 1930s (Stefani 2007: 142). ‘Un tè serio bollente’ might be considered a ghost story because, as the memory of the past haunts the narrator, prejudice possesses the Italian customer of the shop. However, the narrator’s spirit presences are based on her experience and need to be shared with friends, while the old woman’s fears have no real reason to exist and generate discrimination. The adjective serio of the title might therefore refer both to the ‘proper’ tea that the narrator would like to drink and to the ‘serious’ problem of racism in Italy, which the author is able to ironize about with her friends. Kaha’s short story ‘Xusein, Suleyman e loro’ [Xusein, Suleiman, and Them] presents a similar structure to ‘Un tè serio bollente’, and it is also a story about haunting presences and linguistic misinterpretation. Xusein and Suleyman are two Somali students who study Italian in Perugia. They meet an Italian lady in a lift who addresses them by using the formal third plural pronoun loro rather than the second plural pronoun voi. The two students do not understand her, and they wonder who ‘they’ might be. The use of this pronoun reminds them of an event that occurred in Somalia to their cousin Abdikafar, a teacher who had been charged

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by the government to bring education to the peasants in the countryside during the literacy campaign in Somalia, Ololaha. His arrival awakens the animist beliefs of an old woman, who accuses him of having provoked the anger of some spirits. Therefore, there are two evoked and ghostly presences in this story, both indicated with the third-person plural pronoun. One is the prejudice of the Italian lady against African students, which is shared by most elderly people in Perugia who are scared and turn away every time they see ‘them’. On the other hand, there are the ancestral presences of a Somali animist religion, also referred to as ‘them’. In both cases, superstitious people have to confront modernity: in one case represented by Abdikafar’s scholarly campaign, and in the other case the presence of black Somali students in a European country like Italy. The reconciliation with these presences has two different outcomes: while Abdikafar tries to mediate between his task and the superstitious social context by pretending to be a sorcerer and employing at the same time medicine to cure an old woman, the Italian old lady does not rid herself of her preconceptions. Rather than opening a dialogue or reformulating her question, she gets off at the first f loor, even though she lives on the fourth, failing to ask herself why those students who speak f luent Italian have not understood her question, or to rephrase her question in order to be understood by non-native speakers. In this case, racism haunts the old woman’s imagination, which prevents her from communicating with the two African students. ‘Eeddo Maryan’ also presents a misunderstanding that is related to the colonial period. The story opens with the main character, K., who phones Aunt Maryam (eedo, in Somali). Maryam tells her niece of the first time she came to Rome with three friends to study at a boarding school run by Catholic nuns. The story is woven around the prejudices that both female Somali students and nuns have of each other. The nuns tell the Somali young women to take a lift to their rooms, but the students do not trust them. In this short story the lift is represented as a liminal space where multicultural encounters or clashes might happen, just as in one of the most famous Italian novels about immigration, Amara Lakhous’s Scontro di civiltà per un’ascensore in Piazza Vittorio (2006), which was translated into English with the title Clash of Civilization for a Lift in Piazza Vittorio by Ann Goldstein (Lakhous 2008). It is not technology that frightens the Somali students, but the mistrust and suspicion of Italians, the former colonizers of their country. In fact, Eedo Maryam and her friends have already taken a f light to Italy and one of them is even studying engineering. When a nun proposes entering the lift, a ‘room’ where people ‘mysteriously’ appear and disappear, the Somali young women rebel, since they find evidence of the deceit that they were expecting. A communicative impasse suddenly arises: the nun who wants to take them to their rooms regards imposition as the only way to educate (or convert) the Somali students, while the students do not trust the nuns and are not comfortable following one of them in the lift. A solution is found when a second nun, who had been to Africa, takes the girls to the stairs. She is able to find a compromise between Western and African cultures, with which she has come in contact. By explaining to the Somali students the function of the mysterious room, the nun successfully persuades them to get into the lift. The story finishes by expressing the author’s commitment to connecting

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and mediating between cultures to overcome mutual prejudices: ‘Non voglio stare fuori dal mondo, ho l’opportunità di stare dentro’ [I don’t want to stay outside the world, I have the opportunity to be inside it] (Kaha 2010: 60). Irony is also the dominant feature in ‘Nonno Y e il colore degli alleati’, which is perhaps the most suggestive short story of Fra-intendimenti, since it escapes essentialism through the problematization of the identity of the main character in terms of class, gender, and race. The first-person female narrator works on a construction site, where usually only men are present. This unusual setting immediately signals the focus towards the notion of equal opportunities on the basis of gender and race in an economic context that requires immigrants to do dirty, dangerous, and demanding work (Castles 2002: 1152).6 In the story, a truck driver approaches the main character and asks how much she charges, since he mistakes her for a prostitute: ‘Hei!’ mi urla con una espressione di chi chiede giustizia di un diritto violato. Di colpo mi blocco, perché di fronte ai diritti io mi fermo. Lui: ‘Quanto prendi?’ [...] ho capito di quale lavoro stava parlando. Imbaccuccata come ero, come gli sarà venuto in mente che faccio la prostituta? (Kaha 2010: 12–13) [‘Hey!’ he shouts with the expression of a person who demands justice over a violated right. I halt, as I always do when rights are violated. He says: ‘How much do you charge?’ [...] I understood what job he was referring to. How could he think I was a prostitute? I was wrapped up against the cold.]

Ironically, the main character describes herself as wearing modest clothes. Therefore, she argues that the colour of her black skin is the only signifier that might make the truck driver think that she is a prostitute. The truck driver’s emphasis on violated rights does not merely refer to the fact that a woman is occupying the place of a man, but also that an immigrant is occupying the place of a person who is born in Italy. This expression denies the main character’s right to have a professional life that is different from prostitution. The narrator describes black as an absence of colour, and points out that the colour of her skin is constructed not merely by the truck driver but also by progressive thinkers and feminists (Kaha 2010: 13–14). This representation reverses the expression ‘coloured’, which was for some time the politically correct euphemism for black. This term confirms the dominant position of white people and highlights that they are the only ones who can have the luxury not to have a colour, ‘nessun colore’ (Kaha 2010: 13). In ‘Nonno Y’, the expression ‘of colour’ is depicted even as more derogatory than black, since it emphasizes the colour of any skin other than the ‘standard’ white. Moreover, the main character underlines that even these humanitarian and libertarian constructions of the black person speak for or instead of him or her. Following this ref lection, the main character thinks of an event that happened to her grandfather, Y, during the Italian Trusteeship Administration of Somalia. The main character denounces the fact that the Italian government appointed many of the former colonial administrators to lead Somalia towards an independent democratic government (Kaha 2010: 15). Moreover, she shows that AFIS is characterized by both continuity with and difference from the previous colonialism. On the one hand, an Italian officer refuses to accept the equality between Somalis and Italians, and he tries to cause trouble within the Somali community (Kaha 2010: 15).

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When Nonno Y asks him permission to send his daughters to an Italian school, he replies that the whole Somali community should approve his choice first, since he is sure that it will not. On the other hand, the Italian officer is well disposed to provide education to natives, since he thinks that Somalis have finally accepted the superiority of Italian culture. Kaha emphasizes that colonized subjects are not passive victims, but actors in a process of mediation with the dominant power, and she envisions a possible form of resistance through dialogue. Somalis are not represented as a monolithic group but as a community where traditions are modified through discussion. For instance, Nonno Y wants to provide his daughters with the possibility to choose who they want to be and disagrees with ‘anziano F’ [old man F], who believes that instruction in Italian will transform Somali women into prostitutes (Kaha 2010: 20–21). The double setting of the story clearly shows that, as Italians see Somali women as prostitutes, Somalis see Italians as those who create prostitution. It is important to note that Kaha’s grandmother Halima plays a key role in Nonno Y’s decision, since she suggests she ‘scavalcare la biologia’ [overstep biology], by dressing her daughters as sons (Kaha 2010: 24). Thanks to Halima, Kaha’s mother is able to speak Somali, Arabic, English, and Italian (Kaha 2010: 24). This representation shows the prominent role of women in Somali society before the civil war, and identifies a female connection between her wise grandmother, her educated mother, and herself. Coming back to the present day, the main character answers the truck driver with irony, by creating a wordplay between verdoni [the slang name for money], pisello [the green pea colour], the association between green and speranza [hope], and the vulgar use of pisello meaning ‘penis’: Ah! Quanto prendi? Io: ‘Prendo esattamente la quantità di verdoni che non puoi permetterti’ Peplesso, è salito e se n’è andato con il suo camion color verde speranza pisello. No! Con il suo camion color verde speranza. No! Con il suo camion color verde pisello. Bisogna scegliere tra pisello e speranza. È facile [...] il pisello è salito sul camion e la speranza è rimasta a me. La speranza di avere sempre alleati al mio fianco. (Kaha 2010: 25) [Ah! How much do you charge? I: ‘I charge exactly the amount of money that you cannot afford’ Perplexed, he got into his pea-green truck, the colour of hope, and left. No! With his hope-green truck. No! With his pea-green truck. One must choose between peas and hope. It’s easy [...] the peas and penis went in the truck, and hope remained with me. The hope of always having allies on my side.]

This passage is an example of the colloquial register and marked representation of

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the spoken language that characterizes Fra-intendimenti. Irony questions the racist chauvinism of the truck driver who imagines all black women are prostitutes. The final part of ‘Nonno Y’ problematizes once again the adjective ‘coloured’. The main character needs allies to build a future for Somalia and asks herself what the colour of their skin will be: Di che colore sono gli alleati? E per favore non datemi come risposta ‘tutti i colori.’ Perché quando si dice così, sia voi, miei cari lettori, che io sappiamo bene che si tratta del bianco. Ah! Sono inciampata sui colori. (Kaha 2010: 25) [What is the colour of my allies? Please do not say ‘all colours’. Because when we say so, you, my dear readers, and I, know that it’s meant to be white. Ah! I stumbled over colours.]

This passage is critical of the concepts of multiethnicism and multiculturalism, which suggest that a benign coexistence of different cultures is only possible to the extent to which other cultures and other ethnicities are assimilated within the dominant Western culture. In this regard, Slavoj Žižek argues that multiculturalism is a form of racism, because it allows the alterity to express itself only when its discourse can be included in the universalist idea of Western narratives, which is presented as neutral: Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all positive content (the multiculturalist is not a direct racist, he doesn’t oppose to the Other the particular values of his own culture), but nonetheless retains this position as the privileged empty point of universality from which one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular cultures — the multiculturalist respect for the Other’s specificity is the very form of asserting one’s own superiority. (Žižek 1997: 44)

Multiculturalism hides ‘the fact that Capital is effectively an anonymous global machine blindly running its course, that there is effectively no particular Secret Agent who animates it’ (Žižek 1997: 45), and the Eurocentric perspective is pre­ sented as a universal and neutral standard. Kaha seems to provide a fictional repre­ sentation to part of the argument Žižek introduces in the above-mentioned passage through her acknowledging that the ‘norm’ within a multicultural society is still whiteness. Unlike Žižek, however, who sees gender and race discrimination as the consequence of economic exploitation, Kaha shows the connectedness between class, gender, and race discrimination. The South of the World, United, in Oltre Babilonia and Rhoda Igiaba Scego’s oeuvre also deals with the persistence of racist stereotypes in postcolonial Italy. This theme is evident in the novel Rhoda, when the external narrator describes the meeting between the only character who is born in Italy, Pino, and the woman at the centre of the novel who decides to become a prostitute, Rhoda. This description recalls that of a colonial black Venus: La donna che aveva davanti era lo spettacolo più incantevole che avesse mai visto in natura. Testa rotonda, occhi grandi, gambe lunghe, pelle nera, bocca carnosa, seni enormi, fianchi generosi [...] più vicina ai trenta che ai venti [...]

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Race era chiaro che la sua culla era stata l’Africa. Aveva anche un modo di muoversi da regina orientale, non sembrava una prostituta [...] Pino l’avrebbe presa per la moglie di un diplomatico [...] parlava un italiano neutro [...] perfetto [...] era dura e sprizzava negatività. (Scego 2004c: 18–19) [The woman who was standing in front of him was the most fascinating display of nature that he had ever seen. Round head, big eyes, long legs, black skin, f leshy mouth, enormous breasts, generous hips [...] closer to thirty than twenty years [...] it was clear that her cradle had been Africa. She moved like an oriental queen, she did not look like a prostitute [...] Pino took her for the wife of a diplomat [...] she spoke a neutral Italian [...] perfect [...] she was hard and bursting with negativity.]

Rhoda’s condition is identified with that of her country, since she is described as a ‘quadrilatero di dolore [...] simbolo del degrado di una nazione [e] dell’incomprensione globale’ [rectangle of pain [...] the symbol of the degradation of a nation [and] of global incomprehension] (Scego 2004c: 14). Notably, her rape might be seen as a metaphor for the ‘rapes’ of Somalia by Italian colonialism, by Mohamed Siad Barre’s dictatorship and the Somali civil war. Rhoda is an infected person, who decides to die in Somalia because she is sick with an HIV-related illness. The book cover of the novel conveys a similar image, as it represents a woman covered with a black veil, which could be interpreted by the Italian readership as a symbol for mourning, women’s repression, or illness (Fig. 9). The description of Rhoda recalls several stereotypes about African women. As Ponzanesi points out, the bodies of colonized women are often identified with Africa and, vice versa, Africa is often compared to a female body, ‘ripe for conquest’ (2004: 115). In colonial literature ‘the feminization of the colony’ was often set against ‘the trope of masculine possession or even rape’ (Ponzanesi 2004: 115). The association between the African landscape and death or illness is also frequently present in colonial novels after the promulgation of the law against interracial unions (Tomasello 2004: 211–13). Like African female characters in colonial literature, Rhoda’s description as an ill person recalls the dominant and derogatory representation of newcomers that the media often exploit to link patho­ logy with immigration in order to raise xenophobic anxiety (Dal Lago 2009: 71). The ambiguous representation of Rhoda might perhaps be better understood by Scego’s choice of Younis Tawfik’s La straniera [The Stranger] as a literary model for her novel (Scego 2004a). The main characters of La straniera are a young Arab woman, Amina, who is a prostitute and tells her story, and an integrated architect of Tunisian origins, who tries to redeem her. Amina ‘segue i più comuni stereotipi occidentali riguardanti l’orientalismo’ [follows the most common Western stereotypes concerning Orientalism] (Comberiati 2010b: 118) and recalls the stereotype of the black Venus since she is ‘Kahluscia, che in tunisino vuol dire “nera” ’ [Kahluscia, which in Tunisian means ‘black’] (Younis 2001: 52) and very beautiful: ‘viso giovane, bruno e pieno dei suoi occhi neri. Il naso fine esalta le labbra rosse e carnose. I capelli folti, così neri che hanno addirittura rif lessi blu, sono leggermente ricci e lunghi’ [a young, dark face, full of her black eyes. The thin nose emphasizes her red and f leshy lips. The thick hair, so black that it even had blue ref lections, was slightly curly and long] (Younis 2001: 10). Like

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Fig. 9. The book cover of Rhoda. Courtesy of Sinnos Editrice

Rhoda, Amina is an immigrant who cannot be integrated within Italian society and whose destiny, because of her ethnic origins and gender, leads to tragedy. On the other hand, the architect is defined by his profession rather than by his name, demonstrating his integration into the Italian job market. According to Burns, ‘the very title of the novel invites the reader to adopt the perspective and the gaze of the architect, the “straniero integrato” [integrated foreigner] upon the less definable and integral character marked as “other”, or “la straniera” ’ (2013: 114). The architect is either the integrated alter ego of Amina or a redeeming male figure, embodying the role of Pino in Rhoda. The representation of a male saviour recalls a recurrent topos of colonial literature (Stefani 2007: 108), and enforces the idea that the only possibility for an immigrant woman to settle down in Italy is to find an Italian or an ‘integrated’ husband. In this regard, it is significant that Amina asks herself whether ‘può essere una donna libera senza un uomo’ [a woman can be free without a man] (Younis 2001: 162). The architect is represented through a series of oppositions with Amina, who is full of the vitality that the architect has lost through living a modern life in a Western country. Again, this representation has much in common with some clichés of colonial literature, where the Western man, ‘spoiled’ by modernization and inhibited by the claims of Western feminism, could find his lost virility in the colonies (Stefani 2007: 96–97). Moreover, the architect defines himself as different from other immigrants, which he compares to scary black

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shadows in the night (Younis 2001: 122, 131). Rhoda recalls La straniera since both novels create a neat distinction between ‘integrated’ and outcast immigrants, and the identity of the former is defined in contrast with that of the latter. Moreover, both novels inherently associate Africa with death, absence of freedom, and oppressive traditions. Amina, for example, often emphasizes that women are exploited in Arab countries (Younis 2001: 96, 162) and describes Moroccan society as ‘tradizionalista’ [traditionalist] (Younis 2001: 105). The end of La straniera is ambiguous and it seems that the architect finally commits suicide because he is condemned to a permanent loneliness: on the one hand he cannot have an intimate relationship with Italian women because of his culture; on the other, the architect is too emancipated for immigrant women, who are not able to integrate into Italian society as he has. Nonetheless, Igiaba Scego’s representation of immigrant women is less stereo­ typical and more physical than Younis Tawfik’s. While the architect tends to group women as ‘le nostre donne’ [our women] (Younis 2001: 25) and claims that Amina’s life is exemplary of their story (Younis 2001: 185), Rhoda features three main female characters who show — as I will later discuss in detail — three possible ways for an immigrant woman to integrate in Italy. Moreover, Amina’s figure has no consistency, and she disappears at the end of the novel, showing that the architect is not able to transform his amicable relationship into a physical, corporeal one. Amina’s incorporeity is troublesome, especially because it is often connected to the idea that women acquire subjectivity only through the male presence. For instance, Amina becomes a ‘woman’ only after having sexual intercourse with a man (Younis 2001: 59), and the architect’s gaze does not bother her since she wants to look good for him (Younis 2001: 61). The representation of Rhoda is different from that of Amina, because the latter is unaware of political questions (Younis 2001: 13) and is interested in trivial bijoux and shoes (Younis 2001: 47), while the young Somali woman seems self-aware and ‘aveva proprietà di linguaggio notevoli’ [employs the correct use of language] in Italian, Somali, English, Portuguese, and Roman dialect (Scego 2004c: 19). Unlike Tawfik, Scego also stresses the uneven economic relationships into which the stories of the characters of Rhoda are set. For example, Rhoda’s decision to become a prostitute might be seen as a failed attempt to integrate into the Italian economic system. Her story shows ‘l’ipocrisia di una società che ripudia Rhoda come essere umano, ma poi la desidera come oggetto sessuale’ [the hypocrisy of a society that repudiates Rhoda as a human being but then desires her as a sexual object] (Mauceri 2010: 237). The stories of Aisha and Rhoda’s Aunt Barni also offer an example of how integration in Italy is closely connected to the acceptance of a subordinate role in the market economy. Like Rhoda, her aunt is educated but decides to conform to the expectation of Italians by choosing to become a housemaid. This choice testifies to the reproduction of colonial discrimination in Italy at the end of colonialism, as immigrant women from the Horn of Africa were sought after in 1960s Italy, to occupy the same role they had in the colonies (Marchetti 2011: 157–58). Barni’s final integration within the Italian economic system is possible, but only by opening an ethnic shop, a place where her ‘foreignness’ and ‘otherness’ is commodified and becomes marketable for Italians. According to Sara Ahmed, the commodities sold at

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an ethnic shop fetishize otherness as they ‘are assumed to contain the difference of the strange culture’ and promise a reconciliation with the ‘other’, although maintaining and perhaps reinforcing social and racial boundaries (2000: 125). Each of the main characters of Somali origins in Rhoda also indicates models of possible integration within Italian society. Rhoda, who attempts to integrate by commodifying her body, represents a negative model, while Barni, who commodifies her foreign identity at the ethnic shop, and Aisha, who marries an Italian man, are positive ones. Unlike Pino and Aisha’s heterosexual ‘true’ love, Rhoda’s unbalanced lesbian relationship with Gianna, a wealthy, older, and manipulative Italian woman who lives in London, is the start of a painful process of self-annihilation which ends with her becoming a prostitute. The relationship with Gianna is defined ‘un castello di menzogne’ [a castle of lies] (Scego 2004c: 123–24), and accelerates Rhoda’s process of self-destruction (Scego 2004c: 163–64). Rhoda’s lesbian relationship is an ‘amore molesto’ [a troubling love] (Scego 2004c: 125), and symbolizes the non-integration of a second-generation immigrant in Italy. Although Rhoda denounces the ways in which immigrants are exploited eco­ nomically, their depiction at times recalls stererotypical features used to discriminate against African immigrants and colonized subjects. The portrayal of these characters in Rhoda — for example Rhoda as an infected ‘black Venus’, and Aisha as the second-generation immigrant who integrates thanks to her marriage — raises some questions about its effectiveness in challenging stereotypes about African immi­g rants: could a reader who did not know the political position of the author of Rhoda (but also her skin colour, and her gender) unequivocally recognize the distance between the voice of the author and the gaze through which characters are represented? Is it gender and racially insensitive even to ask myself (a white cisgender heterosexual academic from northern Italy) to make a distinction between who wrote what, and how a work is written? Or could these questions about how race and gender are portrayed be brought from different perspectives and angles by all of those who hope that ‘more, and not fewer, people can enjoy the benefits of what has for centuries been denied the victims of race, class, or gender’ (Said 2000: 385)? By asking these questions I do not intend to minimize the crucial importance of Rhoda to kindle a public debate about the necessity of the representation and self-representation of women of African origins in the Italian language. Moreover, I am fully aware of the author’s political position and activism against sexism and racism, which makes it difficult for me to answer the first question. Nonetheless, I believe that close analysis and reading should be used to interrogate and question the ways in which minor subjects are represented in literature. The negotiation and creative manipulation of the dominant representation of African presences in Rhoda is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it might facilitate a more direct dialogue with the readership and with other literary works from which the novel is inspired; on the other hand, it might invigorate the mainstream derogatory and stereotypical representation of immigrants and colonial subjects by appealing to the European taste for the exotic. In both cases, the reference to a colonial imagery in this novel shows its inf luence on the present perception of immigrants of African origins in Italy.

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The representation of characters of Somali origins in Rhoda is further problem­ atized by the fact that the main character outlines a radical and dichotomic dist­ inction between gaal, white people, and ‘us’: ‘Qui ci sono i gaal e qui, dalla parte opposta, ci siamo noi. Siamo due mondi destinati a non incontrarci’ [The gaal are there, and we are on the other side. We are two worlds that are destined not to meet] (Scego 2004c: 69). Aisha’s integration in Italian society, Pino’s support of African prostitutes, and Sandra’s knowledge of the Somali language partly escape this binary narrative. However, these characters play an overall secondary role in the novel, compared to Rhoda and Barni. In particular, Aisha’s role as an integrated immigrant functions merely as a counterpart to Rhoda’s non-integration in Italian society. Scego’s dichotomic representation of black and white characters is also present in Oltre Babilonia. This novel denounces the crimes of Italian colonialism in Africa including the pollution of Somali shores with toxic waste (Scego 2008b: 418) and the exploitation of Somali workers in banana plantations (Scego 2008b: 288). More significantly, it recalls Ennio Flaiano’s 1947 novel Tempo di uccidere [Time to Kill] (Flaiano 2008), one of the few literary works to denounce Italian colonialism right after the end of the Second World War, which nonetheless presented many colonial stereotypes (Stefani 2007: 163–72). In Tempo di uccidere, an Italian soldier accidentally kills an Eritrean woman called Mariam with whom he previously had sexual intercourse. He attempts to hide this killing but soon realizes that nobody is really interested in discovering the truth about it. In Oltre Babilonia, Flaiano’s novel is called ‘un brutto romanzo italiano’ [a bad Italian novel] (Scego 2008b: 393) and its representation of the main female character is criticized since she is ‘una schiava senza valore, che deve dare il suo corpo quando il maschio bianco ha una voglia carnale’ [a slave without value, who has to offer her body when the white male has a sexual desire] (Scego 2008b: 393–94). Moreover, Oltre Babilonia explicitly recalls the scene of the accidental killing in Tempo di uccidere when Italians kill Maryam’s father by mistake (Scego 2008b: 108), perhaps echoing the recent postcolonial rewriting of that scene in Gabriella Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle [Queen of Flowers and Pearls] (2007) (Camilotti 2012: 138–61). It is also important to note the homophony between the name of Flaiano’s main Eritrean female character and that of Zuhra’s mother in Scego’s Oltre Babilonia, which might suggest an intertextual relationship between the two novels. Oltre Babilonia denounces the crimes of Italian colonialism. An example is when Zuhra points the finger at Italians with regard to the present conditions of Somalia: ‘È colpa di questi italiani se oggi stiamo messi male e questi non sanno nemmeno indicarci sulla loro lurida cartina’ [It is the Italians’ fault if today we are in a bad way, and they do not even know how to point us out on their dirty map] (Scego 2008b: 250). She ironically asks herself whether Italians are able to love (Scego 2008b: 110) and ridicules the Italian Empire: ‘D’imperiale quell’Italietta lì non aveva niente, era solo un cumulo di gente famelica, di gente che non sapeva chiedere scusa’ [There was nothing Imperial about that provincial Italy, it was just a bunch of ravenous people, people who did not know how to apologize] (Scego 2008b: 107). Zuhra also celebrates the heroes of the Somali anti-colonial resistance such as Howa Tako, a

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female Somali partisan who died while she was fighting against a pro-Italian group of Somalis during the 1948 riots in Mogadishu, in which forty-four Italians and fourteen Somalis died (Scego 2008b: 424). Moreover, the novel blames the United Nations for having given Italy — ‘un paese uscito con le ossa rotte da un regime fascista ventennale e da una Guerra mondiale, che aveva perso la Guerra e anche un mucchio di denaro, un paese distrutto nell’animo’ [a country that came out of twenty years of a Fascist regime and a World War with its bones broken. A country that lost a war and a lot of money, a country broken in spirit] — the mandate to ‘insegnare la democrazia’ [teach democracy] in Somalia from 1950 to 1960 (Scego 2008b: 259). Zuhra affirms that AFIS created limited infrastructure and a complex bureaucratic apparatus that paralysed public administration (Scego 2008b: 262). She also notices that some of Alcide De Gasperi’s collaborators in Somalia as well as in Italy were former Fascists, and connects the amnesia surrounding the crimes of Fascists involved in the Republic of Salò to the amnesia surrounding the Italian crimes in Somalia (Scego 2008b: 260). The legacy of AFIS is recognizable in the corruption of the Somali government at the time of independence: ‘L’Italia insegnò quello che sapeva fare meglio, la corruzione’ [Italy taught what it knew best, corruption] (Scego 2008b: 262). Therefore she ironizes the Italian civilizing mission by asking herself ‘Si può davvero insegnare la democrazia?’ [Is it really possible to teach democracy?] (Scego 2008b: 260). However, this criticism of Italian colonialism in Oltre Babilonia frequently represents Somalis as mere victims who lack self-consciousness and are not able to determine their own future. Claiming that Somalis have learnt corruption from Italians also means denying their own agency and responsibility. The description of some characters like Gor Gor — a Somali man who lived during the period of Italian colonialism, was completely manipulated by Italians and learned by heart Mussolini’s speeches (Scego 2008b: 107) — negates any subversion of the colonial rule through mimicry. The Italian colonial government is also described as the sole force responsible for the rise of Mohamed Siad Barre’s dictatorship, since he was trained by Italian secret services (Scego 2008b: 262). A similar description of colonialism is delivered in Roma Negata: Percorsi postcoloniali nella città [Rome Denied: Postcolonial Itineraries in the City] (2014), an essay about the postcolonial geographies of Rome, which is the result of Scego’s collaboration with a photographer, Rino Bianchi. In this text, Scego maintains that colonial school ‘era solo un posto dove si subiva un lavaggio del cervello sistematico e si imparava ad essere subalterni, schiavi, colonizzati’ [was a place where people were systematically brainwashed and learned to be subaltern, slaves, and colonized] (Bianchi and Scego 2014: 102), as if education did not also offer the means to challenge the colonial rule and teachers were solely obeying the orders coming from the regime. In this regard, Letizia Argenteri argues that ‘elementary school textbook [...] helped to promulgate the theory that black populations needed to be “civilized” and led to progress’, but she also maintains that ‘certain groups, not necessarily Fascist, accepted such propaganda, while others remained skeptical’ (1999: 5). Similarly, Scego argues that the colonized subject who fought for Italians ‘era sfruttato, deriso, umiliato’ [was exploited, mocked, humiliated] (Bianchi and

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Scego 2014: 40), without acknowledging that some were willing to collaborate with the colonizers in order to gain social mobility, and therefore did so for strategic reasons. According to Antonio Maria Morone, the role of intermediaries in Italian colonial society ‘[problematizza] la classica dicotomia tra colonizzati e colonizzatori, tra sudditi e cittadini’ [problematizes the traditional dichotomy between colonizers and colonized, between subjection and citizenship], as colonized subjects who worked for Italians acquired skills, knowledge, and authority, which allow them to improve their status, wealth and political inf luence (2013: 203). In blunt terms, it seems that some passages of Oltre Babilonia and other works by Scego legitimately accuse Italian colonialism, but at the same time they envision it as a straightforward imposition, which leaves little space for encounter with and possible resistance of the colonized subject, as other Somali Italian literature suggests. More controversially, Oltre Babilonia can be seen as drawing a dichotomic repre­ sentation between white evil characters and black victims. For instance, Maryam argues that Italians forced her father and many other dubats, Somali soldiers in the Italian army, to fight and kill people, but she describes him as ‘non bianco, ma quasi’ [not white, but nearly so] (Scego 2008b: 108). Maryam also ridicules a meticcio young man, whom she calls ‘babbuino tendente al bianco’ [an almost white baboon], because he argues that Italians also gave money to Somalis to fight (Scego 2008b: 110). In Oltre Babilonia, not all minor subjects of African origins, meticci, or Muslims are represented positively. For instance, the Italian-Tunisian young woman Souad is intransigent about religion and blames Zuhra for cleaning herself with a tissue like the ‘bestie infedeli’ [infidel beasts] after having used the bathroom rather than with water like a Muslim person (Scego 2008b: 283–84). Moreover, Souad is racist against black people: ‘Souad diceva che loro erano arabi e non negri, quindi lo stare in Africa era solo un incidente momentaneo’ [Souad said that they were Arabs and not niggers, therefore their being in Africa was just a momentary accident] (Scego 2008b: 282). In both cases, Zuhra depicts Souad’s integralism with irony, by claiming that ‘la geografia mi dava ragione’ [geography agreed with me] (Scego 2008b: 282). This representation partly problematizes the dichotomic portrayal of cultural difference and shows the heterogeneity among Muslims. Overall, however, it seems that the distinction between black and white characters is loaded with radically different connotations. The characters of Oltre Babilonia frequently appropriate racial labels to identify black and white characters. Whites are called gaals (Scego 2008b: 108, 151, 153, 161, 164, 227, 309), ‘infedeli’ [infidels] (Scego 2008b: 56), or haluf (Scego 2008b: 230–31, 234, 281), which in Italian means ‘maiale’ [pig] (Scego 2008b: 346). The following passage shows what the term haluf means for Zuhra: Haluf l’uomo rosa è entrato in acqua [...] La sua pelle mi fa impressione. No, non me lo so immaginare uno così che mi prende la mano, che mi bacia, che mi abbraccia. La sua pelle un po’ la trovo repellente. Mi sembra che sia davvero la pelle di un maiale. (Scego 2008b: 237) [Haluf the pink man goes into the water [...] His skin really puts me off. No, I can’t imagine a person like that taking my hand, kissing me, hugging me. His skin repulses me. It looks like the skin of a pig.]

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This passage strategically connects the term haluf with the notion of repellence and incompatibility, by reversing derogatory images that are frequently employed to discriminate against non-white people. On the other hand, blacks are frequently called ‘nigger’ (Scego 2008b: 344, 389) and ‘negro’ (Scego 2008b: 66, 344) and associated with positive connotations. For instance, Zuhra teaches her sister Mar to accept her double identity and her skin colour and not to be afraid of words: [Zuhra] Mi avrebbe detto che nero è bello e ci avrei creduto. Io anzi ci credo anche adesso che negro è bello. Forse non avrei dovuto dire negro, ma nero. Ma non m’importa, me lo hai insegnato tu, Zuhra Laamane abbayo, che non si deve aver paura delle parole. (Scego 2008b: 389) [[Zuhra] would say that black is beautiful and I would believe her. I still believe that nigger is beautiful. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said nigger, but black. But I don’t care: you, Zuhra Laamane abbayo, taught me not to be afraid of words.]

This passage recalls Geneviève Makaping’s choice of the term ‘negra’ to self-define and her affirmation of the right to say how she wants to be called in the text Traiettorie di sguardi: e se gli altri foste voi? [Trajectories of Gazes: What If the Other Were You?] (2001: 88). In both cases, the appropriation of the n-word aims to disempower the derogatory term, and deprive it of negative connotations. Traiettorie di sguardi ref lects upon the power obtained by those who are allowed to use derogatory terms and how the meaning of words changes in relation to the position of those who speak (Makaping 2001: 36–41). While Traiettorie di sguardi constantly imagines how it feels to look at language and race from different points of view including those of ‘una donna bianca o un uomo bianco’ [a white woman or a white man] (2001: 57), in Oltre Babilonia ‘neri negri black aswad (saraceni e non)’ are often set against ‘white men, visi pallidi gote-culo rosa’ [pale faces and pink ass cheeks] (Scego 2008b: 335). The counter-discursive practice of appropriation of the n-word is used in Oltre Babilonia to confirm the cohesion within the discriminated group, by providing a sense of affiliation that can create the conditions for ‘collective action’ (Bodenhausen and others 2003: 235). This dichotomic opposition between ‘nigger’ and ‘gaal haluf ’ in Oltre Babilonia seems to reproduce and reinforce rather than counter the essentialist dominant representation of race. In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said argues that the effect of the ‘metaphysics of essence like negritude, Irishness, Islam or Catholicism is to abandon history for essentializations that have the power to turn human beings against each other’ (1993: 276). The clear-cut binary opposition that rigidly divides communities into discrete units is a discourse ‘trapped inside itself ’, since it does not allow the reader to recognize the ‘many’ within the ‘one’ (Said 1993: 277). The aforementioned criticism applies to Oltre Babilonia although the imagined communities that this novel envisions do not set race as the only feature that separates or unites human beings. The radical distinction between white and black cultures is also mirrored in the ways in which Maryam describes African and European languages. For instance, in referring to the alphabetization process in Somalia, Maryam affirms that Latin char­acters cannot express the complexity of a Somali thought and calls them ‘foreign’ letters:

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In this passage, Maryam criticizes the decision by Mohamed Siad Barre’s govern­ ment to write Somali with Latin characters in 1972 and argues that this choice was imposed to favour the groups that had more social and cultural contact with the Europeans and to perpetuate the inf luence of former colonialist nations in Somalia. She argues that Somali should have been written with the Osmanya alphabet, which she herself uses to write although her daughter cannot read it (Scego 2008b: 444). However, Maryam’s argument does not account for the debate that had justified this choice and seems to essentialize the nature of Somali language. As Mohamed Aden Sheikh argues, the debate about the written Somali language was one of the moments in history where different parts of Somali society collaborated and debated with each other on whether to adopt nationally the Latin, Arabic, or Osmanya alphabet (2010: 248).7 Osmanya is a Somali native script invented in 1922 by Osman Yusuf Kenadid, a founding member of the Somali Youth League (Morone 2011a: 86). It was not adopted as the form of national writing, since it was related to a particular clan and was not employed by the majority of the population (Laitin 1977: 90). On the other hand, Arabic would have strengthened the role of Islam in political life, and would have reinforced economic partnerships with the Middle East, by reducing contacts with other parts of the words (Laitin 1977: 95). Moreover, Nuruddin Farah acknowledges that it was not possible to write Somali with Arab characters because of its ‘caratteristiche tonali’ [tonal features] (2005: 21). The Somali government preferred Latin characters in order to avoid isolation (Mohamed Aden Sheikh and Petrucci 1991: 50–51), and because the Somali language would otherwise risk becoming a dialect of the Horn of Africa, supplanted by Arabic (Mohamed Aden Sheikh 2010: 245). Although ‘the Latin script was closely associated with Christianity’ (Laitin 1977: 93) and ‘an African state that continues to rely on the language of the former colonial power is not a “nationstate” but really a “client-state” ’ (Laitin 1977: 14), the third option was preferred for technical reasons, since typewriters and other machines had been designed to accommodate its use (Laitin 1977: 96–97). It should also be noticed that the Somali script based on the Latin characters was developed by a Somali linguist, Shire Jama Ahmed, and it is therefore the result of an original manipulation of the colonizer’s alphabet rather than a simple adoption of it. The passage presented above ref lects a precise moment in Somali history. However, Oltre Babilonia often compares multiple temporal and historical dimensions. For instance, Zuhra compares the subordinate condition of immigrants of African origins in Italy to that of African Americans, by referring to civil rights leaders such

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as Malcolm X, who is called ‘un negro nigger saraceno come me’ [a negro, nigger, Saracen like me] (Scego 2008b: 344), and Rosa Parks, ‘la nostra pioniera black’ [our black pioneer] (Scego 2008b: 336). Zuhra also assumes that most customers look at her as if she were ‘una creatura invisibile’ [an invisible creature] (Scego 2008b: 234), by recalling Ralph Waldo Ellison’s 1953 novel Invisible Man (Ellison 1982). Another comparison between different time and space is made between Italian emigration and the Somali and Argentinian diaspora. For instance, Mar Ribeiro Martino and La Flaca are immigrants to Italy, but they are also the daughters of Italian immigrants to Argentina (Scego 2008b: 144, 365). Mar’s position as the daughter of Argentinian immigrants to Italy and southern Italian emigrants, or ‘terroni’, as she calls them (Scego 2008b: 388), functions to envision the alliance between marginalized subjects within the national derogatory imagery. Thus, many immigrants unsuccessfully expected ‘solidarity because they find parallels with the experiences of the Italian emigrants from the South’ (Ponzanesi 2004: 128). Some of these references are very powerful and effective, and they might help the readership to understand contemporaneity in the light of the past and other geographical perspectives. However, other associations are more perplexing, since they are not discussed in detail, within specific cultural contexts. For instance, Zuhra compares the exploitation of workers in the Western capitalist system and women’s oppression to clitoridectomy in Somalia: ‘Io vendo cd in un megastore della cultura (si fa per dire). É un brutto lavoro [...] perchè sei sfruttato. Oramai sì, siamo tutti carne da macello — non solo le clitoridi tagliate dalla zia Fardosa’ [I sell CDs in a cultural megastore (so to speak). It is bad job [...] because you are exploited. Yes, we are all cannon fodder — not only the clitoris that Aunt Fardosa cuts] (Scego 2008b: 82). This passage is effective in highlighting that each society has its own system of repression against the weakest. However, it seems excessive to compare the mutilation of women in a specific context to the indirect class violence and economic exploitation of the capitalist system. The frequent references to different situations of oppression in different times and locations invite comparisons, which Oltre Babilonia does not further develop. For instance, Mar accuses the Italian government and press of having been silent regarding desaparecidos and the Argentinian dictatorship: ‘Eravamo quasi tutti italiani in Argentina, [...] come faceva proprio l’Italia a ignorare? Lei scorreva nelle vene dei nostri corpi maltrattati, possible che se ne fregasse altamente del nostro sangue?’ [We were nearly all Italians in Argentina, [...] how could Italy ignore us? She was f lowing in the veins of our mistreated bodies, how could she not care about our blood?] (Scego 2008b: 365). This passage shows that the resistance of the Argentinian dissidents in Rome should be seen as double: on the one hand they fight against the Fascist dictatorship in their country; on the other they have to resist the institutionalized racism of the immigration policies in Italy (Scego 2008b: 141). However, the connection between national identity and blood might be troublesome, because it is one of the main justifications for discrimination against immigrants in Italy. The reference to Argentinian desaparecidos mirrors the disappearance of Somali dissidents during Mohamed Siad Barre’s regime (Scego 2008b: 355), the detention of people in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (Scego

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2008b: 96), and the imprisonment of immigrants without residence permit in Lampedusa (Scego 2008b: 97). Oltre Babilonia also associates the story of a survivor of the Argentinian prisons, such as La Flaca, with that of Elsa, who escaped from Auschwitz (Scego 2008b: 249). In another passage, Zuhra problematically compares people traffickers to Western colonialism: ‘Pagare un contrabbandiere di anime [era] illegale? Non più di quanto non lo fosse gettare rifiuti tossici in Somalia, o alimentare le guerre civili e le insicurezze per poi depredare le ricchezze dei paesi africani come faceva l’Occidente’ [Was it illegal to pay a soul smuggler? Not more than it was to throw toxic waste in Somalia or to feed civil war and insecurity to exploit the wealth of African countries as the West was doing] (Scego 2008b: 448). The connection between different situations of discrimination is suggested in other works by Scego even more explicitly than in Oltre Babilonia. For instance, La mia casa è dove sono draws a parallel between Mussolini and Mohamed Siad Barre (Scego 2012b: 66). In Rhoda Barni eloquently criticizes the Bossi-Fini Law and argues that ‘tutto il mondo era paese dopotutto. L’Italia del 2000 non era tanto diversa dalla Somalia di “Boccagrande” [Siad Barre] o dalla Germania del post repubblica di Weimar. I capri espiatori servivano a nascondere le magagne globali’ [the whole world is just one country, after all. Italy in 2000 is no different from the Somalia of Bigmouth or from Germany after Weimar. Scapegoats are useful to hide global troubles] (Scego 2004c: 150). The comparison between disconnected historical periods and geo-social context might f latten the power of analysis, although it achieves the rhetorical goal of making the Italian readership think of the discrimination pursued by the legislation on immigration. The simultaneous representation of different geopolitical situations, the complex structure, and the title of Oltre Babilonia might recall Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu’s Babel (2006).8 As David Bordwell argues, this ‘film of global convergence’ is a ‘network narrative’ that ‘develops the topos of crossing barriers’, since it presents ‘four story strands in four languages (Arabic, English, Spanish and Japanese)’ and ‘the action takes place in four countries and on three continents’ (2008b: 243). Because of its global nature, it is difficult to frame this movie within a national context. Similarly, Oltre Babilonia is set in three continents, features several languages, and describes metaphorical as well as literal border crossing. Scego’s novel provides the sense of a compression of the world, and an intensification of consciousness of its inhabitants in order to live in it. Another similarity between these works is that they adopt a sensationalist imagery, which links together spectacular unrelated situations that contribute to keeping the audience or the readership entertained. Oltre Babilonia presents a series of dramatic revelations, which make the reader wonder what comes next: Miranda is repeatedly humiliated by her lover, a soldier named Carlos who works for the military regime in Argentina and has tortured and killed her brother Ernesto; Zuhra has been raped (Scego 2008b: 10); Patricia forces her girlfriend Mar to abort her child (Scego 2008b: 28); Maryam is an alcoholic (Scego 2008b: 49, 192); Howa Rosario falls off a bus and dies (Scego 2008b: 53); Maryam has been infibulated (Scego 2008b: 59); Majad and Famey and all the passengers of the bus in which they are travelling are raped by Italian troops (Scego 2008b: 69); Patricia commits suicide (Scego 2008b: 74); Maryam’s mother dies of a heart attack

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when she finds out that her husband has been killed by Italian troops (Scego 2008b: 110); Howa Rosario is disfigured by a man who unsuccessfully attempted to rape her (Scego 2008b: 147); and La Flaca is raped and commits suicide (Scego 2008b: 374). Like Rhoda, Zuhra and her mother Maryam might be seen as allegorical representations of modern Somalia because in both cases the violence perpetuated on them impedes the successful establishment of cultural or individual identity. This spectacular set of unfortunate events does not encourage the reader to read Oltre Babilonia or Rhoda as realist novels, but rather suggests looking at violence as a metaphor that ref lects the condition of Somalia or that of immigrants in Italy. The succession of such an impressive list of dramatic events and the accent on tragic aspects certainly underline the inf luence of sensationalist mainstream movies, such as Babel, on Oltre Babilonia. However, it also confirms some of the clichéd images of minor subjects, such as the idea that immigrants are necessarily living in extraordinary situations. The dramatic and sensational descriptions of the lives of ill-fated immigrant female characters of African origins recall the stereotypical representation of minorities in newspapers. In this regard, bell hooks argues that most American readers accept fictional representations of African American women only if they are connected to a shared story of pain and victimization, although ‘no narrative of resistance was voiced and respected in this setting’ (1992: 44). Hooks feels bonded into this narrative and revolts against the fact that a ‘ “true” telling of black female experience’ and ‘black female identity [is] made synonymous again and again with “victimization” [...] The black female voice that was deemed “authentic” [is] the voice of pain; only the sound of hurting could be heard’ (1992: 44). The marked emphasis on the pain of the characters in Oltre Babilonia aims to denounce racism and sexism and make readers participate in the effects of discrimination. Moreover, it is true that some of these characters are able to ‘riappropriarsi della propria felicità’ [reappropriate their happiness] after a traumatic event (Lori 2014: 50). However, dramatized representation could be seen as victimization rather than a request for social change and awareness. To paraphrase Sara Suleri, this aspect is particularly evident in the representation of rape as a ‘trope for the act of imperialism’, whose frequent presence in postcolonial literature has perhaps weakened its ‘critically liberating’ force (1992: 17). The multiple temporal and spatial setting of Oltre Babilonia also presents globalization as a kind of recolonization and shows how multinational liberalism takes possession of the lives of African as well as European people. In particular, Zuhra explains the global struggle against neo-colonialism while explaining the meaning of the term Babylon in Bob Marley’s songs: ‘[Marley] disse che Babylon era tutto quanto di peggio possa esistere al mondo. La feccia, il vomito, lo schifo, il dolore [...] pensai che avrei tanto voluto vivere oltre Babilonia’ [[Marley] said that Babylon was the worst that could exist in the world. Crap, vomit, disgust, pain [...] I really wished I could live beyond Babylon] (Scego 2008b: 450). For the Jamaican songwriter, Babylon is a synonym for the ‘West’, and therefore the incitement to leave Babylon ‘calls the listener to self-awareness and spiritual liberation’ (Middleton 2000: 186). For instance, after the chorus of the song ‘Babylon System’ (1979) Marley invites his listeners to rebel against global injustice: ‘The Babylon system is the

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vampire, falling empire, | sucking the blood of the sufferers, | building church and university, | deceiving the people continually’. In other terms, Babylon is ‘a system of bondage and oppression that represents everything from the West African slave trade to colonial and neocolonial class structure, racism, economic deprivation, police brutality, as well as ideological bondage or “mental slavery” ’ (Middleton 2000: 189). In the light of this analysis, Zuhra’s final statement in Oltre Babilonia — ‘Sono andata oltre Babilonia, capisci? Oltre tutto, in un posto in cui la mia vagina è felice e innamorata’ [I have been beyond Babylon, do you understand? In a place where my vagina is happy and in love] (Scego 2008b: 449) — should be interpreted as a desire to go beyond not only her personal problems (particularly the trauma of her rape), but also to go beyond the repressive system of Western capitalism. Significantly, when Zuhra imagines going beyond Babylon her menstrual blood leaves a trace with the shape of a red star on her underpants (Scego 2008b: 456). In this moment she regains the capacity to distinguish colours, which she had lost after being raped. The star might refer to the national f lag of Somalia and the hope of a better future for her ‘raped’ country. In addition, the five-pointed red star is a symbol of communism, which has been used to represent the five fingers of the worker’s hand, as well as the five continents of the communist international dream. Oltre Babilonia recounts that all Italian political parties wanted ‘un’Africa orientale saldamente in mano italiana’ [a Western Africa firmly in Italian hands] (Scego 2008b: 259), yet communism is often presented with positive connotations. For instance, Maryam praises her uncle Gurey since he created a communist community in Somalia (Scego 2008b: 389), which Mohamed Siad Barre’s scientific socialism destroyed (Scego 2008b: 292). One of the Somali dictator’s main crimes is precisely to have defrauded Somalis of the word communism (Scego 2008b: 424). Moreover, Elias presents the story of Pasquinelli, an unscrupulous Italian administrator in Somalia, who first belonged to the Fascist Party and later to the Christian Democratic Party. Pasquinelli argues that these two political parties are connected by the identification of communists as the enemy (Scego 2008b: 315). Discussing the Italian political situation, Miranda also praises the editorial staff of the communist newspaper Il Manifesto by affirming that ‘loro c’erano’ [they were there] (Scego 2008b: 366). Although presenting a multifaceted description of political engagement, these references show that Oltre Babilonia vaguely associates impegno with the legacy of the Italian communist agenda, thus envisioning a possible imaginary community to which some of the main characters of Oltre Babilonia belong. To some extent, this novel might therefore be inscribed within those narratives that — to use Andrea Minuz’s words — have celebrated an ‘epica nazionale a vocazione minoritaria costruita sui modi del melodramma e sulle forme della nostalgia’ [minoritarian national epos that is constructed using melodrama and forms of nostalgia] of the impegno found in the Italian Communist Party (2014: 3). In conclusion, Igiaba Scego’s political engagement is strictly connected to the multiple settings of her works. Oltre Babilonia explains the present marginalization of immigrants in Italy and the discrimination against colonized subjects in Somalia by connecting them to global situations of discrimination in the world. To paraphrase Stuart Hall, Scego represents the condition of colonized and diasporic subjects as

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being ‘always “somewhere else” [...] doubly marginalized, displaced always other than where he or she is, or is able to speak from’, which is the result of their position ‘in relation to cultured narratives which have been profoundly expropriated’ (Hall 1987: 44). However, the presentation of many different settings might f latten the temporal and spatial dimensions into an undetermined glocal universe, where racial divides are nonetheless more present than ever. The imagined communities that Oltre Babilonia and Rhoda envision in terms of race are further complicated and cannot be separated from other features that define the identities of the characters, such as language — as Chapter 1 has discussed — or class, gender, education, and religion, which is the analysis at the core of the next sections. Meticciato and Cultural Racism in ‘Identità’, ‘Salsicce’, and Nuvole sull’equatore Meticci are frequent presences in Somali Italian literature. The textual analysis so far has focused on Domenica Axad in Madre piccola and will analyse the representation of Mar in Oltre Babilonia in the next section, but other meticci characters are present in Somali Italian literature, including Sissi, Yabar’s cousin, in Il comandante del fiume, Michele, the son of one of Shirin’s friends, who is presented as a new Italian in Lontano da Mogadiscio (2013: 323–27), and a nameless meticcio character who is friends with Maryam Laamane in Mogadiscio (Scego 2008b: 194). Meticci are also the main characters in many novels about Italian colonialism including Wu Ming 2 and Antar Mohamed’s Timira and Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle. Meticci characters embody in their skin the identitarian split of persons who disrupt racial boundaries: ‘Literary mulattos [...] are able to cross boundaries, which were considered fixed or natural. Therefore, they are ideal critics of the establishment’ (Sollors 1997: 245). Their presence is noteworthy because the 1936–37 laws against interracial unions and the 1938 Racial Laws considered them as biologically inferior individuals, naturally inclined to prostitution, crime, violence, and depravity (Stefani 2007: 158). However, the threat that these figures represent cannot be entirely blamed on biological racism, as ‘racist arguments against immigration no longer bear on the question of the biological inferiority of the immigrant, for that is now untenable in scientific terms’ (Ward 1997: 91). In this regard, Derek Duncan suggests that the legacy of the Racial Laws should be found in the fear of hybridity, not only in biological terms but also in cultural ones (2005: 100–01). According to Étienne Balibar, in the era of decolonization the bodily signs of the alterity of immigrants have been reconfigured as the stigmata of a cultural difference. Modern racism is based on unassimilability between cultures, which has partly substituted the biological criteria. ‘Culture can also function like a nature’ if it allows the division of humanity into two incompatible cultures (Balibar 1991: 22), ‘one universalist and progressive whose style of life is legitimated by institution and the other is considered as particularist and primitive’ (Balibar 1991: 25). Significantly, cultural racism is represented in Oltre Babilonia as the fear of cultural miscegenation: ‘La gente non ti diceva più che eri di una razza inferiore, le razze si era scoperto che non esistevano, la gente ora ti diceva “la tua cultura è troppo diversa dalla mia. Siamo incompatibili” ’ [people no longer said that you were of

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a different race, people discovered that races did not exist, and now people said ‘your culture is too different from mine. We are incompatible’] (Scego 2008b: 394). Similarly, when Zuhra has to move some Mozart CDs in the book- and recordshop where she works, a racist customer wonders ‘che ci fa Mozart in mano a una zulù?’ [What is a Zulu doing with a Mozart CD in her hand?], stressing the cultural incompatibility between an African subject and Western classical music (Scego 2008b: 235). It should be noted that both this text and Madre piccola were written after the discrimination against Muslims began in the wake of September 11, 2001, which is one of the most evident recent cases of ‘cultural racism’ (Rivera 2003: 20). The presence of meticci characters symbolizes an uncanny encounter between cultures and religions, and most notably another way of being Italian. Igiaba Scego’s short stories ‘Identità’ [Identity] (2008a) and ‘Salsicce’ (2005c) are perhaps the short stories that represent most clearly, respectively, how colonial mixophobia has become a fear that incompatible cultures can mix with each other in contemporary Italy, and how integration has been frequently associated with conversion to Catholicism. ‘Identità’ begins with a mock article by an Italian female journalist, Milena Morri, focusing on interracial union and arguing that Italian men prefer foreign women because they are beautiful and more sexually available. The article provides the example of an interracial couple: Fatou, a woman of Somali origins, and Valerio. The article describes Fatou according to orientalist stereotypes as a beautiful woman with ‘collo da giraffa e due occhi da cerbiatta indifesa [...] unghie e denti che all’occorrenza possono fare molto male’ [a neck like a giraffe and two defenceless doe eyes [...] nails and teeth that, when duty calls, can do a lot of damage] (Scego 2008a: 8–9).9 Moreover, it portrays her as ‘una cagnolina che aspetta solo la mossa del padrone’ [a puppy who simply waits for her owner to act] (2008a: 9), and her house as a place ‘profondamente tendente a una primitività ancestrale’ [profoundly leaning towards an ancestral primitivism] (2008a: 8). This description clearly ironizes how colonial stereotypes are still present in the media. Fatou is divided between Italian and Somali cultures, which are embodied by Valerio, her boyfriend, and Nura, her sister. Valerio is Italian but was born in Somalia and knows Somali. Fatou and Valerio share a bond of complicity, until Valerio hangs a picture of a madama, a concubine of Italian soldiers in the colonies, in their living room. Fatou starts wondering whether Valerio — as well as most white Italians, such as Milena Morri — sees her as a madama too, and if a white person can be anything but a colonialist. On the other hand, Nura is different from Fatou since she is ‘somala’ and strictly follows the rules of the Qur’an (Scego 2008a: 16). For example, Fatou does not tell her sister that a ‘folle frocio’ [nutty queer] lived in that house before her and Valerio, since she knows that Nura would have never consented to be her guest (Scego 2008a: 26). Nura would want her sister to be a good Muslim, too, and to be married to a Muslim man. Despite Fatou’s expectations, when Valerio and Nura meet they are able to overcome their differences thanks to their knowledge of a common language, Somali (Scego 2008a: 33). The strict association of Islam and traditional Somali culture with homophobia shown in the characterization of Fatou is different from that of other Somali Italian literature. For instance, the traditional Somali community in Il latte è buono

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considers its only homosexual member as the ‘coscienza degli oppressi’ [conscience of the oppressed] (Garane 2005: 15). The dichotomic description of an Italian character as a person with a colonial gaze and a Somali character as a traditional Muslim is understandable within the comic vein of the short story and might appeal to the more general readership which the leading publishing house Laterza addresses. ‘Identità’ successfully demonstrates that the fear of interracial unions in contemporary Italy has become the fear of the mixing of different cultures. The main character of ‘Salsicce’ is an Italian woman of Somali origins who feels at ease with her double identity, until the Bossi-Fini Law is approved. After this moment, she feels dispossessed of her rights as an Italian citizen in terms of religion and ethnicity. The core of the story is the affirmation of a multiple Somali–Muslim–Italian identity, which is denied by both Italians and Somalis. For instance, the main character’s family does not consider her a proper Muslim, because she is too European. Likewise, she does not feel Italian when she has to answer questions about her identity at a civil service exam by a negative character called ‘l’esaminatice’ [the examiner], who ‘sembrava un travestito’ [looked like a crossdresser] (Scego 2005c: 28) and was ‘butterata’ [pock faced] (Scego 2005c: 35).10 In short, the young main character of the story is torn between her parents’ Muslim moral codes and the Italian way of life. The Bossi-Fini Law not only troubles her Muslim identity, but also her Italian identity, since the main character assumes that her country of origin is liberal. For instance, she describes the obligation of fingerprinting, introduced by this law, as a way to reduce a person’s identity to a physical and silent signifier: ‘Credo di essere una donna senza identità. O meglio con più identità. Chissà come saranno belle le mie impronte digitali! Impronte anonime, senza identità, neutre come la plastica’ [I think I am a woman with no identity. Better yet, a woman with several identities. Just think how beautiful my fingerprints will be! Anonymous fingerprints, without an identity, as neutral as plastic] (Scego 2005c: 28). In this passage, the main character affirms that having a double identity is like having no identity. In order to be accepted in Italy, she tries to defy her belonging to the Muslim Sunnite religion by eating impure foods such as pork. Later, she vomits before eating sausages, underlying a physical incompatibility with the food of the other. In an interview with Cristina Mauceri, Scego affirms that ‘il vomito rappresenta un modo per riappropriarsi della propria identità’ [the vomit represents the reappropriation of one’s identity] (2004a). It should be noted that ‘Salsicce’ has a clear assonance with Igiaba Scego’s memoir La mia casa è dove sono, by suggesting that this short story has an autobiographical inspiration. In a passage of this text, Scego describes her problems with bulimia and how she frequently vomited to erase her sense of guilt for living in the luxury of Western countries (2010c: 143). In order to understand the role of sausages in this short story, it might be worth analysing how the association between disgust and the cultures of ‘others’ is frequently used in the dominant discourse to discriminate against them (Rivera 2003: 24). According to Julia Kristeva, the rejection of what is ‘other’ is crucial to create the dominant subjectivity. In particular, she argues that food often symbolizes the expulsion of the ‘foreign body’ from the body politic:

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Kristeva assumes that racism is strictly connected to the abjection of the ‘other’ within: the disgust of the ‘other’ in the derogatory narratives expresses nothing but a lack of self-consciousness. The horror stories of what ‘they’ incorporate elsewhere define the limits of what can be incorporated in the cultural diet. Moreover, food is frequently present in literary works by immigrants to indicate their belonging: Because people absorb food, they seize the opportunity to demarcate their own and the other group. People eating similar food are trustworthy, good, familiar, and safe; but people eating unusual food give rise to feelings of distrust, suspicion and even disgust. Food taboos formalise to an extreme the position with regard to particular foods, hence the existence of a culinary classification and norms, which attribute to food and its eaters a given place in the world. (Scholliers 2001: 8)

As immigrants cross national borders and threaten the notion of national identity, food crosses ‘the border between the “outside” and the “inside”, and this “principle of incorporation” touches upon the very nature of a person’ (Scholliers 2001: 8). In this regard, Parati recognizes that in many Italian migrant writings, ‘food [...] is a reductive but effective trope that allows [one] [...] to manipulate stereotypes about Italianness’ (2005: 77). It should be noted that in the appendix of Rhoda and La Nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock, Scego presents some Somali recipes and invites the Italian reader to have a more physical contact with the ‘other’, by eating his or her food. The main character of ‘Salsicce’ reacts to a totalizing notion of identity that is imposed on her body by rejecting foreign food. Initially ‘Salsicce’ portrays cultures as irreducible one to another, by recalling the comparison between the body and the body politic that is often employed to discriminate against minorities (Matala de Mazza and others 2007). Significantly, Scego was inspired by the many stories in Castilian literature in which Moriscos had to prove their conversion to Catholicism by eating food deemed impure by Muslims (Scego 2004a). The second part of ‘Salsicce’ suggests that different cultural identities can coexist, although they play different roles in the life of the main character. As Mauceri affirms in an interview with Scego, the main character of ‘Salsicce’ is both Italian and Muslim, although her two identities are described in dichotomic terms (Scego 2004a): her Italian part is connected to culture and her Somali part to nature (Scego 2005c: 28–29). ‘Salsicce’ shows that Italian and Muslim identities are different but nonetheless compatible. The imitation of the typical Western diet mocks socio-political responses to demographic multi-ethnicity, which claim that immigrants and ethnic minorities should integrate by assimilating to the dominant culture without maintaining their differences. However, the coexistence between Italian and Somali cultures and the metaphorical use of the rejection of foreign

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food simultaneously recalls and challenges the dominant derogatory narratives concerning immigrants. The non-acceptance of sausages within the body of the main character doubles the non-acceptance of her identity within the body politic: as Italy does not integrate Muslims, the Muslim character cannot incorporate the food of the other and deny her religious identity. Among the cultural aspects that the main character chooses to define her Italian identity, it is interesting to note that she depicts herself as a left-wing activist, by referring to ‘partigiani’ [partisans] (Scego 2005c: 9). In another passage, the main character identifies with Titino (Nino Manfredi), the main character of Ettore Scola’s movie Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? [Will Our Heroes Be Able to Find Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously Dis­app­eared in Africa?] (1968), who decides to live with an African tribe instead of going back to Italy with his brother-in-law (Alberto Sordi). The cultural identification with a definite product of Italian cultural industry such as commedia all’italiana [Italian-style comedy] aims to show the main character’s multiple identities and to resist cultural homologation. Scola’s movie occasionally reverses the gaze between the Europeans and the Africans, and depicts an African character that scares Sordi with his camera (Laurenzi 2000: 349). However, Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? is also a symbol of the distorted Italian representation of African people, who are described as a crowd which can be easily subjugated by a Western man since they are credulous and naive. Through these cultural references, the main character claims her right to choose which symbols better represent her identity, problematizing at the same time the imagined communities to which she feels she belongs. The main character of ‘Salsicce’ is a Muslim Italian of Somali origins, but she also identifies with the Italian main character of a movie set in Africa, in which ‘the characters of the “locals” are never developed: they are only stereotyped and/ or idealized by the two Italians’ (Luijnenburg 2014: 47). As in ‘Identità’, a final reconciliation between the two identities is obtained through language and in the ways in which the main character represents herself. At the beginning of ‘Salsicce’, the main character is a young girl who lives in Rome and is enjoying Ferragosto, a ‘typical’ Italian holiday. She implicitly identifies with anyone, since anyone like her could have gone ‘in un qualsiasi negozio di una qualsiasi strada dimenticata da Dio’ [into any old shop on any godforsaken street] and bought sausages (Scego 2005c: 23). Her colloquial language does not provide the reader with any clues to her identity, until the issue of religion is presented. The main character’s language is characterized by a colloquial register, which is emphasized by the presence of repetitions, atonic pronouns, rhetorical questions, apostrophes, use of the indicative tense instead of subjunctive, the insertion of capital letters in order to reproduce the different volume and tones of vocal expression, and the omission of conjunctions. The presence of direct dialogues allows the reader to participate in the main character’s emotions and to identify with her. On a lexical level, the main character of ‘Salsicce’ limits the presence of Somali words and employs slang, Roman dialect, neologisms, and swear words, which highlight her belonging to Italian linguistic communities. For instance, dialect plays a strategic function since it aims to emphasize the Romanness of the main character. The

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vernacular contributes to create a bitter comic effect, since the main character wants to ‘become Italian’ by eating sausages even though she already speaks with a specific Italian accent. This use of language succeeds in showing that the two cultures that had been previously presented as irreducible and distant can coexist in the main Somali Italian character. The most significant thematic issue that ‘Salsicce’ shares with other Somali Italian works is that it associates integration in Italy with conversion to Catholicism. Scego implicitly suggests the same idea in the title Italiani per vocazione [Italians by Vocation] (2006), which she chose for an edited volume of short stories by immigrant writers. This title implies that Italianness is not a condition that should be acquired through living in the country, but rather a religious calling. The importance of how biological racism is connected to the acceptance of Catholicism in Italy has been outlined in the previous analysis of Cristina Ali Farah’s Madre piccola and in Kaha Mohamed Aden’s short story ‘Eedo Maryam’. Moreover, the strict connection between colonization and Catholicism is suggested in the title of Ennio Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere, which explicitly refers to the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. The idea that racial discrimination might be connected to religious affiliation both in colonial Somalia and in postcolonial Italy is perhaps most strikingly presented in Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Nuvole sull’equatore. This novel features a meticcio young woman called Giulia as the main character and focuses on the issue of meticciato in Somalia during the AFIS administration. Nuvole sull’equatore shows the legacy of laws against interracial unions in Somalia: even after Italian colonialism ended, meticcio young women were confined to religious colleges in Somalia, since they were considered ‘figlie del peccato’ [daughters of sin] (Shirin 2010: 148). Moreover, meticcio couples did not want to be seen together (Shirin 2010: 14) and racial segregation in public places continued (Shirin 2010: 40). In presenting the plot of this novel, it might be useful to read it along with Erminia Dell’Oro’s Il fiore di Merara [The Flower of Merara] (1994) and L’abbandono. Una storia eritrea [The Abandonment. An Eritrean Story] (1991), two texts that also deal with the issue of colonialism and meticciato, but from such a different perspective that I am inclined to see Nuvole sull’equatore as a response to the representation of Africa in Dell’Oro’s work.11 The first and most evident difference between Shirin’s and Dell’Oro’s works are that the latter was written in standard Italian without any insertion of Tigrinya or other languages spoken in Eritrea, which clearly allows one to see her experience of Eritrea as that of a white Italian colonist living there with little contact with the local population in the local language. Il fiore di Merara employs a child’s viewpoint to recollect the childhood that the author spent in Asmara, where she was born in 1938. As Polezzi has noticed, this gaze is employed to describe ‘a space where reality and history mix together with legend and mythical dimension’, by producing ‘a singular, dreamlike vision of Eritrea in colonial and post-colonial times’ (2006: 155). According to Polezzi, this point of view ‘avoids, ultimately, questions about individual responsibility and generational re-assessment of history’ (2006: 156). On the other hand, Giulia’s gaze of a child in Nuvole sull’equatore shows the absurdity of colonial rules, therefore challenging the vision of Africa as a ‘dreamscape of fable-like innocence’ in other books that

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adopted the child’s gaze to talk of Italian colonialism like Dell’Oro’s Il fiore di Merara (Polezzi 2003: 313). Giulia’s narration from a child’s point of view allows the reader to share the surprise of the continuous physical humiliation through which the nuns of the college attempted to redeem their young pupils. Thus, as soon as Giulia enters the religious college she has to get rid of all her clothes (Shirin 2010: 56), she has to get a new haircut (Shirin 2010: 64), and she is frequently punished by the nuns, who leave the signs of lashes on her body and those of her school mates (Shirin 2010: 65). Like Nuvole sull’equatore, Dell’Oro’s L’abbandono also describes the story of a meticcio young woman, Marianna, who is abandoned by her Italian father, is rejected by both Italians and Africans, and eventually goes to Italy. One of the main differences between the two texts lies in the ways in which the African mothers of the two young daughters are portrayed. In Nuvole sull’equatore, Amina, Giulia’s mother, marries an Italian man to improve her social status as a labourer; she seems fully aware of her racial and social status among Italians, and the departure of the Italian father is described laconically as an abrupt (but expected) absence: at Giulia’s birthday ‘Guido non c’era’ [Guido was not there] (Shirin 2010: 48). On the other hand, Marianna’s mother, Sellas, is torn apart by — and eventually dies because of — the departure of her Italian husband. While Giulia comes to terms with her personal story before getting to Italy and deciding to talk to her father (Shirin 2010: 204), Marianna writes to her father and asks him to explain to her mother his reasons for leaving her, thus depending on his version of the story for making peace with her own past (Dell’Oro 1991: 267–69). Another relevant divergence between the two novels is the differing reactions dis­played by the two main characters in front of the arrogance of nuns. In L’ab­ bandono, for example, Sellas meets a nun to put Marianna in a college for meticci, but the nun initially does not want to accept her daughter. Sellas reacts to the nun’s arrogance in these terms: ‘Sellas fissò la suora, le sue spesse lenti da miope, e strinse le labbra, irritata. Avrebbe voluto andarsene, non avere più niente a che fare con quell’essere ignorante che le stava davanti; ma era pur sempre una suora’ [Sellas looked at the nun, at her thick, near-sighted lenses and she closed her lips, irritated. She would want to go, no longer to have anything to do with that ignorant being in front of her; but she was still a nun, after all] (Dell’Oro 1991: 174). Sellas’s acceptance is determined not only by the situation and the protection that her daughter would receive, but also because she implicitly accepts the role the nun embodies and the institution that she represents. On the other hand, Giulia and her schoolmates develop strategies to revolt against the nuns, such as a specific idiom called ‘lingua missioni’ [mission language] to communicate with each other and not be understood by the nuns (Shirin 2010: 72). Giulia’s comments about nuns are also potentially subversive. In a remarkable passage, for example, she wonders about the sex of nuns and she soon realizes that ‘anche le suore hanno le tette’ [even nuns have tits] (Shirin 2010: 64). Similarly, Nuvole sull’equatore shows the successful resistance of Amina against the religious institutions that do not want to provide her daughter with education (Shirin 2010: 100). While in Dell’Oro’s works ‘the bad men [...] are the usual culprits, the Fascists, but the rest of the Italians, the old colonials,

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remain, after all, “brava gente” ’ (Polezzi 2006: 156), Nuvole sull’equatore provides a more radical criticism of colonialism by showing that a cultural motivation, such as the Catholic religion, has often been used in the colonies to justify biological racism. This representation of colonialism shows that, as Chiara Giorgi and Antonio Morone have argued in their historical research, Fascism was not ‘un incidente di percorso, [...] una parentesi in una narrazione nazionale fondamentalmente altra’ [an incident, limited in time, within a radically different national history] (2011: 86), but rather that there was a continuity between the liberal and Fascist colonialism and the AFIS administration with respect to racism. Most Somali Italian literature feature characters of Muslim background, but religion is just one among many aspects that define their multifaceted identity. For instance, in Il comandante del fiume Yabar has attempted unsuccessfully to ‘diventare religioso’ [become religious] (Ali Farah 2014: 212). Yabar’s inability to become a Muslim mirrors that of many young people born in Italy of the same age who distanced themselves from the Catholic religion. This novel also mentions the fact that many Somalis in London lie to their family and drink alcohol, thereby showing how the religious rules of Islam adapt to new social and cultural habits (Ali Farah 2014: 170–71). Somali Italian authors predominantly write about Islam to show that infibulation is not a practice required by the Qur’an (Garane 2005: 31; Scego 2008b: 166; Sirad 1996b: 111). This is perhaps in response to the misconceptions about Islam, of which Oriana Fallaci provides a good example in La rabbia e l’orgoglio [The Rage and the Pride]: ‘Lo sai, vero, che cos’è l’infibulazione? È la mutilazione che i musulmani impongono alle bambine per impedir loro, una volta cresciute (o ancor prima, se si sposano a nove anni), di godere l’atto sessuale’ [Do you know what infibulation is? It is a mutilation that Muslims impose on girls in order to impede their sexual enjoyment once they grow up (or before, if they marry when they are nine)] (2001: 228). Shirin is the only Somali writer to talk extensively about her being Muslim in the wider European context in the new version of Lontano da Mogadiscio. The novel ends by claiming that religious faith might contribute to the coming of a new dawn in Somalia (Shirin 2013: 549), and it articulates a more definite religious identity that the author could freely express since she moved to the multireligious context of the United Kingdom from Italy.12 For instance, Shirin expresses her surprise both in seeing that prayer rooms for all religions are present in airports in the United Kingdom (Shrin 2013: 337) and that some Italians consider the fact that women wear the hijab to be an imposition rather than a choice that could be made independently. Notably, Shirin asks herself: Perché ci sono persone che devono dettare cosa è l’Islam? Ma cosa sta succedendo? Perché in Occidente ci sono politici che sono così intolleranti? Perché tutto questo allarmismo per un pezzo di stoffa? In tutti i quadri e gli affreschi nelle chiese di tutto il mondo la Vergine Maria è raffigurata con l’hijab. È anche Lei così pericolosa? (2013: 534–35) [Why are other people dictating what Islam is? What is going on? Why are some politicians in the West becoming so intolerant? Why this scaremongering about a piece of cloth? The Virgin Mary, in all the paintings and frescoes of every church around the world, is wearing a hijab. Is she dangerous?]

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In another and even more explicit passage of the text, Shirin argues that ‘oggigiorno i musulmani sono diventati degli ostaggi, senza aver commesso alcun crimine’ [Muslims have become scapegoats without committing any crime] (2013: 337). These words certainly signal a relationship of non-reciprocity concerning religious freedom in Italy. While Italians in Mogadishu built the largest Christian cathedral in Africa (Fig. 10; Fig. 11; Fig. 12), which ‘[si ergeva maestosa] vicino a minareti di antiche moschee costruite in pietra corallina’ [stood majestically next to minarets of ancient coral stone mosques] (Shirin 2013: 405–06), in Novara there are no mosques or satellite tele­v ision programmes with which to follow religious ceremonies (Shirin 2013: 133), and ‘osservare il mese del digiuno [...], è come sciare sulle dune del deserto’ [fasting [during Ramadan] [...] is like skiing on the desert dunes] (Shirin 2013: 134). The clear reference to the oppression of Muslims in Italian colonies and contemporary Italy in works like ‘Eedo Maryam’, Lontano da Mogadiscio, Madre piccola, Nuvole sull’equatore, and ‘Salsicce’ shows that religion is inescapably linked to a racist perception of the ‘Somali other’ in Italy, and Islam and Italy are seen as two incompatible concepts. Islam is frequently represented in Somali Italian literature as an alternative to assimilation and cultural homogenization: the adaptation of Islamic practices to another cultural context is part of a broader process of identity negotiation. In conclusion, I cannot but agree with Roberto Gritti by recognizing that the presence of Muslims and Muslim authors in Italian contributes to the secularization of the country. Although the most common stereotype about Islam and Muslims concerns their being incapable of separating religion from politics (Gritti 2001: 15), the request for equal religious rights for which these writers ask seems to propose a greater separation between politics and Catholicism in Italy. Political Immediacy and Rhizomatic Chronotopes The previous textual analysis has highlighted that many characters of Somali Italian literature describe their identity as internally divided: they are familiar with Italian culture because of the historical relationship between Italy and Somalia and because they live or have lived in the country, but at the same time they are excluded because of the colour of their skin. Shirin Ramzanali Fazel expresses this condition in Lontano da Mogadiscio: she calls herself ‘un’italiana dalla pelle scura’ [an Italian with dark skin] (Shirin 2013: 320), but argues that in Novara ‘nessuno conosceva il mio nome ma solo il colore della mia pelle’ [nobody knew my name, but only the colour of my skin] (Shirin 2013: 99). Like the texts analysed before, Lontano da Mogadiscio presents a rhizomatic structure and ‘does not follow a chronological order, but rather links different situations together in relation to the emotions inspired by the narration of the events’ (Brioni 2013a: 627). The 2013 edition of the book further complicates the already rhizomatic structure of the novel, as at least four different time periods are intertwined: the memory of Somalia before 1970 described in 1994, the narration in the present of 1994, the re-reading and re-writing of those parts from the viewpoint of 2013, and the writing in the present of Shirin’s daily life in 2013. (Brioni 2013a: 627)

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Figs. 10 (above) and 11 (left). Side and front views of the Mogadishu Cathedral during the AFIS administration (1950–60). Franco Granata’s private picture collection. Courtesy of Matteo Guglielmo

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The possibility to look up particular words in the e-book version offers further opportunities to follow alternative and non-linear paths for reading. The split identity of Somali Italian characters is often represented and mirrored in the structure of the literary works: a definite spatial event in Italy in the present falls out in the normal course of biographical life and immediately refers to another event in space or time, which is frequently, but not exclusively, connected to colonialism in Somalia. Therefore, Somali Italian literature envisions a specific chronotope, or ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’ (Bakhtin 1981: 84). According to Mikhail Bakhtin, who first introduced this term, the literary space-time allows the readership to understand ‘the weaving of historical and socio-public events’ in literature (1981: 247), and ‘determines to a significant degree’ the representation of characters (1981: 251). Moreover, the chronotope is useful in understanding the time-space in which a literary work has been produced: ‘Out of the actual chronotopes of our world merge the ref lected and created chronotopes of the world represented in the work’ (Bakhtin 1981: 253). Bakhtin not only believes that the chronotope might explicate the social and political context, but also that a different representation of reality might modify the existing social order. In fact, by materializing spaces and times, artists are able to create an image of the real world where historical relations can be subverted or confirmed.

Fig. 12. The ruins of the Mogadishu Cathedral in 1991. Picture by Claudio Colombo. Courtesy of Guido Colombo

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By highlighting the relationships of power, exploitation, and subordination in a postcolonial global space, Somali Italian literature subverts the depiction of nonwhites and non-Catholics as a constant threat to national identity. The intersection of multiple geographic and temporal settings creates a complex and stratified representation, which suggests that the present cultural, economic, and racial discrimination of immigrants cannot be fully grasped if it is not considered in light of the Italian colonial past. The chronotope in Somali Italian literature does not follow a linear structure, but instead one that is organic (rhizomatic), which Deleuze and Guattari explain in these terms: Unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even non-sign states [...] It is composed not of unities but of dimensions, or rather moving directions [...] It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills [...] Unlike a structure, which is defined by a set of points and positions, the rhizome is made only of lines; lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line of f light or deterritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes metamorphosis, changes in nature. These lines, or ligaments, should not be confused with lineages of the arborescent type, which are merely localizable linkages between points and positions [...] The rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entrance ways and exits and its own lines of f light. (1987: 21)

As Deleuze and Guattari’s organization of discourse challenges the dominant linear style of philosophical Western writing, the chronotope of Somali Italian litera­t ure questions the dominant discourse regarding immigration in contemporary Italy that frequently avoids historical contextualization. The structure of these texts is rhizomatic because Somali Italian literature envisions cultural roots not merely as a link to a past that is lost in Mogadishu, but also as the source of trans­nat­ional networks of relationships, which are related to the diasporic condition of Somalis. Somali Italian literature presents an expanding representation of time, where the present can be explained in relation to the past and the past survives within the present. Moreover, the textual analysis has highlighted that the chronotope of Somali Italian literature cannot be reduced to the chronological time of the everyday but expresses a temporality that is regulated by the lives of the main characters. The chronotope of Somali Italian literature involves a series of temporal negotiations that break a unified composition of historical time and space, by accounting for personal time and individual durations. As a consequence, time in Somali Italian literature can be described by referring to Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of Aion. According to Deleuze, multiplicity is irreducible to one scheme (Vaccaro 1990: 9), and minorities manifest themselves in different spatial and temporal relations, by creating ideal connections between different events (Vaccaro 1990: 59). Deleuze and Guattari argue that minor subjectivities do not express themselves through the measurable time of Chronos, ‘the time of measure that situates persons and things, develops a form, and

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determines a subject’ (1987: 262), but rather through an experiential, individual, and intimate time, Aion, ‘the indefinite time of the event, the f loating line that knows only speeds and continually divides that which transpires into an already-there that is at the same time not-yet-here, a simultaneous too-late and too-early, a something that is both going to happen and has just happened’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 262). The two forms of time do not just express a difference ‘between the ephemeral and the durable, nor even between the regular and the irregular, but between two modes of individuation, two modes of temporality’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 262). As Bhabha suggests in the quotation that opens this chapter, the linear and chronological description of time serves to ‘forget the violence of the past’ (1990: 310). On the other hand, Aion allows us to ‘affirm ourselves — to construct and express ourselves — as multiple, complicated beings brought together before any transcendent model or plan’ (Rajchman 2000: 111). The Aion is the form of time that Deleuze and Guattari associate with the idea of becoming that characterizes minor subjects (Bell 1994), which I will discuss further in my Conclusion. As becoming requires an openness to difference, it should be expressed through a perspective that is different from the hegemonic notions of time and space. However, Deleuze and Guattari describe the Aion as transcendent and immaterial in form, taken away from actuality. This is in contrast to Somali Italian literature, which envisions unusual spatial and temporal relationships through real historical events that noticeably affect the lives of the authors and are strongly connected to socio-economic relationships. Moreover, these texts contest the idea that ‘nomads have no history; they only have a geography’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 393), by presenting the version of colonial history that nomads hand down to their descendants. To refer again to Bhabha’s quotation at the beginning of this chapter, the choice of this multiple spatiality and the representation of a discursive time lag are meant to challenge narratives that cut minor subjects off from the histories of their determination. If Paul Gilroy is right to affirm that ‘racism rests on the ability to contain blacks in the present, to repress and to deny the past’ (1987: 12), the representation of discrimination in Italy today as connected to the history of Italian colonialism and to a more global history of discrimination sets the condition of minority in space and time, which we might well define as a ‘transnational’ space and an ‘uncanny’ time. Regarding space, it is significant to note that, along with referring to the transnationality of the Somali diaspora (Lori 2013: 98–99), Somali Italian literature frequently draws a comparison between the condition of immigrants in Italy and that of African American subjects. For instance, Ali Farah’s ‘Rapdipunt’ (2004) refers to African American rap as a model for second-generation migrant adolescents of African descent living in Rome. This story centres on the importance for these characters of finding their cultural ‘roots’. However, the ‘need for the roots’ is not connected to some unchangeable and monolithical origins, but rather is a mediation between Somali cultural elements and the Italian cultural environment. Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Lontano da Mogadiscio refers to the ‘third worlds’ that she has seen in New York, the Rodney King murder in Los Angeles (2013: 193), and the racial segregation in the United States (2013: 191). In ‘Salsicce’, Scego compares

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the conditions of African American and African Italians, by emphasizing that the problem of racism is transnational: ‘ “Comunità afro-americana in rivolta per pestaggio da parte di poliziotti bianchi di un minorenne nero” [...] Perchè ci pestano sempre?’ [‘The Afro-American community revolts because white policemen have beaten an underage black’ [...] Why do they beat us all the time?] (2005c: 33). Throughout her oeuvre, Scego often mentions that she was called ‘Kunta Kinte’ in schools, like the African American slave who is the main character of the 1977 American television miniseries Roots (2003: 80–86; 2008b: 399; 2010c: 151). Similarly, in Il latte è buono, Gashan blames the conformism of African Americans, who have forgotten their origins and iron their hair, which African immigrants to Europe do not do (Garane 2005: 101). These frequent references to African American culture have four main impli­ cations. First, they show that Italy has been actively involved in processes of coloni­zation, decolonization, and postcolonialism, and is not an exception within the Western exploitation of the rest of the world. This challenges the Italians’ selfperception of their own country as victims of other colonial powers. Secondly, these references seem to suggest that the internal division of Somali Italian characters should not merely be seen in terms of their migration, but as a consequence of the exclusion and segregation that they experience in Italian society. Thirdly, they disrupt the relation between colonizers and colonized, revealing a much more complex and rhizomorphic set of transnational geo-political relationships within which the Somali Italian connection can be better understood. To paraphrase Paul Gilroy’s thoughts about African American culture, to locate the relationships between Italy and Somalia ‘in a webbed network, between the local and the global, challenges the coherence of all narrow nationalist perspectives and points to the spurious invocation of ethnic particularity to enforce them and to ensure the tidy f low of cultural output into neat, symmetrical units’ (1993: 29). I will come back to this point in Chapter 3 with an analysis of the peripheral intertextual re­lationships that Somali Italian literature entertains with other literary works written by members of discriminated groups that feature minorities. Finally, to refer to Gilroy’s Black Atlantic again, these references clearly indicate a desire to ‘seek inspiration from other sources and, in effect, to make an intellectual journey across the Atlantic’ (1993: 4). To quote Kenneth Mostern’s reading of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, Somali Italian literature seems to show that ‘the postslavery world, like the postcolonial world, is one with “no resting-place”, one where people displaced across oceans as labouring migrants move themselves across vast territories from country to city’ (2001: 264). In particular, references to African American literature in Somali Italian literature seem to show that the ‘postslavery and postcolonial exper­ ience is particularly conducive to the generation of doubles’ (Mostern 2001: 261).13 In view of this, Du Bois’s ‘double consciousness’ might be a useful comparative paradigm to describe some aspects of the double nature and cultural intermixture of the divided characters in Somali Italian literature. Thus, as Tatiana Petrovich Njegosh points out, by reading la storia della razza in Italia in comparazione e in un contesto simultaneamente nazionale e sovranazionale, che includa sia le colonie sia gli Stati Uniti, è

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[...] possibile vedere le dinamiche transnazionali di razzializzazione tra Italia, Africa, Europa e Stati Uniti a cavallo tra Ottocento e Novecento e poi nei primi decenni del Novecento, nonché i risultati materiali e simbolici di quelle dinamiche. (2012: 14) [the history of race in Italy in comparison and within a simultaneously national and supranational context, which includes both the colonies and United States, [...] it is possible to see the transnational dynamics of racialization between Italy, Africa, Europe and the United States at the very end of the nineteenth and in the first decades of the twentieth century and the material and symbolic results of those dynamics.]

This comparative reading obviously does not aim to equate two different experiences like colonialism and slavery, but rather to show possible connections between ‘the postslavery or postcolonial experience of the educated middle class, which are in many ways quite the same’ (Mostern 2001: 267). Moreover, Du Bois implies that both white and black Americans are Christian, while in Somali Italian literature physical and religious discrimination are strictly connected. According to Du Bois, double consciousness is not an essential or natural feature of African American subjects but a social construction: African American subjects can perceive themselves only through a ‘veil’ — or, hegemonic representation — which has been created by white people to preserve their own economic supremacy and dominant social position. African American subjects are separated from white American citizens by a colour-line, and they feel a sense of ‘two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder’ (Du Bois 1994: 2). This idea is crucial when describing the ‘double consciousness’ in Somali Italian literature, as its characters do not only feel ‘like strangers in their own homes’ (Du Bois 1994: 2) because they had to move from Somalia, but because they feel discrimination in a country whose culture they and their families know well. A second key idea of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks which can be related to Somali Italian literature is that the inescapable desire of the African American subject ‘to merge his double self into a better and truer self ’ (Du Bois 1994: 2) allows one to gain ‘a new possibility for social and personal empowerment’ (Hale 1994: 448). The painful inner division allows the African American subject to acquire a ‘second sight’ and a greater self-awareness. As a consequence of the loss of social and economic power, he or she can ‘see more’ and is able to consider another point of view: A position of social oppression has its compensations: what the subaltern lack in social power, they gain in knowledge [...] the ‘Negro’ see[s] that the white [...] cannot see him; he is behind a veil that the white mistakes for him. And he can also see that he cannot see himself [...] the ‘Negro’ alone knows that this ignorance is created by his socially imposed identity [...] The ‘veil’ [...] creates a double consciousness within the ‘Negro’, a split between his inner self and the self imposed by white society. If this outer self is false, it is, however, also the only self that the ‘Negro’ can see: he is thus blind to himself, lacking any true self-consciousness. (Hale 1994: 450)

The marginal position of African Americans allows them to see beneath the veil that white society has imposed on them and to envision a different self-representation.

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One of the most renowned novels inspired by The Souls of Black Folk, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, reconfigures this double vision as: a slightly different sense of time, you’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes you’re behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible f lowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it laps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around. (1982: 8)

The main character of Invisible Man is able to ‘look beneath the surface’ of the present (Ellison 1982: 151), and to see his presence in the US in light of historical events, implying deportation and slavery. As Ellison points out in Shadow and Act, the dialogue between these two temporal dimensions challenges the racist dominant discourse: When the white American [...] says, ‘This is American reality’, the Negro tends to answer ‘Perhaps, but you’ve left out this, and this, and this. And most of all, what you’d have the world accept as me isn’t even human’. (1995: 25)

Similarly, Somali Italian literature represents the empowering force of its split consciousness of temporality. The ‘doppia visione’ [double vision] — to use Ali Farah’s expression in an interview with Radio Alt (2007b), although it might be more correct to talk of ‘multiple visions’ for the reasons explained previously — of many characters in these writings presents history through a rhizomatic rather than linear narration. The Somali Italian chronotope brings back the memory of the traumatic events of colonialism in contemporary Italy, by showing what Étienne Balibar (2004) and Sandro Mezzadra (2008) have defined as the recolonization of immigration, namely the fact that the recent politics of immigration reinforce exploitation and recreate the racial hierarchies that were present in the colonies. It clearly emphasizes that, to paraphrase Jaqueline Andall’s sociological studies on contemporary Italy, ‘hierarchical differentiation between Italians and colonial subjects continues to be expressed in a similar form of hierarchical differentiation between Italians and extracomunitari’ (2005: 207). Moreover, it highlights that the narration of Italian history is not merely distorted but also incomplete without considering colonized peoples’ perspectives. To quote Scego, Somali Italian literature ‘prende di petto la storia’ [faces history head on] and unmasks stories that have usually been left latent or ignored (2007: 80). This reconceptualization of temporality through the double vision of Somali Italian characters challenges the self-representation of Italy as a more ‘developed’ country than Somalia, demonstrating that the ‘modernity’ of Italy is connected to the colonial exploitation of other countries. The fact that some Italian colonists think that Somalia is situated in a different temporality than Italy is represented in Gerald Hanley’s Warriors and Strangers, which refers to ‘vecchi coloniali’ [old colonists], who liked to say ‘un anno in Somalia è come cinque anni in Italia’ [a year in Somalia is like five years in Italy] (1971: 79). Similarly, Tempo di uccidere revels in the surprise of Maryam when the main character of the novel gives her a clock (Flaiano 2008: 16). By mirroring the present discrimination against immigrants in the colonial past through a hybrid language, which often transforms the dominant Italian language

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into a unusual idiom for native speakers, Somali Italian literature forces upon the Italian reader a vision that is disorienting or uncanny. Following Sigmund Freud’s definition of the uncanny as ‘that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’ (2001: 225), Somali Italian literature is uncanny as it subverts the familiar narration of Italian racial identity and history. By referring to Julia Kristeva’s reading of Freud’s uncanny in the figure of the stranger, we can suggest that Somali Italian literature implies that the fear of African strangers partly derives from the removal of the colonial memory from the collective consciousness (1994: 181–91). To paraphrase Bhabha, in Somali Italian literature ‘the history confronts its uncanny doubles’ through a partly realist style (2012: 279): this choice is a target-orientated fictional construction that challenges the supposedly realist discourse of the colonial and neo-colonial discourse, which ‘employs a system of representation, a regime of truth, that is structurally similar to realism’ (Bhabha 2012: 101).14 The uncanny nature of these narrations is also evident in the strategic use of irony, which challenges the ‘grand discourse’ of Italian dominant culture. The next chapter will show that the narration of shared histories through autobiographically inspired texts, the reference to non-European literary works, or the critical appropriation of some landmark works of Italian literature also have a disruptive and uncanny potential. In this sense, it is significant to note that Somali Italian literature is replete with uncanny images, which include not only meticci, as I have previously pointed out, but also ghosts or phantasmic presences: the spirits of Kaha Mohamed Aden’s ‘Xusein Suleiman e loro’ and ‘Un tè serio bollente’, Rhoda’s spirit in the eponymous novel, and the many ghosts that populate Gashan’s Rome, as well as the presence of the spirit of Kana, the wise old man who experienced Italian colonialism in Il latte è buono, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. The occurrence of these presences constitutes a constant leitmotif in postcolonial Italian literature. For example, in Tempo di uccidere the Eritrean victim of the Italian soldier comes back to life as a ‘fantasma ai piedi del letto’ [ghost at the foot of the bed] (Flaiano 2008: 51). Many ghosts and spirit presences also populate Regina di fiori e di perle, signalling the haunting presence of colonialism, a ‘repressed’ historical event from the Italian collective unconscious. Cristina Lombardi-Diop argues that in Ghermandi’s novel ‘la figura del tallian sollato [...] ha del demoniaco. Il suo arrivo ad Addis Abeba è vissuto come un’inquietante apparizione di spettri’ [the figure of the tallian sollato [...] is demonic. His arrival in Addis Ababa is perceived as an uncanny manifestation of a spirit] (2007: 257). Similarly, contemporary Italian artwork that deals with the legacy of the colonial period often represents colonized people as ghosts, such as in Giorgio Ballario’s Morire è un attimo [Death Happens Suddenly] (2008: 161), or in Hugo Pratt’s 1979 comic L’uomo della Somalia [The Man of Somalia] (Pratt 2006), in which a British soldier in Somalia is haunted by the ancestral presences of the land that he is conquering. In Luciano Marrocu’s Debrà Libanòs, a police novel set in Ethiopia in 1937, inspector Luciano Serra discovers the brutal killing of 300 monks by General Rodolfo Graziani through a séance (Marrocu 2002: 65). As I have argued elsewhere (Brioni 2013c), the haunting presence of the colonial past is resurrected in the form of a monster in Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (1979), a movie

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that provides a fictional representation of Italians’ fears of the historical nemesis of colonized subjects that were reawakened when Italy transformed from a country of emigration into a country of immigration. Riccardo Bonavita describes the haunting presence of colonial history in the present clearly and argues that to study the relationship between literature and racism in Italy one should ‘studiare dei fantasmi’ [study ghosts] (2009: 24). To summarize, this chapter has shown the difficulty in finding a systematic and univocal critical narrative of race in Somali Italian literature. Nonetheless, the analysis of the chronotope of Somali Italian literature helps us to recognize the topics that are inevitably involved in its representation. First, Somali Italian literature shows that racism in Italy cannot be divorced from a discourse on discrimination that goes beyond the mere Somali and the Italian cultural context. A transnational discourse on race offers a paradigm by which to understand better the Somali Italian encounter, to envision possible alliances, and to ref lect upon the geo-political role of Italy and Somalia. Secondly, Somali Italian literature deconstructs cultural and biological racism — and the sexism, classism, and religious discrimination that are closely connected to it — by setting it in a historical perspective. Each of these works provides an interpretation of history delivered through fictional representation, which is an ideal means to visualize the legacy of colonialism and the resurgence of its narrative tropes in the present. Perhaps more importantly, Somali Italian literature facilitates empathic participation, which might have a stronger impact on the readers’ unconscious. After all, as some of these texts beautifully represent, racism might be seen as an unconscious and aversive response, frequently connected to disgust or repulsion, to the unknown. In this sense, Somali Italian literature brilliantly responds to Del Boca’s invitation to Italian writers to support historians — each in his or her own way — to spread awareness of colonialism, and possibly change the ways in which Italians see the ‘other’ within (2003: 43). Notes to Chapter 2 1. In a similar vein, Deleuze argues in an interview with Claire Parnet that American literature is superior to French literature, since the latter is too narcissistic, moralist, and affected by too much psychologism (2007: 147). In this regard, Charles Stivale argues that Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘insistence on the centrality of Kaf ka’s ethnicity calls into question presuppositions of the homogeneity of European culture while at the time inviting comparisons of Kaf ka’s practices to those of minority writers in general’ (2005: 118). 2. I started to investigate the meaning of Domenica’s cuts in the novel after reading Anna Ciampaglia’s interview with Cristina Ali Ubah Farah, in which she stressed that Domenica’s self-cutting is not ‘autolesionismo’ [self-harming] (2008b). This section is based on a previous article, in which I interpreted the cuts on Domenica’s body as a form of self-expression that initiate the process of writing, or — as I called it –‘dermografia’ [dermographia] (Brioni 2010). 3. Cixous’s écriture féminine has inf luenced Deleuze’s notion of becoming. Thus, écriture féminine is potentially available to both sexes and is not exclusively related to physical or biological ties. Deleuze praises Cixous (Deleuze 2004: 90–93) and also ‘treats the event as synonymous with the wound’ (Reynolds 2007: 145). Unlike Cixous, however, Deleuze describes the wound as an incor­poreal entity that exists ‘before us, before any particular subject or individuality, and yet we are born to embody it’ (Reynolds 2007: 155). Therefore, in Deleuze’s view, ‘the wound is both temporal and transcendental, rather than an empirical event that happens’ (Reynolds 2007: 145). 4. This resemanticization of circumcision and infibulation for Somalis in the Italian context is also

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central in Hawa’s choice to infibulate her daughter in Sirad Salad Hassan’s Sette gocce di sangue (1996b: 109–10). 5. Kaha and I have tried to maintain this feature in the documentary La quarta via, by setting the eponymous oral story concerning the history of Somalia in Pavia, where Kaha lives and works at present. 6. This topic is at the centre of Kaha’s theatre play, Specchio specchio delle mie brame, chi è più abile nel reame? [Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Most Competent of Them All?], staged in Prato in 2006. In this play, Kaha refers to Edward Lazear and Sherwin Rosen’s ‘Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts’ (1981) to explain that the entire community and not merely women are penalized if an incompetent man occupies an important position instead of a skilful woman. 7. Somaliya-Antologia storico culturale 7–8 (1969), edited by the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione della Repubblica Somala [The Ministry of Public Education of the Somali Republic] is dedicated to ‘Il problema della lingua somala’ [The Problem of Somali Language] and further testifies to the vivid debate and participation concerning the adoption of a written language in Somalia. It is written in Italian and English, and shows the different perspectives held by scholars of the Somali language, who suggested adopting respectively Arab, Latin, and Osmanya characters. 8. Igiaba Scego has a shown a keen interest in cinema, as is evident from the title of her first work and from the recent preface that she has written for Leonardo De Franceschi’s edited volume on Italian postcolonial cinema (2013d). 9. Hereafter I refer to Claire Lavagnino’s English translation of ‘Identità’, ‘Identity’ (Scego 2013a). 10. Hereafter I refer to Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria Offredi Poletto’s English translation of ‘Salsicce’, ‘Sausages’ (Scego 2005d). 11. I was so surprised about the intertextual dialogue between Nuvole sull’equatore and Dell’Oro’s works that I have asked Shirin whether she intended to challenge the representation of Africa provided by one of the most visible Italian authors writing about the colonial past in the 1990s and the 2000s. Shirin replied that she did not, although she confirmed that she has read most of Dell’Oro’s works. 12. The greater religious freedom that Muslim immigrants have in the United Kingdom compared to Italy is also at the centre of Kaha Mohamed Aden’s ‘Tra il giusto e il vero’ [Between the Right and the True Option], included in the collection Fra-intendimenti. This short story features a woman who wears a hijab in London to feel part of the local Muslim community and to acquire ‘dignità e forza’ [dignity and strength] since she was a ‘povera vedova profuga con sei figli’ [poor refugee widow with six children] (Kaha 2010: 54). 13. Bhabha also underlines the relation between the postcolonial and the post-slavery experience clearly in a passage of The Location of Culture: ‘Postcolonial perspectives emerge from the colonial testimony of Third World countries and the discourses of “minority” within the geographical divisions of East and West, North and South’ (2012: 245). 14. It should be noted that Kristeva has deeply inf luenced Bhabha’s ref lections on the uncanny and she is frequently mentioned in The Location of Culture.

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Chapter 3

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Belonging All biographies like all autobiographies like all narratives tell one story in place of another story. (Cixous 1997: 178) Identities are [...] the positions which the subject is obliged to take up while always ‘knowing’ (the language of consciousness here betrays us) that they are representation, that representation is always constructed across a ‘lack’, across a division, from the place of the Other, and thus can never be adequate — identical — to the subject processes which are invested in them. (Hall 1996: 6)

The two previous chapters have highlighted that Somali Italian literature does not describe identity as fixed but rather as in constant negotiation. On the one hand, identity in Somali Italian literature is constructed in connection to strategies that express double or multiple linguistic competences. On the other hand, the identities of most Somali Italian characters are internally divided: they partly feel Italian because of their cultural and linguistic knowledge, but they are excluded in Italy because of their skin colour. However, this double belonging cannot be reduced to the racial or the religious dichotomies between two homogeneous groups of Italians and immigrants or Catholics and Muslims. Issues of class, education, gender, and language must be considered as they contribute to envision multifaceted identities, which the present chapter and the Conclusion discuss in more detail. Focusing mostly on Garane Garane’s Il latte è buono, Cristina Ali Farah’s Madre piccola, and Igiaba Scego’s Oltre Babilonia, this chapter seeks to peel away two main layers that are connected to Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of collective assemblage: their autobiographically inspired nature, and their presentation of multiple voices. First, this chapter analyses how partly autobiographical forms might be used to imagine a multiple sense of belonging. Therefore, it contests Deleuze and Guattari’s assumption that free indirect discourse is the technique that most effectively allows the envisioning of this plural and multivoiced subjectivity, since it describes ‘single characters from the point of view of a received and anonymous language’ (1987: 17). In so doing, this chapter provides a response to and extends Parati’s assumption that immigrant writers in Italy privilege autobiographically inspired texts in order to represent their own identity as well as to describe the broader communities to which each writer belongs (2005). My investigation provides further evidence to support the argument that the plural identities and multiple belongings of minor subjectivities are expressed through the subversive use of autobiographically inspired narrations. In particular, the analysis focuses on how

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Somali Italian literature stresses the relational nature of the voice by envisioning authoring as a dialogue. This chapter also shows that, as Stuart Hall’s epigraph quotation suggests, the creation of imagined communities in Somali Italian literature involves the exclusion of other minor subjects. Secondly, the analysis will identify how the many voices that are present in these texts or, to use Mikhail Bakhtin’s terms, their literary heteroglossia, serves to create multiple belongings. Chapter 1 has already demonstrated that many voices are envisioned in Somali Italian texts through the use of different languages. Significantly, Venuti connects the idea of linguistic deterritorialization to that of heteroglossia, by maintaining that ‘minor translation’ destabilizes ‘the major language by cultivating linguistic multiplicity and polychrony to receive the foreign text and culture’ (1998: 139). This chapter interprets heteroglossia as intertextuality, contesting Deleuze and Guattari’s idea that minor literature entertains little dialogue with the dominant narratives of canonized texts or the literary tradition (1986: 18). The reference to specific texts — including canonized Italian texts, migrant writings in Italian, the Somali oral tradition, and other literature — allows us to envision the imagined communities to which characters in Somali Italian literature belong. Double Elitist and Male Affiliations in Il latte è buono As the title of Garane’s novel suggests, milk is a central image in Il latte è buono and the analysis of how it is described in the novel can give us indications about Gashan’s sense of belonging. Milk is a key source of nutrition in pastoralist society, and its alimentary relevance in Somali nomadic culture is underlined in language, as there is a specific verb to indicate the action of drinking milk, dhamid, instead of the generic cabid [to drink]. In Il latte è buono, milk symbolizes natural nourishment and Gashan’s blood relationship with Somalia. It is associated with Somali traditional oral culture and clan belonging. In particular, the reference to milk in Il latte è buono might be understood using Garane’s implicit literary model, Nuruddin Farah’s Sweet and Sour Milk (1992). Nuruddin describes milk as simultaneously sweet and bitter, underlining that dictatorship in Somalia has been possible thanks to the conniving help of traditional power systems, such as the patriarchal family, religious authority, and clans (Williams 2006: 45). Milk might also refer to the Somali nation, since the name of the country in Somali means ‘go and milk’. This name originates from the fact that Somalis were known for their hospitability, and they usually provided fresh milk to guests (Proglio 2011: 129). Thus, in Sweet and Sour Milk ‘l’avvelenamento del latte [...] è anche la metafora di un’intossicazione dei figli della Somalia’ [the poisoning of milk is also a metaphor for the poisoning of the children of Somalia’] (Proglio 2011: 135). Through the association between bittersweet milk and the Somali oral tradition, Nuruddin maintains that the nurturing Somali culture is ‘effectively allied with the reactionary forces of tribal authoritarianism and obscurantism’ (Wright 2002: 347). Garane depicts orality in a similar way, finally claiming that Somali history has to be written: ‘Bisogna trasportare tutto dall’oralità alla scrittura. Così la Somalia non sarà negata, persa’ [we must bring

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everything from oral to written. So Somalia will not be lost or negated] (Garane 2005: 124). As Garane once remarked in an interview, his novel recalls Somali oral tradition (2006). The most salient element of this inf luence is the structure of Il latte è buono, which is divided into two disconnected main sections: in chapters one and two, traditional Somali oral culture is represented by talking of the birth and acceptance of the legendary queen Shakhlan Imam; in chapters three and four, Gashan, the main character, narrates his autobiographical story. This abrupt division between an historic real present and a dreamlike golden age, in which ‘pace tra gli uomini e la natura’ [peace between man and nature] existed (Garane 2005: 5), recalls a Eurocentric chronology which identifies the beginning of history in Africa with colonialism. Moreover, Garane frequently employs emblematic signs of orality such as refrains, like the ever-present ‘Il latte è buono’ and the epithet ‘camminava, camminava’ [she walked, she walked], which characterize Shaklan Iman’s belonging to a nomadic culture (Garane 2005: 46, 48, 54–57, 61). The first section of the novel describes the story of the main character’s ancestor, Shakhlan Iman, and is set in an unspecified moment of the eighteenth century in the Anzania region, located between Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Garane highlights the importance of clan discussions in the sociocultural reality of Somalia, by representing a polyphonic dialogue between the wise old men of the clan. Il latte è buono shows the oratorical and rhetorical ability of Somalis, which is a significant trait of this cultural tradition as underlined in historical works (Laitin 1977: 37; Ioan Lewis 2002: 5). The men of the clan talk of social and political problems such as infibulation, the use of the veil, or the election of a woman, Shakhlan Iman, as queen. Shakhlan Imam’s portrayal recalls mythological oral narratives, as she is described not merely as only partly human, but also partly female. For instance, spirits together with the people of Anzania are waiting for her election as a queen (Garane 2005: 38). She is a sorceress, who changes her eyes with those of a lioness and identifies herself with the queen of animals (Garane 2005: 36). Thanks to this zoomorphic representation, her sexual identity is erased and she can claim to be male and female at once (Garane 2005: 36). The insertion of supernatural elements in the narration is intended to represent Somalia before colonization as a nonsecularized culture. Thus, Shakhlan Imam ‘era nata dopo ventiquattro mesi vissuti nel grembo di sua madre. Era lei che aveva fatto la scelta’ [was born after twentyfour months living in her mother’s womb. She is the one who made the choice] (Garane 2005: 5). Similarly, the birth of Shakhlan’s son is mythological, since it lasts twelve months (Garane 2005: 38). Gashan is the first man of his clan to be born ‘in-history’, after nine months of his mother’s pregnancy (Garane 2005: 47). By describing the mythical origins of his family, Gashan expresses his belonging to a privileged class, clan, and lineage. Gashan’s references to oral culture are frequently employed to distinguish himself from most Somalis, as he frequently affirms that he is a nobleman, a title that in Somalia is valid only for a specific clan. For instance, Gashan highlights that Italians ‘volevano creare i loro propri nobili’ [they wanted to create their own nobles] (Garane 2005: 38) and argues that ‘nobili si nasce, non si diventa’ [one is born a noble, one does not become one] (Garane 2005: 39). Gashan’s upper-class status is also underlined in a passage where he comments that all the

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untouchables of the world must unite (Garane 2005: 55), when his uncle refers to him as a ‘nobile’ (Garane 2005: 64), and when he argues that his name means elected, ‘uno scelto’ (Garane 2005: 36). Although Gashan argues that clans produce a never-ending process of violence (Garane 2005: 84), his description of clannism is highly problematic. For instance, he situates clans and political parties side by side, equating an elective system with a hereditary one (Garane 2005: 77). When he finds Somalia devastated by a war between clans, he contends that it is necessary to reconstruct ‘il clan e poi la Somalia’ [the clan and then Somalia] (Garane 2005: 114). He also describes himself as a person who writes with his left hand, holds a rif le with his right hand, has an African brain, and a heart that belongs to his clan (Garane 2005: 124). Through these associations Gashan seems implicitly to refuse a future ‘fatto di linee rette’ [made of straight lines], which Europeans have conceived for Africa (Garane 2005: 127), and to re-evaluate Somali culture — or, rather, the culture of his clan — which he initially dislikes. Gashan’s position differs from that of other characters in Somali Italian literature, such as Yabar’s mother in Cristina Ali Farah’s Il comandante del fiume, who argues that ‘il clanismo è la nostra disgrazia e nominare le appartenenze non fa altro che ribadirne l’importanza. I somali non si sono uccisi in nome del clan, ma per mezzo del clan’ [clannism is our disgrace and to nominate belonging does nothing but reclaim its importance. Somalis did not kill themselves in the name of the clan, but through the clan] (Ali Farah 2014: 182). The difference between these views shows how different senses of clan belonging are portrayed in Somali Italian literature. The reincarnation of the spirit of the old wise man of the clan, Kana, in Gashan at the end of the novel is also controversial, as it envisions a prominent role of men over women in the reconstruction of Somalia (Garane 2005: 126–27). To paraphrase Burns’s analysis of the cliché of the ‘figuration of the father, at home, as an embodiment of a cultural truth’, Kana might be seen as ‘a sort of Ur-text, furnishing human wisdom and understanding’ (2013: 107). On the one hand, Kana can be seen as a character with progressive views. The wise man of the clan criticizes the fact that women have to be covered by veils and argues that this is a social practice rather than a rule of the Qur’an (Garane 2005: 27). Gashan recognizes that in Somalia women love men ‘nell’odio’ [by hating them] (Garane 2005: 31), and consensus with women should substitute violence against them (Garane 2005: 27). On the other hand, Kana sticks to traditional rules. He is the principal ally of Shaklan, but not because he is favourable to women’s rights: he belongs to a community in which clan lineage is as holy as the Qur’an, and he proposes dynastic rather than elective rules in order to choose Shakhlan as Imam on the basis of blood relationships (Garane 2005: 10). Despite the reluctance of Shakhlan, Kana has to accept her infibulation as ‘un piccolo compromesso [...] se la [vuole] vedere come regina d’Anzania’ [a little compromise [...] if [he wants] to see her as a queen of Anzania], since ‘l’infibulazione come tappa culturale era senz’altro più importante di quella biologica’ [infibulation was more important as a cultural rather than a biological step] (Garane 2005: 31). To be able to elect a female Iman, the clan has to see her masculine qualities, and therefore Mukhtar, a member of

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the clan, sees infibulation as convenient because it emasculates the woman’s body (Garane 2005: 29). Moreover, he affirms that when women are circumcised they can love their country more, because they have no attraction to men (Garane 2005: 30). Despite her mythical origins, Shaklan Iman has a passive role, and is subjected to the decisions of men. Shakhlan Imam’s election does not symbolize the triumph ‘over superstition and fundamentalism’ (Carroli 2010: 210), but the fact that the new formation of Somalia is inextricably linked to traditional rules (Garane 2005: 41, 127). Significantly, when Gashan elects Kana as his guide to create a new future for his country, Shaklan Iman disappears from the narration (Garane 2005: 126). The representation of Shaklan Iman underlines another aspect of Il latte è buono, namely the fact that Gashan’s imaginary communities do not seem to include either Somali or Western women. Gashan and his friends agree that they prefer European women since they are not infibulated and can feel pleasure during sexual intercourse, but one of them named Turtur objects that ‘le francesine sono depresse’ [French women are depressed] (Garane 2005: 89–90). The use of the adjective depressed for all French women symbolizes the essentialist gaze of the African male, whose role is implicitly to please them. The diminutive ‘francesine’ for French women further strengthens this patronizing representation. Turtur also compares European women to prostitutes since they scream while they have sexual intercourse (Garane 2005: 90). Gashan’s derogatory description of European women and his critique of infibulation is presented strictly from the position of a man who enjoys the sexual freedom he has obtained in Europe. Il latte è buono does not contrast the Western essentialist misrepresentation of Somali women and reproduces the dichotomic difference between emancipated Western women and repressed Somali women. The image of milk in Il latte è buono also symbolizes whiteness and Western cultural nutrition, highlighting the maternal and nurturing function of the colonizing power. Another novel by Nuruddin Farah, Links (2003), provides Garane with a literary model. Like Gashan, the main character of Links, Jebelleh, describes his affiliation to Italian culture through his love for Dante Alighieri’s Divina commedia [The Divine Comedy], and describes the present political situation in Somalia with reference to Dante’s Inferno [Hell] (Mari 2013: 293–302). Gashan often considers Italian culture as maternal (or paternal) and her colonized subjects as children, since they are inferior, emotive, and incapable of taking decisions: ‘Sono ancora un bimbo e sarò ancora un bimbo. Sono africano e non ho il diritto di avere l’età della ragione’ [I am still a baby, and I will be a baby. I am African and I do not have the right to reach the age of reason] (Garane 2005: 70). In this passage, the image of milk might be read in relation to the children–father (or mother) rhetoric. As childhood in colonial literature was frequently employed in order to indicate ‘a blank slate on which adults must write their moral codes’ (Nandy 1983: 15), this passage also seems to refer to the need for Western education by the African subject. Gashan states his superiority to most Somalis, who behave like barbarians and do not know Italian, by noting his admiration for Dante: ‘Ho studiato nelle scuole della lingua di Dante [...] Grazie Dea Italia! Sarò finalmente lontano da questi somari, da questi brutti ceffi, selvaggi, che adorano i cammelli’ [I have been educated in

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the schools of Dante’s language. Thank you Goddess Italy! I will be finally far from these morons, these ugly mugs, savages, who adore camels] (Garane 2005: 57). Gashan’s identification with Dante is central in the novel, as much as Il latte è buono can be seen as an inverted journey from the Heaven of the uncritical enjoyment of Italian culture in Somalia to the Hell of European and American discrimination and Somali civil war. To some extent, Dante’s role as a guide of the main character in Il latte è buono recalls Virgil’s role as Dante’s mentor in the Divina commedia. Moreover, Dante becomes an idealized and elective Heimat, where Gashan can take refuge whenever he needs to (Garane 2005: 50). To paraphrase Bhabha, Il latte è buono ‘is almost the same but not quite’ as the Divina Commedia and it provides a perfect example of mimicry (Bhabha 2012: 127), since Garane reinterprets critically and even controversially many passages of Dante’s text. For instance, he mentions ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita’ [In the middle of the journey of our life] (Dante, Inf. 1.1) in order to remind his Italian readership that the pronoun ‘nostra’ refers to the entirety of humanity, including colonial subjects (Garane 2005: 50).1 When Gashan moves to Italy, he believes that he will be welcomed because he knows the Italian language and culture, but he feels exiled just like Dante (Garane 2005: 54, 81). The word ‘exile’ is reconfigured three times in Il latte è buono: Gashan feels exiled in his homeland because he is different from other Somalis; Gashan is exiled in Western countries since he is discriminated against; and Gashan is exiled from Somalia after the beginning of the civil war in 1991. The reference to Dante might lead some Italian readers to see themselves as foreigners to their own culture, since they have been unable to revitalize the critical potential of Dante’s engagement with the political affairs of fourteenth-century Italy in a contemporary context, as Garane has been able to do. For instance, Gashan rearticulates a central passage of Dante’s work (Inf. 33.81) to criticize the treatment of Somali refugees by the Italian government during the Somali civil war, ‘Ahi, Italia, vituperio delle genti!’ [Ah, Italy, shame among the people] (Garane 2005: 112). The previous examples show that Gashan reconfigures Dante not only as an author but also as an authority, which has been used to impose Italian cultural supremacy in its colonies — specifically, in the Italian schools that Gashan attended in Mogadishu — and to exclude some colonized subjects from a specific cultural context. This point can be better understood through Edward Said’s reading of the Divina Commedia. According to Said, Dante characterized the Orient as a place that is ‘always symmetrical’ and ‘diametrically inferior’ to the Occident (Said 1978: 71–72). Moreover, he argues that the introduction of concepts of ‘customs’, ‘mind’, and ‘destiny’ associated with the Orient and the Occident in Western literature provided powerful narratives to support colonial propaganda and racist hierarchies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Said 1978: 3). In this regard, it is noticeable that Dante’s verse ‘Uomini siate, e non pecore matte, sì che ‘l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida!’ [be men, not maddened sheep, lest the Jew there in your midst mock you] (Par. 5.80) appears on the cover of La difesa della razza [The Defence of the Race], a Fascist magazine that was published after the promulgation of Racial Laws in 1938. Like Said, Garane promotes a ‘contrapuntal reading’ of canonical

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Italian literature (Said 1993: 78), in order to locate the Divina Commedia within the context of its use even during the colonial period and to suggest that the colonial discourse exploited literary texts to promote economic and political subjugation. Gashan’s self-comparison with the author of the Divina Commedia can be motivated by Dante’s role as the initiator of Italian as a national language, and as ‘father of the nation and the symbol of national greatness through the centuries’ (Dickie 1996: 23). As Dante demonstrated ‘the effectiveness of Florentine as a literary medium capable of dealing with any subject and of reaching out beyond the intellectual elite’ (Dickie 1996: 24) and transformed a regional dialect into the national language, Gashan becomes the ideal initiator of a hybrid and transnational language in which different cultures can coexist (Garane 2005: 122). Moreover, he indirectly suggests, with a clear mocking purpose, that his work will replace or live in proximity with canonized Italian literary works. Since Gashan is deprived of social recognition, he appropriates the right to become an interpretative authority of the most canonical Italian author, by engaging in a transnational, transcultural, and non-Eurocentric reading. To paraphrase Stuart Hall’s article on Cyril Lionel Robert James, Gashan tells his Italian audience: You do not understand your greatest artist, [Dante], and I do. It is because you do not understand what your own author is telling you that you can be inhospitable to me. You should welcome me — not throw me out. (quoted in Pease 2002: 138)

By marginalizing Gashan, Italians are also betraying their identity since they refuse to listen to the voice of their most canonical poet, who has defined the national culture and language. Despite Gashan finally seeming to accept his Africanness and hoping to overcome the dichotomy of ‘bianco e nero, di cose opposte’ [black and white, opposite things] (Garane 2005: 121), Italian cultural nourishment is never really put into question. Gashan believes that the ‘white’ nutrition of Western culture provides Africans living in Europe with greater self-consciousness than those living in Africa (Garane 2005: 66–67). Gashan’s Italy is primarily a literary notion, and it seems that his memories of Mogadishu are related to the environment of Casa d’Italia, although he claims that it is ‘un luogo da non tramandare’ [a place not to be remembered] (Garane 2005: 67). Even the Somali Civil War reminds Gashan of a Western literary image, namely Dante’s ‘selva oscura’ [a dark wood] (Garane 2005: 122). Similarly, the final idea of creating ‘un mondo nuovo dal nulla’ [a new world out of nothing] shows that Gashan’s vision of Africa is partly informed by the colonial representation of this continent as an uncontaminated land (Garane 2005: 121).2 His radical solution to build a new Somalia from scratch greatly differs from the ones that Kaha Mohamed Aden proposes in the oral tale La quarta via (2007) or Shirin Ramzanali Fazel seems to outline in Lontano da Mogadiscio, namely to learn from Somali history and to look at the many times in which Somalis have been able to live together in peace to build a new future. To summarize, cultural references to the Somali oral tradition and male authors such as Dante and Nuruddin Farah are crucial to represent Gashan’s educational background, which is different from that of uncultivated immigrants and of most

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native Italians, who do not even know their own culture. Gashan behaves like his ‘fratelli vu cumprà’ [brothers, the street sellers] (Garane 2005: 83), but he is different in terms of class and lineage from them and other Somalis. The reference to Somali oral tradition shows the distance between him and other non-noble Somalis, as well as from Western written culture. Gashan also shows that he belongs to an African cultural elite by associating with Thomas Sankara, who will become the president of Burkina Faso (Garane 2005: 95). Moreover, his worship of Dante distinguishes him from uncultured Italians and Somalis. Gashan’s linguistic f luency in Dante’s language allows him to approach Italy not as an impoverished economic migrant, but as someone with cultural expectations who wants them to be fulfilled. However, he also feels a sense of belonging to an exiguous Italian cultural elite of people who are able to understand Dante and Petrarch, but he distances himself from most Italians, who are uncultivated. Gashan is a privileged person, since he knows many cultures while Italians or Somalis know only one (Garane 2005: 67–68). These cultural references define Gashan’s multiple identitarian belonging and unbelonging. Weaving Diasporic Voices in Madre piccola The previous analysis has identified three main themes of Il latte è buono: the autobiographically inspired story introduces the history of Somalia; the novel has an irregular structure, which recalls oral narratives; and Gashan envisions multiple and gender-based belongings including his clan and the Italian cultural elite. Gashan’s identity is not fixed, but is defined by both inclusive and exclusive paradigms. The reference to oral tradition being used to envision a broader community and the connection between autobiography and history are also central in Cristina Ali Farah’s Madre piccola. As Chapter 2 has shown, this novel has a strong autobiographical vein, so much so that Domenica might be described as the fictional alter ego of the author. Moreover, Ali Farah claims to speak for a larger social group, namely the members of the Somali diaspora: la vicinanza dell’oralità nella mia scrittura [ha] due ragioni: da una parte è un fattore culturale, dall’altra è dovuta [...] [all’] idea della funzione della letteratura. Considero la letteratura come una melodia a più voci che lo scrittore orchestra in maniera funzionale alla società, nel senso che lo scrittore restituisce alla società quello che da lei riceve. (2007a: 64) [the proximity to orality in my writings has two reasons: on the one side it is a cultural inf luence, on the other side it is due to my idea about the function of literature. I consider literature as a melody with many voices which the writer orchestrates in a useful way for society, in the sense that the writer gives back to society what he/she receives from it.]

Ali Farah maintains that she wants to actualize traditional Somali orality and that she fictionalizes the stories that other Somali people tell her (2010: 78–79) and expect her to write (2010: 76). The collective voices of Somalis are clearly represented in Madre piccola. For instance, the voice of Barni is fictionalized by presenting it as an interview (Ali

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Farah 2007c: 13–57). This marked representation of the voices of the Somali diaspora recalls Nuruddin Farah’s Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (2000), a hybrid text where ‘L’autore-narratore [...] racconta di sé prestando il proprio “io” al racconto, assegnandogli il compito di fare da collante delle varie storie’ [The author-narrator [...] tells his story by lending his ‘I’ to the narration, and giving it the task of gluing together different stories] of the members of the Somali diaspora in different countries (Di Maio 2003: 10). Significantly, Ali Farah quotes a passage from this text in an epigraph at the beginning of Madre piccola. Moreover, she employs the metaphor of the knot to represent plural discourse, as Nuruddin Farah does in Knots (2007): Soomaali baan ahay, come la mia metà che è intera. Sono il filo sottile, così sottile che si infila e si tende, prolungandosi. Così sottile che non si spezza. E il groviglio dei fili si allarga e mostra, chiari e ben stretti, i nodi, pur distanti l’uno dall’altro, che non si sciolgono. Sono una traccia in quel groviglio e il mio principio appartiene a quello multiplo. (Ali Farah 2007c: 1) [Soomaali baan ahay, like my half that is whole. I am the fine thread, so fine that it slips through and stretches, getting longer. So fine that it does not snap. And the tangled mass of threads widens and reveals the knots, clear and tight, that, though far from each other, do not unravel. I am one thread in that tangled mass and my beginning belongs to the multiple one.]

This passage refers to Cabdulqaadir Xirsi Siyaad ‘Yamyam’’s poem Soomaali baan ahay (1986: 181–82), and it signals both Domenica’s belonging to a community whose voices she wants to collect as well as the various processes of translation and self-translation that are central to the novel. Adriana Cavarero’s For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression provides a fruitful interpretative key to Madre piccola’s gathering of diverse social experiences and its reconnection to a collective discourse by an individual subject. According to Cavarero, in European culture the voice (phōnē) and the word (logos) have gradually been separated in order to privilege semantics over sounds and mind over body. This disconnection has deprived minor subjects — Cavarero is referring primarily to women — of a voice and of a body. In fact, voice is simultaneously relational and plural, but at the same time it allows the linking of the unique body of a person to language, to obtain a relation between unique individuals (Cavarero 2005: 13). Following Cixous, whose écriture féminine is strictly connected to voice and the reacquisition of a devocalized body, Cavarero proposes a ‘politics of voices’, in which the corporeal materiality of the voice is privileged over the immaterial semantics in the narration of history (2005: 210). Many voices are present in Madre piccola and the marked representation of the spoken might be because oral transmission dominated Somali culture until 1972. Ali Farah affirms her intention to reinterpret traditional Somali orality (2008b), and states that her narrative style is inf luenced by oral narration, ‘per ricreare il ritmo, la sequenzialità narrativa, per far emergere l’umorismo e il modo somalo di raccontare storie’ [to recreate the rhythm and the sequential narrative, to emphasize humour and the Somali way of telling stories] (2007b: 48). The characters of Madre piccola often stress that their way of telling stories is different from the way Europeans tell

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stories. For instance, Barni tells the journalist who is interviewing her: ‘Il mio è un modo concentrico di raccontare’ [mine is a roundabout way of telling a story] (Ali Farah 2007c: 33). Similarly, Domenica refers to her language as imperfect in these terms: ‘posso infilare l’ultima perla della collana, perché so che questo fa parte del vostro modo di raccontare. Raccontare concludendo’ [what I can do is thread the last pearl onto your necklace because I know that this is the way you in the West have of telling stories. Telling stories by ending them] (Ali Farah 2007c: 54). In other words, Madre piccola seems to refer to the ‘principle of instability’ that characterizes African oral narratives: An oral text is actualized in oral performance and is open and mobile; what can be abstracted as the verbal content of a given work is perpetually recreated, modified as the occasion demands, and given new accents from one instance of its realization to another. (Abiola Irele 2001: 34)

Bandia maintains that the African organization of discourse is peculiar ‘not because of the lack of conversational rules, but rather because the norms and values are not always the same as those that determine the conditions for an “adequate” conversation in the Western context’ (2008: 54). Although in an interview held at Radio Alt, Ali Farah scaled down the level of inspiration she takes from traditional Somali oral narratives (2007b), Polezzi is right to recognize it as a characteristic trait of Madre piccola: il bisogno di tradurre, non solo e non tanto se stesse ma soprattutto i ritmi e i racconti delle proprie comunità [...] [che] si materializzano in una molteplicità di voci, ognuna delle quali racconta, con i toni della conversazione quotidiana frammisti ai ritmi della tradizione orale, la propria versione della stessa storia [...] quella della diaspora somala. (Polezzi 2008: 125) [the need to translate, not only and not just themselves but above all the rhythms and the tales of their communities [...] [which] materialize in a multiplicity of voices, each of which tells, with the tones of everyday conversation mixed with oral tradition, their version of the same story [...] that of Somali diaspora.]

The inf luence of Somali oral narration is also evident in Ali Farah’s Il comandante del fiume and her poetry. The title of Ali Farah’s second novel explicitly refers to a Somali oral legend, according to which a Somali man was selected to create a river and to protect people from crocodiles. According to Daniele Comberiati, Ali Farah’s poem ‘Af Dabeyl ovvero bocca di vento’ [Af Dabeyl Mouth of Wind] (1999) has some of the typical traits of oral poetry, including the repeated use of metaphor and alliterations (Comberiati 2007: 57). Ali Farah connects orality with plurality in many of her works, by claiming that she wants to account for the multivoiced discourse of Somali diasporic subjects: ‘Intrecciare storie diverse mi permette di ri-costruire il mondo della diaspora, mettere insieme una comunità di fatto sparpagliata per il mondo intero’ [to connect together different stories allows me to reconstruct the little world of the diaspora, to put together a community strewn across the whole globe] (2007a: 48). Like Garane Garane’s Il latte è buono, the path Madre piccola follows is full of logical and dimensional gaps and fractures, as with most oral discourses. This non-homogeneous structure and polyhedric construction mirrors its double spatial and temporal setting.

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The representation of the spoken word is also connected to the distance into which the diaspora forces Somalis, and to new forms of oral communication that they adopt in order to converse. For instance, Barni tells a journalist about the divorce of Taageere’s wife, who makes him repudiate her three times by phone (Ali Farah 2007c: 31–32). This passage is noteworthy for at least three reasons. First, it shows that the introduction of new means of communication and the fragmentation of life in the contemporary world have modified Islam. Consequently, this representation challenges the Western stereotype of this religion as non-secularized and monolithic. Secondly, Madre piccola shows that refugees cannot benefit from divorce laws because the Somali government does not exist. The divorce is not valid since it took place over the phone which shows that ‘le leggi e le convenzioni senza stato, senza sistema’ [laws and conventions without a government, without a legal system] are worthless (Ali Farah 2007c: 32–33). Thirdly, it highlights the importance of the telephone for the members of the Somali diaspora, which Ali Farah underlines in these terms: una delle cose che tiene più uniti i somali è il telefono. I somali hanno un rapporto fortissimo con il telefono, quasi fosse una parte di sé, del proprio corpo [...] Quello che viene fuori [...] sono i racconti del quotidiano: [...] da un punto di vista più occidentale [...] sarebbe più normale parlare di quello che si è, del proprio ruolo nella società, dei passaggi esistenziali importanti [...] Invece no, quello che emerge sono i dettagli legati alla vita di tutti i giorni [...] L’insieme di tutti questi dettagli è ciò che dà corpo alla vita e comporli significa dar voce alla diaspora somala, a questa comunità sparsa ma in qualche modo tenuta insieme. (2007a: 48) [one of the things that keeps Somalis together is the telephone. Somalis have a strong relationship with the telephone, as if it was a part of them, of their bodies [...] What comes out are everyday stories: [...] from a Western point of view [...] it would be more common to talk of who one is, of one’s role in society, of important existential passages [...] On the other hand, what emerges are details connected to everyday life [...] All those details together gives body to life itself, and to put them together means to provide with a voice the Somali diaspora, a community that is scattered, but to some extent comes together].

Members of the Somali diaspora entertain a quick and precarious interaction even with their closest relatives over the telephone. For instance, Taageere explains that he has to change telephone booths every time he wants to contact somebody: Avevo comprato [...] una scheda da cinque dollari. Ci potevo parlare per trecento minuti. Three hundred minutes, ha detto la voce. Voce automatica di donna. Le schede le puoi usare ovunque, dal telefono pubblico, dalla casa di chi vuoi o addirittura dal barbiere. (Ali Farah 2007c: 59) [I had bought a telephone card [...] for five dollars. I could speak for three hundred minutes. Three hundred minutes, said the voice on the card. The taped woman’s voice. You can use cards anywhere. All you need is the card and you can call from the phone centre, from a public telephone, from anyone’s house, even from the barbershop.]

In Madre piccola, as well as in most Somali Italian literature, the telephone therefore has an ambiguous role: on the one hand, the telephone is a ‘lifeline’, which

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symbolizes ‘the strong thread linking the [...] characters across continents’ (Carroli 2010: 209); on the other, its use emphasizes the distance, the difficulty, and the fragmentation of human interactions. While the reference to Somali orature shows the connection between the voice of the narrator and a shared cultural tradition, the presence of phone conversations in Somali Italian literature indicates the distant relationships between the members of the Somali diaspora. In both cases, the relational nature of voices is emphasized to envision a broader and transnational community to which Somalis belong. Ali Farah is aware that her literary work might speak for a collectivity: Quando pensi che quello che dici [...] è ciò che dicono migliaia di persone, senti che il tuo lavoro ha [...] un valore maggiore del tuo bisogno personale. Penso che la letteratura debba essere fortemente legata alla vita, alla politica e alla vita sociale. (2008b) [When you think that what you are saying [...] is what thousands of people are saying, you feel your work has [...] more value than your personal needs. I think that literature should be strictly linked to life, politics, and social life.]

Madre piccola creates a polylogue in which three alternate voices contribute to build up a plural narrative. The three narrative voices of Madre piccola alternate as follows: Domenica Axad talks to the reader (Ali Farah 2007c: 1–13); Barni introduces herself through an interview with a journalist (Ali Farah 2007c: 13–57); Taageere tells his story through a telephone call to his former wife Shukri (Ali Farah 2007c: 57–97); Domenica Axad talks to Barni (Ali Farah 2007c: 97–135); Taagere is the first-person narrator of his own story (Ali Farah 2007c: 137–45); Barni talks to Domenica Axad (Ali Farah 2007c: 147–84); Taagere talks to someone whom he calls ‘friend’ (Ali Farah 2007c: 185–221); Domenica Axad writes a letter to her psychologist (Ali Farah 2007c: 223–59); and Domenica tells her story without referring to a precise interlocutor (Ali Farah 2007c: 260–67). Successful multivoiced works written by immigrants in Italian, such as Younis Tawfik’s La straniera, Amara Lakhous’s Scontro di civiltà, Sirad Salad Hassan’s Sette gocce di sangue, and Igiaba Scego’s Rhoda might have inspired the polyphonic structure of the novel, although the interactions between different social voices in these novels greatly differ from one another. In particular, the possible inf luence of Sette gocce di sangue on Madre piccola, Rhoda, and Oltre Babilonia can be appreciated by the presence of female networking and sisterhood that crosses familial bonds. On the back cover of her double-voiced novel, Sirad claims to speak in the proximity of infibulated women, who cannot make their voice heard and might be her relatives: ‘Questo racconto mi tocca da vicino, Ascia e Hawa potrebbero essere le mie zie, le mie cugine, le mie nonne, che sono somale e tutte infibulate’ [This story closely touches me, as Ascia and Hawa could be my aunts, my cousins, my grandmothers, who are Somalis and infibulated] (1996b). These intertextual connections show that dialogue in Madre piccola is entertained not only between characters but also with other texts that discuss migration in Italian. Madre piccola often envisions a collective narrative that exceeds the idea of national belonging. For instance, when Taageere meets a Portuguese woman, he notices that her son looks like his own (Ali Farah 2007c: 83). Elsewhere in the novel, a Ukrainian

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female greengrocer addresses Domenica Axad as if other Italian customers did not exist (Ali Farah 2007c: 150). More frequently, nonetheless, Domenica Axad envisions a link between members of the Somali diaspora. For instance, she feels connected to some Somalis, who died whilst trying to reach Italy: ‘Sento nelle braccia il peso di quei corpi inghiottiti dal mare bianco’ [I feel in my arms the weight of those bodies swallowed up by the white sea] (Ali Farah 2007c: 53). Domenica also narrates that in Italy her father has learned a lot about the revolutionary brotherhood from other Somalis (Ali Farah 2007c: 11–12). In addition, Barni notices that there are some links between the same generation of Somalis: ‘La nostra generazione e chi ha vissuto a Mogadiscio. Tutti presto o tardi ci siamo incontrati’ [See how we all know each other? Our generation and those who lived in Mogadishu] (Ali Farah 2007c: 155). However, it should be noted that Madre piccola does not envision a monolithic idea of Somalis as a coherent and homogeneous group. This fact is evident when Domenica Axad notices that clan divisions are redoubled in Europe, and Somali restaurants in the same neighbourhood of London have different customers (Ali Farah 2007c: 163). Domenica makes an interesting comment about the internal divisions between Somalis in another passage: ‘Dicono: l’unione fa la forza. Peccato che i Somali, come i tori, se ne siano dimenticati’ [Here they say there is strength in numbers. Too bad that the Somalis, like the bulls, have forgotten that] (Ali Farah 2007c: 35). In highlighting connections between Somalis, it is interesting that Madre piccola shows that some relationships at times are as important as those within the nuclear family. For instance, in a noteworthy passage of Madre piccola a Somali man accepts the paternity of a fatherless child because he does not want him to be called a ‘bastardo’ [bastard] (Ali Farah 2007c: 45). Madre piccola also highlights the privileged connection between Somali women which transcends blood relations. For instance, Gaandi’s husband recounts that his wife breastfed Domenica Axad and therefore Domenica should consider her as a second mother (Ali Farah 2007c: 6). Moreover, Gaandi affirms that an acquaintance is ‘Dumaashi, cognata [...] perché suo marito è somalo, allora tutti i Somali sono cognati’ [Dumaashi, sister-in-law [...], because her husband is Somali, so all Somalis are brothers-in-law] (Ali Farah 2007c: 6). Barni also states that she has many mothers, and her idea of motherhood is fragmented (Ali Farah 2007c: 33). The existence of predominantly female affective relationships, which are alternative to the nuclear family, is also implicitly expressed in the title of the novel Madre piccola. This word is the Italian calque of the Somali habaryar, which literally means ‘little women’ but also ‘little mother’, and indicates the maternal aunt. This original compound indigenizes the literal meaning of the Italian translation by showing that, in Somali culture, kinship terms like mother often do not refer strictly to biological ties. The word habaryar is also employed in a metaphorical term to name Barni, who is not merely Taariikh’s aunt, but also an obstetrician. Barni’s role as habaryar of Taariikh also implies her ‘sorellanza elettiva’ [elective sisterhood] with her cousin that replaces Domenica’s troublesome relationship with her mother (Ali Farah 2007c: 240). This practice of emphasizing that the connections between Somalis go far beyond simply belonging to the nuclear family is common in Somali Italian literature. For

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instance, Kaha’s Fra-intendimenti shows that the members of her family frequently have the same role for children who are not relatives. Kaha argues that ‘davanti al [...] nome [di Nonno Y] più che nonno veniva messo zio, zio Y — era lo zio di tutti e di tutte’ [in front of [Grandpa Y’s] name people used uncle more than grandpa, uncle Y — he was everybody’s uncle] (Kaha 2010: 24) and maintains that she calls a friend of her family aunt ‘come è consuetudine nelle parti più orientali dell’Africa’ [as people are used to doing in the most oriental parts of Africa] (Kaha 2010: 73). Literature by women writers of Somali origins also envisions specific connections among female characters. For instance, Kaha in ‘Autoritratto’ claims to have three grandmothers. This description disrupts the biological ties and escapes the blood relationships that are fundamental in the nuclear family (Kaha 2010: 7–10). Moreover, Kaha underlines the key role played by her grandmothers in the family and in society, by illustrating the emancipation of women in Somalia during the 1960s. Similarly, the main character of ‘Un tè serio bollente’ calls her Italian friends Eli and Dani ‘sorelle’ [sisters] (Kaha 2010: 93). Similarly, Shirin notices that ‘la famiglia somala è di tipo esteso: zie, nonne, madri, cugine aiutano la neomamma’ [the Somali family is extended: aunts, grandmothers, mothers, cousins help the new mother] (Shirin 2013: 130–31). In Nuvole sull’equatore, the young woman Giulia has two mothers, her nanny Amina and her mother Dada. The novel describes ‘female solidarity and friendship independent of kinship’ that go far beyond the nuclear family (Burns 2013: 56). In Ali Farah’s Madre piccola, Domenica Axad frequently describes the collective discourse of the Somali diaspora as a texture in which many threads are woven together. Domenica Axad suggests that in the art of weaving-writing, especially for those who do not have an entirely Western background, there is always the risk of losing the thread of the discourse, especially when it is not written: Mi è assai più semplice raccontare i fatti per iscritto, giacché la mia relazione con la parola è ancora emotiva e frammentaria. Non di rado capita che io perda il filo del discorso o segua il f luire di un pensiero che finisce con il ripiegarsi su se stesso. (Ali Farah 2007c: 223) [It is much easier for me to narrate the events in writing since my relationship with words is still an emotional and fragmented one. It’s not unusual for me to digress or to follow the thread of a thought that ends up folding back on itself.]

Since straddling two cultures has fragmented the narration of these stories, writing is necessary to fix ineffable facts and thoughts into a proper scheme. As Abdelkebir Khatibi and Ali Amahan argue, weaving might also have the function of preserving ‘the memory of signs (signs of a community, ethnic group or corporate body) [...] adding others, maybe unknown, to be etched on a new memory’ (1995: 64). In Madre piccola weaving and memory are also connected to dermographia, since Domenica’s self-cuttings engrave a spider’s web on her skin. The metaphor of weaving in relation to writing can be traced back to the etymological origin of text and comes from the Latin texere, which means ‘to weave’ (Spivak 1993: 83). Spivak assumes that this metaphor is frequent in the Western literary tradition and that it refers to the domestic space traditionally occupied by women. Consequently, its appropriation has a potentially subversive force since

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it might re-envision this female activity as a political practice, in which threads might ref lect social relations. Madre piccola can be seen as a skein of different voices and multiple codes that are interwoven. This image signals the attempt to relate a personal story to a collective female history, which Ali Farah expresses also in a poem called ‘Strappo’ [The Strip]: Ci laviamo con le altre donne i miei figli sono i loro figli. Voglio tenere insieme tutti i pezzi. Indossare l’abito con le altre. Senza di loro, vecchie e adolescenti, storpie e bellissime, bianche e nere, io non esisto. Sono donna finché loro esistono. (2007d: 36) [We wash with other women. My children are their children. I want to hold together all the pieces. Putting on a dress with the others. Without them, women young and old, crippled, lovely, white and black, I don’t exist. I am a woman as long as they exist.]3

Madre piccola offers many representations of this female kinship. For instance, Domenica describes Ardo, a Somali refugee woman in Italy, who finds it difficult to integrate in Italy: ‘[Ardo] non si è fidata di questo paese, non si è fidata del futuro, perchè dentro di sé, dentro al suo corpo, continua a sentire il dolore per non essere a casa sua’ [[Ardo] did not trust this country, she did not trust her future, because inside herself, inside her body, she continues to feel the pain of not being in her own country] (Ali Farah 2007c: 176). Domenica imagines a link between Ardo’s daughter and Barni, whose mother is also called Ardo (Ali Farah 2007c: 159), and refers to the metaphor of the knot to define their connection: ‘Devo aiutarla a trovare [...] qual’è la sua colpa solo se lei la sconta riuscirà a sciogliere questo nodo’ [I have to help her find out [...] what she is guilty of, because she will only be free of this knot if she expiates it] (Ali Farah 2007c: 176). The act of weaving is not merely related to the bonding of two languages and cultures, but also to the intersection of voices of Somali refugees, and in particular of female refugees. Among Somali refugees, men occupy a secondary role and most social relation­ ships are forged between women. Domenica recognizes the difficulties faced by Somali men trying to integrate in Italy and argues that ‘é così difficile per i nostri uomini inventarsi un ruolo. Ridefinirsi. Adattarsi. Accettarsi’ [It’s so difficult for our men to invent a role for themselves. To redefine themselves. To adapt. To accept themselves] (Ali Farah 2007c: 33), while per noi donne è molto più semplice, non è forse vero che facciamo la stessa vita ovunque ci troviamo? Non continuiamo forse a occuparci, a prenderci cura di qualcuno? Gli uomini si sentono inutili, il loro nome genera conf litto e non occupano più il luogo delle decisioni. (Ali Farah 2007c: 264)

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[it’s much easier for us women. Isn’t it true that we can lead the same lives no matter where we are? Isn’t it true that we continue to look after, to take care of someone? Men feel useless, their names generate conf lict, and they no longer play the role of decision-makers.]

For instance, Taageere cannot find his place in Italy, since he is stubbornly proud: he prefers to work in a factory rather than receive welfare funds (Ali Farah 2007c: 198). According to Laura Lori, Taageere is represented as ‘un inetto: debole e meschino’ [a drip: weak and miserable] (Lori 2013: 207), but he is not the only negative male character in Madre piccola. For example, Libeen, the cousin of Barni and Domenica, is described as ‘paternalistico e tirannico’ [paternalistic and tyrannical], and the fathers of Barni and Domenica are ‘figure piuttosto distanti’ [quite distant figures] (Lori 2013: 208). This representation mirrors that of the fathers of the two female characters in Sirad’s Sette gocce di sangue: ‘il padre di Aiscia lavora in Arabia Saudita e contribuisce al benessere materiale della famiglia inviando denaro, ma senza alcuna forma di partecipazione attiva; il padre di Hawa, invece, la tratta addirittura come una serva’ [Aiscia’s father works in Saudi Arabia and contributes to the material benefit of his family by sending money, but he does not participate actively in his family’s life; Hawa’s father, conversely, treats her as a servant] (Lori 2013: 202). The representation of Taageere is echoed in the figure of Elias in Oltre Babilonia, who admits in his letter to Zuhra that he has been ‘un figlio mancato, un padre mancato’ [a bad son, a bad father] (Scego 2008b: 60). Elias never speaks of himself and is not able to find a permanent job nor a permanent companion, as he abandons Maryam, the mother of his daughter Zuhra, in Rome (Scego 2008b: 433). Both in Madre piccola and in Oltre Babilonia the immigrant fathers are excluded from the struggle for self-recognition, which is conducted mainly by women. This representation shows that Somali parents in Europe ‘may be so emotionally overwhelmed by the weight of the migration process that they are unable to provide emotional support to their children, and may in fact turn to the children for their own emotional support’ (Ahmed M. Yusuf and Amin 2011: 166). Nonetheless, the main female characters show compassion and comprehension rather than hatred for male figures. Taageere and Elias are travellers, anti-authoritative figures who react against the stability and the authority of patriarchal figures and are unfit for their role. This representation has also a sociological legitimacy, since more Somali women than men have found a job in Italy, which has radically changed traditional gender relationships (Balsamo 2003: 33). Giovanna Campani accounts for the strong role of women within immigrant families and the formation of non-nuclear female branches of families in the following terms: All’interno del gruppo etnico non viene ricostruita l’unità familiare composta dalla coppia e dai figli, ma si formano spezzoni di famiglie, reticoli atipici [...] lo statuto e il ruolo sociale delle donne non possono essere prescritti in relazione all’uomo, presenza spesso precaria e saltuaria [...] nel quadro di un cambiamento di ruoli nell’intreccio delle relazioni di genere proprie a due culture, a due contesti, e la predominanza di attività centrate attorno alle donne ha a lungo termine l’effetto di produrre una sorta di ‘etnicità al femminile’, di valorizzazione dell’apporto delle donne alla cultura d’origine ed al cambiamento, al riadattamento di questa nella nuova realtà. (1993: 157)

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Campani’s sociological research also points out another crucial aspect that is represented in Madre piccola, namely the fact that migrant women are frequently more able than men to adapt to the new environment and therefore they are not ‘subordinat[e] all’uomo, vittim[e] passiv[e] di una triplice oppressione (come donna, come immigrata, come appartenente a una classe subalterna), custod[i] acriti[che] della cultura tradizionale’ [subordinate to the man, passive victims of a triple oppression (as a woman, an immigrant, a subaltern), acritical heirs of traditional culture] (1993: 271). The different aspirations of male and female characters in Madre piccola are particularly evident in the image of ‘roots’, intended as cultural origins. On the one hand, Taageere divorces his wife since distance puts a strain on their relationship and he wants to find ‘roots’ in Italy: ‘Sento il bisogno di radici, oggi. Una famiglia. [...] Sentirmi uomo nel ruolo di uomo. Occuparmi di qualcuno diverso da me, essere un uomo di cui fidarsi’ [I feel the need for roots, now, today. A family [...] to feel like a man in a man’s role. To take care of someone other than myself, to be a man worthy of trust] (Ali Farah 2007c: 71). On the other hand, Domenica Axad describes her permanence in Italy as a way to distance herself from the oppressive traditions of Somali society: Gli anziani conoscono a memoria il loro albero genealogico fino alle origini, almeno così dicono. Ma è un argomento di cui non voglio parlare, è una ragione di conf litto radicata nella gente. Non ne faccia menzione. A mio parere sono tutte congetture, le genealogie, gli alberi, le radici. (Ali Farah 2007c: 14) [Our elders know their family trees by heart, all the way back to their origins, at least that’s what they say. But this is something I’d prefer not to talk about; it’s an issue that deeply divides people. Leave it out. In my opinion it’s all conjecture, all those bloodlines, family trees, roots.]

Similarly, Barni describes Somalia as a prison that she has to escape: ‘Un paese valeva l’altro purché fosse fuori da quella prigione’ [One country was as good as another, as long as it was far from that prison] (Ali Farah 2007c: 117). Moreover, she affirms that once one has lost one’s roots and has been eradicated from one’s birthplace, one learns to live everywhere: ‘Ma senza radice — senza ragione dominante — un luogo perde rilevanza’ [But without roots — without a prevailing reason to be there — a place loses its importance] (Ali Farah 2007c: 115). In addition, she invites Somali women to dispense with traditions: É questo il senso della storia. Non quello che vedono tutti, che i vecchi vanno rispettati se si vuole essere rispettati da vecchi, ma che il cerchio va spezzato, che bisogna avere il coraggio di perdonare e di rompere il circolo. (Ali Farah 2007c: 154)

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[This is the meaning of the story. Not what everyone perceives it to be, namely that old people should be respected if you in turn want to be respected in old age, but that the circle must be broken, that you have to have the courage to forgive and break the circle.]

While for Taageere ‘roots’ symbolize stability, Domenica Axad and Barni compare them to patriarchal power, which causes female subordination in Somalia. In Barni’s and Domenica’s descriptions, migration allows women to disrupt traditional gender roles, and cannot merely be described as an unfortunate or sorrowful event. The Somali Italian Borderland in Oltre Babilonia The presence of an autobiographically inspired character and of different voices that contribute to the invention of transnational belongings and unbelongings is a feature that Igiaba Scego’s Oltre Babilonia shares with Il latte è buono and Madre piccola. The previous analysis has underlined that Madre piccola is an autobiographically inspired account, where many voices of the Somali diaspora are interconnected through the marked presence of the spoken word. The images of the thread and of the text as a texture envision a dialogue, which is not only entertained between the three narrative voices that alternate in each chapter, but also with a set of literary references, such as Nuruddin Farah, Toni Morrison, Sirad Salad Hassan, and João Guimarães Rosa’s 1956 novel The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (Guimarães Rosa 1971), which is quoted at the beginning of Madre piccola perhaps as a reference to the non-homogeneous structure of the novel rather than to any inf luence of ‘magic realism’ in Ali Farah’s work. These voices and stories identify precise cultural belongings. Unlike Garane, who identifies his elitist belonging to a community of male cultural figures such as Dante and Kana, Domenica Axad in Madre piccola envisions primarily a female community, which often extends beyond nuclear familiar ties. Oltre Babilonia features five narrative voices: Miranda and Zuhra are the narrators of their own stories; an external narrator describes Mar’s story; an external narrator tells Maryam’s story, but she also recounts her story on tape by using the firstperson singular to make amends to her daughter Zuhra (Scego 2008b: 49); and Elias writes to his daughter Zuhra, but uses the third-person singular as he feels ‘quasi un estraneo’ [almost a stranger] to her (Scego 2008b: 63). In analysing the multiple belongings expressed in Oltre Babilonia, Scego’s novel can be compared to Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La frontera, a text that has deeply inf luenced Scego’s work. For instance, in her PhD thesis, Scego employs this text to comment on Gabriella Ghermandi’s, Erminia dell’Oro’s and Cristina Ali Farah’s novels (Scego 2008c). In a self-presentation (Capitani and Coen 2008: 4) and in the radio programme Damasco (2007), Scego maintains that, like Gloria Anzaldúa, she does not want to choose among her identities, since she belongs to a border generation and identity is placed beyond citizenship. In La mia casa è dove sono, Scego also refers to images that are central in Anzaldúa’s work such as identity as ‘ponte’ [bridge] and ‘crocevia’ [crossroad] (Scego 2010c: 31, 77) and the association of Somalis with ‘ossa sacre’ [sacred bones] (Scego 2010c: 112). Moreover, Scego compares her grandfather, who

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was forced to work for the Italian colonizers as a translator, to Anzaldúa, since he was ‘un ponte sospeso tra due mondi’ [a bridge suspended between two cultures] (Scego 2010c: 82): ‘Mio nonno in qualche modo incarnava quello che Gloria Anzaldúa, una scrittrice chicana che venero, chiamava herida abierta, ferita aperta’ [My grandfather embodied what Gloria Anzaldúa, a Chicano writer whom I adore, calls herida abierta, an open wound] (Scego 2010c: 84). In Anzaldúa’s work, the ‘borderland’ literally refers to the interstitial space between the Mexican and US frontiers, where the Chicano community occupies a minor position. Using this specific border as a paradigm, Anzaldúa identifies the inhabitants of borderlands with those people who live in more than one location at the same time. Borderlands/La Frontera challenges the notion of the border as separation between cultures and languages, or discrimination in terms of race and gender, to reconfigure it as a place of transition and dialogue. In other words, borders are places where different cultures, identities, sexualities, classes, geographies, races, and genders may meet but also be separated. Anzaldúa’s intention to cross these boundaries is evident in the choice of a hybrid language, which is composed of standard and slang English, standard Spanish, standard Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish dialect, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, and Pachuco (Anzaldúa 1987: 55). Anzaldúa’s hybrid language mirrors the hybrid literary genre through which she expresses her kaleidoscopic identity. She does not follow a linear narrative but rather a multifaceted style that involves poetry, an alternative telling of history, autobiography, and critical insight on the issue of race and gender. Significantly, Anzaldúa calls her text autohistoria, since she presents the history of the Chicano community through her personal story. Similarly, Scego’s multilingual novel describes the minor position of immigrants within Italy, which is reconfigured as a liminal space or borderland. Like Borderlands/La Frontera, Oltre Babilonia is a partly autobiographical text. The story of Zuhra Laamane is somewhat similar to the one narrated in Scego’s subsequent memoir La mia casa è dove sono. For instance, the story of Igiaba’s grandfather in La mia casa è dove sono (2010c: 72) recalls that of Zuhra’s grandfather (Scego 2008b: 108). Like Zuhra’s father (Scego 2008b: 425), Scego’s father, Alì Omar Scego, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs in Somalia, had to migrate to Italy because of Mohamed Siad Barre’s dictatorship (Scego 2010c: 47). Like Zuhra, Scego in La mia casa è dove sono claims to have two mothers (Scego 2010c: 156) and argues that her mother, like Zuhra’s mother, is unable to write (Scego 2010c: 68). The mutual relationship between these two texts might not suggest that Oltre Babilonia is a realist novel (although it is inspired by and describes the lives of real people), but rather shows the hybrid nature of both Igiaba Scego’s autobiography and fictional works, which cannot be reduced to a single specific genre. The inf luence of Borderlands/La Frontera on Oltre Babilonia is also ref lected in the title of the novel. The aim to go ‘beyond Babylon’ refers to both the destruction of the concept of monolingualism and the reconstruction of a new, hybrid, and transnational language, where minor languages can interact with hegemonic ones and multilingual speakers can understand each other and wholly express their linguistic identity. Consequently, the title of Scego’s Oltre Babilonia and the

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presence of Arabic, Spanish, Somali terms within the Italian text might refer to the confusion of the multilingual world and to the necessity of translation in order to communicate. It suggests a global condition of communication and permanent translation, in which the specificity of languages is maintained, but at the same time this incommensurable difference does not preclude communicability. In ‘Des tours de Babel’ Derrida claims that ‘Babel’ tells ‘at least of the inadequation of one tongue to another, of one place in the encyclopaedia to another, of language to itself and to meaning, and so forth, it also tells of the need for figuration, for myth, for tropes, for twists and turns, for translation inadequate to compensate for that which multiplicity denies us’ (2002: 104). In other words, the term Babel exceeds the boundaries between languages: ‘At the very moment when pronouncing “Babel” we sense the impossibility of deciding whether this name belongs, properly and simply, to one tongue’ (Derrida 2002: 111). Derrida’s interpretation of the term Babel throws light on another characteristic of Oltre Babilonia, namely its transnational and translingual nature. This novel refers to popular music, TV shows and movies, and deals with expressive modes as diverse as emails and oral stories: Scego’s plots recall the chaotic family relations of Pedro Almodovar’s films: her characters, and her style are hybrid, and her language is visual and graphic, overtly sexual and crude; a mélange of spoken registers of the metropolis, especially youth jargon, accented with regional lexicon and inf lexions with overtones from the noir, Cannibali, and pulp genres. (Carroli 2010: 211)

Oltre Babilonia aims to talk to and about the entire world, by decentring the national perspective from within (Portelli 2008). Its narration is polyphonic and polysemic and could hypothetically be enlarged ad libitum, questioning the necessity and the centrality of the plot. Moreover, Oltre Babilonia refers to non-Western literary works, and this shows the intention to cross the borders of the national literary scene. For instance, Maryam’s nickname, ‘la Pessottimista’, refers to the name of the main character of Emile Habibi’s 1974 novel The Secret Life of Saeed (Habibi 2003). This reference might be explained through the connection between private story and history in Oltre Babilonia, which is also central in Habibi’s novel: [Habibi] weaves a mesh of personal and fictional events around particular historical events and general conditions. The use of a fictional mode for this purpose should not be seen as a necessarily less serious or, in its essence, a less reliable method of dealing with historical material. (Salma 2003: ix)

Moreover, Habibi incorporates words, phrases, and proverbs from Palestinian Arabic in English, by performing an operation of linguistic hybridization that is similar to Scego’s. Although the inspiration this text offers to Oltre Babilonia is less significant than that of Borderland/La Frontera, this reference (as well as those to Anzaldúa) signals Scego’s intention to narrate collective and alternative histories through a personal story. Describing translation as a painful process of bringing together cultures and a political activity is a common thread that runs through Oltre Babilonia and Borderlands. Anzaldúa assumes that ‘the dominant white culture’ and the linguistic

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hegemony of English in the United States have silenced Spanish-speaking Chicanos (Anzaldúa 1987: 86). Therefore, Anzaldúa describes her community as ‘your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos huérfanos — we speak an orphan tongue’ (Anzaldúa 1987: 58). Anzaldúa argues that her identity is the site of an inner struggle and ‘a process-in-the-making’ (2000: 238), which consists of two stages: Coatlicue and Nepantla. The experience of being pulled between two identities in terms of race and language initially made Anzaldúa feel annihilated, isolated, and confused (1987: 72). However, the permanence in this stage of silence, which Anzaldúa calls Coatlicue, nourishes the political and spiritual consciousness of the female mestizo subject, la mestiza, and provokes a strong desire to transgress gendered, linguistic, and cultural ‘unnatural’ boundaries (Anzaldúa 1987: 2). Moreover, in order to survive the borderland, the new mestiza has to develop a mimetic attitude that allows her to deal with multiple and even conf licting linguistic and cultural identities. Once the new mestiza claims her right to speak and write the language that best describes her experience without having to translate for those who cannot or will not understand, she reaches the stage of Nepantla, a term that comes from ‘a Nahuatl word for the space between two bodies of water, the space between two worlds’ (Anzaldúa 2001: 13). As the Chicano author highlights in the preface to Borderlands, in Nepantla la mestiza creates a liminal language that is located ‘at the junction of cultures [where] languages cross-pollinate and are revitalized’ and includes minor languages within the dominant discourse as a conscious act of ‘linguistic terrorism’ (Anzaldúa 1987). Language therefore becomes an in-between space of resistance, through which a ‘racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross-pollinization, an “alien” consciousness — a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer [...] a consciousness of the Borderlands’ can be expressed (Anzaldúa 1987: 77). It should be noticed that Anzaldúa envisions this further stage as a greater self-consciousness not merely in terms of language and culture, but especially in terms of class and gender: [Nepantla is] a birthing stage where you feel like you’re reconfiguring your identity and don’t know where you are. You used to be this person but now you’re different in some way. You’re changing worlds and cultures and maybe classes, sexual preferences. (2000: 225–26)

Therefore, the Nepantla stage of la mestiza also involves the affirmation of a possible lesbian identity in a heteronormative world. Anzaldúa considers the new mestiza as a cultural and linguistic translator, a role which she describes using the ambiguous figure of la Malinche and its repre­ sentations. La Malinche was Hernán Cortés’s translator and therefore the cultural mediator between colonizers and colonized in Mexico. However, she is also represented by two antithetical figures, a virgin (la Virgen de Guadalupe) and a prostitute (la Chingada). La Malinche was a virgin before becoming the Spanish conqueror’s lover. The representation of la Malinche as a prostitute is so widely acknowledged that malinchismo means betrayal in Mexican. In addition, la Malinche is described as the mother of a hybrid progeny of children, whom she has generated

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together with the Spanish conqueror, and as la Llorona, the mother who cries for her dead children. The negative representation of la Malinche clearly emphasizes the isolation of the translator, who is separated from both her own community and the receiving culture: la Malinche is personified by la Virgen de Guadalupe and has the great responsibility of creating a bridge between cultures, but she is also la Chingada, the traitor of her own people, who helps and stands on the side of the colonizers. Cultural translation and hybrid language allow la mestiza to affirm the composite identities of those who inhabit the borderlands. Borderland/La Frontera envisions identity as a process of linguistic self-translation, which passes through a stage of silence and anxiety, and makes the translator feel like a betrayer of both languages and cultures. Anzaldúa describes the political function of the cultural translator in affirming a multilingual, mestizo, and lesbian identity. Her autobiographical story collects the voices of the multiple marginalized communities to which Anzaldúa belongs. Like Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Scego’s Oltre Babilonia connects issues of language, race, and gender to each other, by describing the process of racial and gendered self-awareness of two multilingual main characters: Zuhra and Mar. Like la Malinche, Zuhra and Mar are atravesados who straddle cultures and live at the conf luence of at least two languages. These characters claim their right to affirm the ‘aberrant’ and ‘mistaken’ language that can better express their multilingual identity. Moreover, in Borderlands/La Frontera as well as in Oltre Babilonia cultural translators are women, who occupy an internal yet critical position within a social context, and have little representation within the dominant narrative. Like Anzaldúa, Mar is a meticcio character who describes herself in these terms: Sono frutto del Terzo mondo. Un padre negro, una madre figlia di terroni. [...] Sono terra di conquista. Terra da calpestare. Frutto ibrido senza colore. Senza collocazione. Una mezzosangue che non appartiene a nulla. Il mio sangue è contaminato. Confuso. C’è troppo di altri in me [...] Mezzosangue. Seminera. Mi vergogno. Per i black non sono abbastanza scura. Per i white non sono abbastanza chiara [...] Sono scorretta. (Scego 2008b: 388–89) [I am a fruit of the Third World. My father is black, my mother is the daughter of Italian Southerners. [...] I am a land of conquest. A land to step on. A hybrid fruit without colour. Without a place to be. Half-breed who does not belong to anything. My blood is contaminated. Confused. There is too much of others in me [...] Half-blood. Half-black. I am ashamed. For blacks I am not dark enough. For whites not light enough [...] I am wrong.]

In this passage, which perhaps echoes not only Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, but also Kym Ragusa’s self-description as ‘Black and Italian. African American, Italian American. [...] Biracial, Interracial. Mixed-Blood, Half-Breed’ in her memoir The Skin between Us (2006: 25), Mar envisions the many borders that she has to straddle. First of all, she envisions the borderland as the space between Italy and Argentina, which has strong cultural and historical connections because of migration. In particular, by calling herself the daughter of Italian Southerners, Mar invites questioning of what are the north/south boundaries of the world and where Italy could be located within this framework. Secondly, she is ashamed

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of her meticcio skin and envies both Zuhra’s blackness (Scego 2008b: 389) and her mother’s whiteness: ‘[Miranda] sembrava una réclame [...] “Perchè io valgo” e io valgo?’ [Miranda looked like an advertisement [...] ‘Because I am worth it’ Am I?] (Scego 2008b: 392). Mar’s nickname is ‘la Nus-Nus’ or ‘mezza-mezza’ [half-half ] (Scego 2008b: 25), and she calls herself ‘mezzosangue’ [half-blood], ‘seminegra’ [half-nigger], and ‘seminiente’ [half-nothing], since she feels too white to be black and too black to be white (Scego 2008b: 389). The third reconfiguration of the borderland is related to language: unlike Miranda, who writes in a ‘pure’ Spanish language, Mar speaks a hybrid language, a mixture of Italian and Spanish. Just as the meticcio Anzaldúa mixes English and Spanish, Mar’s meticcio language is often associated with her meticcio skin. Mar’s perception of her hybrid language and her meticcio skin as inferior is linked to her troublesome relationship with her mother Miranda. Therefore, she frequently envisions another border, namely that of different generations, which divides her and her sister Zuhra from her parents. Unlike her mother, who is incapable of writing Somali and records her story on a tape recorder, Zuhra can speak many languages. Moreover, she can afford to go to the sea and get a tan (Scego 2008b: 237), implicitly marking her distance from impoverished immigrants who, as Sara Ahmed says about the obsession of European white people with getting a tan, cannot represent their skin colour as an adornment rather than a stain and in many cases cannot share the luxury of covering their bodies with a browner veil (2000: 129). Zuhra shows that there are different ways of ‘being black’ with respect to one’s class belonging, and she highlights the difference in class she feels between herself and her immigrant parents. Like Anzaldúa, Mar and Zuhra learn to span many different languages and cultures, by passing through stages of silence and self-denigration. Initially both Mar and Zuhra envy their mothers’ pure language, and perceive their own manner of expression as imperfect and wrong. Mar’s and Zuhra’s process of acquiring this new political, racial, female, and linguistic consciousness achieves its symbolic closing stages with the substitution of the mother/daughter relationship with sisterhood. Their fascination with the monolingual mother tongue is substituted by a sister’s tongue, which derives from the mother tongue, but is different from it. Moreover, at the end of the novel Zuhra dreams of becoming a mother (Scego 2008b: 449) and Mar imagines giving birth to a beautiful child who resembles her and whose skin is a mix of many colours: an ‘impasto di bianco e nero, di rosso e di giallo’ [mixture of white and black, red and yellow] (Scego 2008b: 397). This representation recalls Ali Farah’s Madre piccola, as Domenica substitutes the troublesome relationship with her mother for sisterhood and by becoming mother herself of her child Taariikh. Through their motherhood, Domenica, Zuhra, and Mar acquire a new political, racial, female, and linguistic consciousness, overcoming the previous stages of pain and difficulty. Mar, Zuhra, and Domenica’s motherhood symbolizes the birth of a plural, meticcio, and multilingual genealogy, as well as the overcoming of the many traumas in their lives. According to Judith Lewis Herman, the main effect of a traumatic experience is ‘disempowerment and disconnection from others’ (1994: 133), and the recovery of the trauma is connected to the ‘creation of new [social] concessions’ (Herman 1994: 133) and to the ‘action of telling a story’ (Herman 1994:

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175). The childbirth and the female connections described in Madre piccola and Oltre Babilonia might be seen as a way to create a plural discourse in which minorities (in terms of both gender and race) that have been subjected to a traumatic experience can make their voices heard. Zuhra and Mar’s sisterhood at the end of Oltre Babilonia shows many affinities with the description of la mestiza, although Anzaldúa partly identifies selfemancipation with the affirmation of her lesbian identity. Igiaba Scego often refers to homosexuality in her literary and journalistic works. For instance, she has written ‘La libertà ritrovata dei migranti omosessuali’ [The Freedom of Homosexual Migrants is Found Again] (Scego 2009), which is an important article regarding homosexual immigrants. Moreover, the representation of homosexual characters in Scego’s work shows that a source of conf lict between Somali children and parents can be gender roles, as ‘parents may have gender role expectations for their children that are incompatible with behaviors the children need in order to function effectively in the new society’ (Amin and Ahmed M. Yusuf 2011: 166). Unlike Borderlands/La Frontera, where the acquisition of a mestiza consciousness allows for the overcoming not only of national and linguistic, but also of gender boundaries, homosexuality in Oltre Babilonia is inherently connected to trauma, violence, or misfortune. In a passage of the novel, a German and an Italian colonel challenge each other and decide to prove who is more brutal. The Italian colonel, Guglielmi, wins, since he shoots a Somali man, castrates another, and rapes Elias’s father, Majad (Scego 2008b: 69). The symbolic representation of Italian colonialism as a homosexual rape might respond to the myth of emasculated Italian soldiers and possibly raise awareness of the fact that many Italian colonizers were able to enjoy wider sexual freedom and engage in homosexual relations in Africa (Stefani 2007: 223). However, it also connects the moral depravity of Fascists to homosexuality, by echoing a frequent cliché in Italian literature and cinema in the aftermath of the Second World War (Prono 2001). Majad’s rape changes his sexual tendencies, by making him no longer feel like a man (Scego 2008b: 118). Majad enjoys tailoring and cooking, has a ‘voce di uomo e di donna’ [the voice of a man and a woman] (Scego 2008b: 441), dresses like a woman, and has a ‘passo sbilenco’ [a lopsided step] (Scego 2008b: 118). While Majad’s ‘polysexuality’ and ‘erotic energy’ in Oltre Babilonia have been interpreted as positive symbols of queerness (Carroli 2010: 214), nonetheless this description also recalls the effeminate representations of colonized subjects, which were used to negate their ‘humanness’ (Nandy 1983: 43). In both cases, Majad’s description is never characterized with ostensible or realistic traits, as he eventually appears as a magical presence. The representation of Majad as a symbolic figure erases his corporeal presence as a queer subject. It should also be noted that Majad’s non-masculine representation is associated with illness (Scego 2008b: 119). This representation is controversial since lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people were historically considered mentally and physically ill simply because they were not heterosexual or did not conform to gender norms. Moreover, the attraction to homosexuals is represented as an impediment to true sentimental life. For instance, Zuhra is traumatized after being raped by an Italian caretaker at school. Therefore, she resists engaging in heterosexual relationships and

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is attracted to gay men, since they are more ‘rispettosi’ [respectful] (Scego 2008b: 178). Notably, she prefers George Clooney to Cary Grant, because the former has a more feminine aspect (Scego 2008b: 23), inasmuch as he resembles her female psychologist (Scego 2008b: 12). Zuhra’s initial predilection for homosexual men is mentioned alongside the fact that she looks masculine: ‘Anche se è un maschio, mi assomiglia molto Maradona’ [even if he is a man, Maradona looks a lot like me] (Scego 2008b: 15). Zuhra also equates homosexuality and effeminacy, by justifying it with one of the most common denials of personal heterosexism, that of the ‘gay friend’: ‘Cazzo ... mica sarai una maledetta checca anche tu? Io adoro i gay. Ho amici gay, ma cavolo non vorresti mai che il tuo uomo è una maledetta checca, ti pare?’ [Shit ... Aren’t a damned queer, too? I love gay people. I have gay friends, but you would never want your man to be a damned queer, would you?] (Scego 2008b: 230). Zuhra’s derogatory words to define gays might be related to the attempt to ref lect a metropolitan language, but the reiteration of this terminology together with a clichéd representation of homosexuals could result in confirming negative stereotypes (Pinzuti 2012: 201). For example, Zuhra has a romance with Leonardo, a person who later becomes a transvestite. Leonardo has ‘l’andatura sbilenca [...] faceva ballo latinoamericano [...] usava troppo profumo alla violetta’ [a lopsided walk, dances to Latin American music, and uses too much violet perfume] (Scego 2008b: 178). This representation is stereotyped, since it gives a distinctive and corporeal mark to a sexual behaviour, which is further noted in a passage of the novel where Zuhra thinks that a person is gay ‘con quel suo modo di sculettare obliquo’ [with that lopsided way of moving his ass] (Scego 2008b: 83). The reference to Leonardo in the story is useful to emphasize the difference between Zuhra and her parents, who are more conservative regarding gender roles. Moreover, Zuhra’s fascination with gay men symbolizes her difficulty in redefining her identity after a trauma. Like her sister Zuhra’s fascination with gay men, Mar’s homosexuality is depicted as just a stage before she discovers her ‘true’ non-homosexual nature and dreams of having a child. Mar often denies being a lesbian, although she entertains a lesbian relationship with an Argentinean girl called Patricia, who forces the young SomaliArgentinean-Italian woman to have sex with an aberrant man (Scego 2008b: 31), and to abort her child (Scego 2008b: 28). Mar identifies with her girlfriend Patricia and envies her because she is white (Scego 2008b: 33). Mar’s gendered identity seems to be intrinsically connected to her unfortunate destiny. At the end of the novel, both Zuhra and Mar dream of motherhood and they seem to accept themselves for who they are. Motherhood is not connected to a heterosexual identity, nor does the idea of maternity necessarily require the intervention of men. However, the presentation of a linear narrative or a progression from homosexuality to motherhood for Zuhra and Mar seems to envision reproduction as a symbol of a redemptive future. Since the child has often been used as the ‘perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics, the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention’ to discriminate against and limit the rights of queer minorities (Edelman 2004: 3), the question might be raised whether Zuhra and Mar’s dreams of motherhood are connected to a heteronormative imagery.

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Overall, the representation of queer subjects in Oltre Babilonia is quite different from Borderlands/La Frontera. Non-heterosexual sexual orientation is frequently represented in Oltre Babilonia as the result of a traumatic sexual experience, such as the cases of Zuhra, Majad, or Miranda, who falls in love with another women called La Flaca after having been the lover of an Argentinean military officer, Carlos, who treated her as his sexual slave (Scego 2008b: 242). Oltre Babilonia also seems to represent attraction to homosexual persons as a stage, which preludes the acquisition of a gender consciousness. The finding of a non-homosexual identity for Zuhra and Mar is, to paraphrase Rosemary Hennessy’s thoughts concerning self-acceptance of one’s gender identity, ‘an imaginary compensatory psychological wage of normalcy’ (2000: 44), which in this case is denied to Somali Italian characters by racism. Therefore, Oltre Babilonia describes a transnational sisterhood of subaltern women which is set in contrast not merely to the violence of white males — like Guglielmi, il bidello, and Carlos — and the hopeless marginalization of immigrant male characters (Elias), but also to homosexual subjectivities. This complicates the representation of belonging in Oltre Babilonia, which encompasses not only gender but also, as the previous two chapters have pointed out, involves a contraposition in terms of race between ‘niggers’ and ‘haluf ’ and the difference in language use between the immigrant parents and their children. Collective Assemblage and Autobiography There is no single paradigm through which multiple identitarian belongings are represented in Somali Italian literature. The shifting and multiple identities in Somali Italian literature therefore prevent readers from fixing the characters of these literary works in any stable position, and might even make readers question their desire to do so. However, the previous discussion has highlighted three shared features of the writings analysed, namely the marked presence of the spoken word or the dialogic dimension of these texts, the use of autobiographically inspired narratives to envision a plural history, and the frequent intertextual reference to define — in terms of both exclusion and inclusion — imaginary communities. This section has two objectives: to analyse whether these features are relevant to other texts written by authors of Somali origin and to evaluate how they might be connected to what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘a collective assemblage’. Deleuze and Guattari’s ref lection on ‘collective assemblage’ stresses the constructedness of social identity, which might only be articulated through language. However, they do not seem to assume — and I will further demonstrate this point in the Conclusion — that texts are inherently minor or major by the way they are written, since they are also the result of the ways in which their readers receive them over time. Nonetheless, to explain in simple terms how minor subjects express a ‘collective assemblage’, one could say that they present subjectivity as originating from many different voices, while major literature delineates a clear and homogeneous self-definition of the narrator as ‘I’. In other words, minor writers do not write to affirm an identity that is supposed to already exist, but to negotiate a provisional identity, which has not yet been created. In so doing, minor literature

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shows that ‘being is univocal only insofar as it is at the same time multiple, indeed, the very division of itself into difference’ (Evans 2008: 178–79). Minor literature forms styles that allow bodies to create new territories, constantly breaking off from any image of a general or universal subject. Since minor subjects seek to constitute or create their identities, their discourses are necessarily discontinuous and fragmentary. One reason for this discontinuity is the fact that minor literature expresses a dialogue between different voices. Similarly, the marked representation of the spoken in Somali Italian literature shows that these narratives are interlocutory and inspired by an oral dimension. For instance, some sections of Madre piccola, Oltre Babilonia, and Rhoda fictionalize interviews and oral reports and are constructed as a set of different narrative voices that engage in dialogue with each other. Igiaba Scego, Kaha Mohamed Aden, Cristina Ali Farah, and Garane Garane often employ direct discourse in order to create a more immediate relationship with the reader. As the discussion in Chapter 1 has highlighted, the presence of Somali signifiers in the Italian language recalls the spoken language of multilingual subjects. The repre­ sentation of the spoken is also connected to the rhizomatic structure of Somali Italian literature, although in this case it might be better described using Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, as a space ‘in which each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other’ (1997: 11). Unlike Deleuze and Guattari, who strictly connect the rhizome to language, Glissant talks of ‘identity-rhizome’ to describe an identity that is not rooted, but is characterized by multiple encounters (1997: 23). Deleuze and Guattari, by highlighting that ‘there is no individual enunciation. There is not even a subject of enunciation’ (1987: 79), recognize that the expression of identity is the result of a dialogue whether it is acknowledged — as minor literature does — or not. At the same time they do not recognize that the representation of this multiplicity of voices is strictly connected to the social position that the minor writer occupies, which is a crucial aspect in Somali Italian literature. Conversely to Deleuze and Guattari’s abstract model, Du Bois’s theorization of double consciousness describes the ability of writers of African origins to express their internal division as a polyphony of voices that enables social and personal empowerment. According to Dorothy Hale’s reading of Du Bois’s double consciousness as a multiple voicedness, those subjects whose self is divided because of discrimination are able to internalize heterogeneous social voices and to describe the dialogue between self and society, by developing a discourse that can subvert ‘if not the terms of [one’s] identity, then at least [one’s] own linguistic expression of that identity’ (Hale 1994: 461). Nonetheless, the internal division of Somali Italian characters seems to be slightly different from the one envisioned by Du Bois, as it involves a multiple, rather than double, voicedness, which specifically refers to Somali traditional orature. Moreover, the emphasis of the spoken in Somali Italian literature shows the difference between the oral culture of Somalia and the Western literary tradition, in which orality is considered a precursor of or inferior to literacy, rather than the two being interdependent forms of expression (Finnegan 1988: 56). The fictionalization of Somali traditional orature aims to restore value to this practice in front of a Western audience, by performing an intercultural (from one cultural

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context to another), interlingual (from a minor language into a dominant one), and intersemiotic (from orality to literacy) translation. This transformation involves not only written, but also audiovisual forms such as Kaha Mohamed Aden’s 2007 oral story La quarta via (Brioni 2014b). The reference to Somali oral tradition is often linked to the reconstruction of the collective memory of a key presence in Somali Italian literature: Mogadishu, which was destroyed during the civil war, and is the place where most of these writers’ families came from. For instance, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel dedicates Nuvole sull’equatore, ‘alla “mia” Mogadiscio che non esiste più, ma che porto sempre nel cuore’ [to my Mogadishu, which I carry in my heart although it no longer exists] (2010: 5). Similarly, Gashan in Il latte è buono affirms that ‘Mogadiscio non è mai esistita ma è stata partorita dalle immaginazioni latine, greche e britanniche’ [Mogadishu never existed but was born from Latin, Greek, and British imaginations], asserting the necessity to write a Somali narrative of the capital city of Somalia (Garane 2005: 83). Kaha Mohamed Aden expresses the same idea in the oral story La quarta via: Mogadishu survives wherever a Somali has emigrated. This reconstruction of Mogadishu is strictly connected to the many definitions of home and belonging that these writings envision: the feeling of having lost their home is in fact connected to the sorrow of not having entirely found a home, ‘neither past nor present’ (Orton 2011: 405). In this sense, Somali Italian characters in Italy rediscover ‘the “place” from which [they have] been removed’ (Burns 2001: 177). The many voices in Somali Italian literature identify multiple belongings. The identity of the main characters in Somali Italian literature are described by both inclusive and exclusive paradigms, which go beyond the simple dichotomy of Italian/Somali or residents/immigrants since they are constructed in relation to class, education, gender, language, race, and religious differences. This assumption provides a further reason to criticize Deleuze and Guattari’s model: the minor ‘collective assemblage of enunciation’ does not include all minorities; in fact, it excludes some of them. It might be worth giving examples here of some of the groups in contrast to which the identities of the main characters of Somali Italian literature are defined: Gashan in Il latte è buono is different from both Somalis and Italians because of his lineage and culture, and delineates his imagined community along gender lines; Domenica in Madre piccola does not entirely feel Italian because she is meticcia and cannot feel Somali because she cannot speak this language well; Zuhra in Oltre Babilonia defines herself as a non-conventional Italian, who is also different from her illiterate mother and from impoverished immigrants who cannot afford the luxury of going to Tunisia and getting a sun tan (Scego 2008b: 237); Scego in La mia casa è dove sono indicates belonging to a lower class than most Italians (2010c: 114, 125, 139), but also maintains that her family was different from other Somalis since it was ‘l’intellighenzia del paese’ [the intelligentsia of the country] (2010c: 87).4 The identity represented in much Somali Italian literature can be described by Stuart Hall’s quotation at the beginning of the chapter as a constant process. Hall further describes his views on identity in the essay ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ as follows:

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Belonging Cultural identity [...] is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past. (2003: 234)

Hall also notices that identity is defined through a process of differentiation and the recognition of difference, which is constructed through ‘the relation to the Other, the relation to what is not, to precisely what it lacks’ (1996: 4). Deleuze and Guattari seem uninterested in the imagined minor communities against which minor subjects define themselves nor do they acknowledge the different levels of discrimination to which black immigrant women — to take an example — are subjected. For instance, Braidotti points out that Deleuze ‘de-essentialise[s] the body’ of women and conceives subjects ‘in terms of a multiplicity of impersonal forces’ or as ‘symbolical’ presences (Braidotti 1993: 44). Therefore, Braidotti argues that ‘the dissolution of sexed identities by neutralization of gender dichotomies [...] is historically dangerous for women’ (1993: 47–48) and maintains that ‘deconstruction of phallogocentrism cannot be disconnected from the concrete changes taking place in women’s lives’ (1993: 46). More controversially, Deleuze and Guattari assume that free indirect discourse might illustrate at best that ‘every utterance involves a constellation of interacting voices’ and envisions a collective discourse (Evans 2008: 180). However, as Cixous’s quotation at the beginning of this chapter suggests, minorities and especially women have frequently employed autobiography as a genre with which to talk about issues they were not allowed to address and to denounce their discrimination. Referring to Du Bois’s double consciousness, Sheila Rowbotham maintains that the autobiographical genre has been employed by African American women writers in order to express a self that is even more divided than that of African American men (1973: 31). Rowbotham contends that the use of autobiography by a woman allows her to see herself as ‘historical being-woman’, and to take possession of a subjectivity that has often been denied (1973: 31). By using autobiography, a member of an ‘oppressed group’ might create a ‘collective consciousness’, which is useful in order to make the group visible both to the oppressor and to the group itself (Rowbotham 1973: 27). In this sense, to use Luisa Passerini’s words this time, the creation of an historical subject through the use of a genre usually connected to an intimate, private, and even domestic environment affirms the right for minorities to ‘be in history’ and to ‘have a history’, moving from subjection to subjectivity (1988: 7). The connection between social position and the use of autobiography to envision broader communities might be useful in commenting on Somali Italian literature. The previous analysis has underlined that the narrator of Somali Italian literary works is often the actual protagonist or witness of the events he or she recounts:

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Shirin is the first immigrant author to write her autobiographically inspired text without the help of an Italian co-writer; a first-person singular narrator is the main character of the majority of Kaha Mohamed Aden’s partly autobiographical short stories; Domenica’s story in Madre piccola mirrors Ali Farah’s; the character of Zuhra in Oltre Babilonia, as well as those of many of her short stories, recalls Igiaba Scego’s life; Il latte è buono is narrated by an external voice, but Gashan’s story recalls Garane Garane’s migratory experience. Significantly, only Sirad’s Sette gocce di sangue, Shirin’s Nuvole sull’equatore, and Scego’s Rhoda are not partially autobiographical texts, although they are inspired by real stories and interviews. Somali Italian autobiographically inspired texts belong to a hybrid genre and are ‘a literary product that is at once familiar (autobiography, testimony, narrative) and perplexing (all and none of these)’ (Burns 2001: 177). This combination of diverse genres and styles testifies to the fragmentation of the experience of diaspora and is clearly an example of Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘assemblage’, as it creates a new form from existing elements that were not previously connected together.5 Rather than reinforcing a monolithic, dominant, unified, and sovereign paradigm of the self, Somali Italian literature envisions the writing of the self as an emancipatory project, which allows minor subjects to acquire a self-representation and affirm their identity in a process of becoming. To quote Sidonie Smith’s ref lection on autobiographies by minorities, Somali Italian autobiographically inspired texts have ‘proved to be an effective means for members of ethnic and/or sexual minorities to articulate, voice and legitimize their long-silenced and marginalized experiences [...] [and they constitute] a means of building a sense of self and “agency” through the organization in writing of chaotic fragments of experience’ (1998: 108). The creation of multiple imagined communities across class, language, education, gender, race, and religious divides and of an autobiographical self hood that is f lexible and dependent on interpersonal relationships in Somali Italian literature is decisive in countering the homogenizing force of national belonging and in distinguishing a minor subject from the monolithic groups into which he or she is usually forced. The imagined communities to which the main characters of Somali Italian literature belong, as well as those to which they do not belong, are often created by referring to other texts. Somali Italian literature is not separated from the global literary discourse and has been written by cosmopolitan intellectuals who testify to a world in which it is possible to have contact with different languages and cultures. For instance, these writings refer to canonical Italian works such as Dante’s Divina Commedia in Il latte è buono and Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere in Oltre Babilonia or other writings about migration in Italian such as Meneghello’s Il dispatrio in ‘Dismatria’, Younis Tawfik’s La straniera in Rhoda, Cesare Pavese’s La luna e i falò [The Moon and the Bonfires] (1950) in Il comandante del fiume (Ali Farah 2014: 195), and Gezim Hajdari’s poems in Lontano da Mogadiscio (Shirin 2013: 342). Italian novels about migration from former Italian colonies often refer to or suggest intertextual connections between one another. For instance, Scego recognizes the inf luence of Ribka Sibhatu, Gabriella Ghermandi, and Cristina Ali Farah in her work (Scego 2007: 71, 82). Notably, the final lines of her autobiography La mia casa è dove sono — ‘è Igiaba ma siete anche voi’ [it’s Igiaba, but it is also you] (Scego 2010c: 160) —

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recall the end of Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle: ‘Oggi vi racconto la sua storia. Che poi è anche la mia. Ma pure la vostra’ [Today I tell you her story, which is mine but also yours] (2007: 251). The possible inf luence of the presence of alternate voices in Sette gocce di sangue on Madre piccola and Oltre Babilonia has also been suggested. References to non-European writings about liminal identities include Morrison’s Beloved in Madre piccola; Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s 1973 novel The Fortunes of Wangrin (Amadou Hampâté 1987) in La mia casa è dove sono (Scego 2010c: 82); Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Habibi’s Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, and Ragusa’s The Skin Between Us in Oltre Babilonia. Moreover, reference is made to texts about racism and colonization such as Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks in Il latte è buono, popular movies that are set in multiple parts of the world such as Iñarritu’s Babel in Oltre Babilonia, or Hollywood productions that feature African American stars such as Barry Sonnenfeld’s Man in Black (1997) in Il comandante del fiume (Ali Farah 2014: 85–88). According to Laura Lori, Igiaba Scego’s Rhoda recalls Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) as in this novel ‘la narrazione è corale, la dimensione temporale non cronologica ma narrativa e soprattutto l’ultimo capitolo dà voce alla protagonista, appena giustiziata per aver assassinato la donna che ha causato la morte della sorellina infibulandola’ [the narration is choral, the temporal dimension is non-chronological but narrative and, above all, the last chapter presents the voice of the main female character, who has been executed for the killing of her younger daughter, whom she was infibulating] (Lori 2013: 222). Like Garane Garane and Cristina Ali Farah, Igiaba Scego also refers to the literary works of the most wellknown Somali author, Nuruddin Farah (Scego 2010c: 8). The many references to non-Western global narratives suggest that ‘the literature around us is unmistakably a planetary system’ (Moretti 2004: 148) and allow the envisioning of a ‘border thinking’ that connects different liminal and peripheral experiences of subalternity, by problematizing the centre–periphery model for describing global relationships (Mignolo 2000: 91–126). As a consequence, the textual evidence contests Deleuze and Guattari’s assumption that ‘there are no possibilities for an individuated enunciation that would belong to this or that “master” and that could be separated from a collective enunciation’, since minor literature is ‘something other than a literature of masters’ (1986: 17). Thus, Deleuze and Guattari assert that minor literature refuses to refer to the past literary authority and that it ‘sounds “unmasterly” ’ (Zamberlin 2006: 76). However, this assumption is controversial since the French philosophers seem to offer an instrumental rather than a critical reading of Kaf ka, with literary examples used in order to demonstrate their theories. According to Stanley Corngold, Deleuze and Guattari ‘deny, in Kaf ka’s name, the subjective aspirations of individuals. Kaf ka says exactly the opposite: minor literature encourages “the independence of the individual writer” ’ (Corngold 2004: 288). Moreover, Corngold demonstrates that Kaf ka’s writings entertain a strong connection with major authors (2004: 287). As Deleuze and Guattari’s model disregards the intertextual connections in minor literature, this aspect of Somali Italian literature can be analysed using Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of literary heteroglossia. Bakhtin defines heteroglossia as the literary representation of the polyphony of voices that characterizes the speech

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of every subject: Heteroglossia [...] is another speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way. Such speech constitutes a special type of double-voiced discourse. It serves two speakers at the same time and expresses simultaneously two different intentions: the direct intention of the character who is speaking, and the refracted intention of the author. In such discourse there are two voices, two meanings and two expressions. (1981: 324)

The heteroglot novelist is capable of ‘translating one’s own intentions from one linguistic system to another, of fusing “the language of truth” with “the language of the everyday”, of saying “I am me” in someone else’s language, and in my own language, “I am other” ’ (Dentith 1995: 57). The notion of heteroglossia is significant in Somali Italian literature for at least two reasons. First, Bakhtin argues that heteroglossia is implicitly related to the political nature of minor literature, as it mocks authoritative and official language by showing readers the plurality of languages that constitute any language and subject (1981: 273). Considering heteroglossia in relation to Du Bois’s double consciousness, Hale contends that as Bakhtin’s writer talks of the impossibility of representing one’s language as unitary, Du Bois suggests that discrimination explains why African intellectuals cannot perceive themselves as subjects. Bakhtinian heteroglot writers are able to distance themselves from the social languages from which they ‘are spoken’ — the same languages that define their identity — in order to self-represent. Similarly, Du Bois argues that discrimination against intellectuals of African origins provides them with a greater awareness of their social identity, which they express in an original language. This aspect is very relevant in Somali Italian literature, as these works account for the multiplicity of social voices of marginalized subjects as well as their multiple languages. The heteroglossic nature of Somali Italian literature counters the apparent monologic unity of the dominant representation and shows that identity is based on a fragmented and composite language.6 Secondly, as Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between minor and major liter­ ature, Bakhtin recognizes two lines of stylistic development of literature: while one line eliminates heteroglossia and creates fake representations of individuality as singular, stable, and monolithic, by often referring to the ‘ennobled’ language of authors of the past, the second refers to the social and political contiguity and presents identity in a constant state of renegotiation, f lux, and extension (1981: 385). Nonetheless, Bakhtin argues that in the second case ‘heteroglossia becomes only one of the participants in a dialogue of languages’, which might also involve other literary works (1981: 386). This aspect is certainly relevant to describe Somali Italian literature: although Somali Italian writings are not completely disconnected from other literary works, their authors appear more interested in everyday life and struggle. Somali Italian literature creates an arborescent political, literary, and historical system rather than confirming the existing hierarchies in Italian literature. These works revisit from a different perspective or systematically disregard canonical Italian literature. These texts are therefore different from other contemporary Italian texts, like Lucarelli’s L’ottava vibrazione [The Eight Vibration] (2008) or Domenichelli’s Lugemalé, which refer in explicit terms to novels such as

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Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Ennio Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere respectively, in order to justify their colonial setting (Stefani 2010: 40–56). Unlike Somali Italian literature that bases its credibility on the ‘true story’ of the author, most of these texts attempt to write an alternative history of colonialism and they persuade the reader to trust the writer’s narrative accounts, as they are based on Western historiography. For example, Carlo Lucarelli in the acknowledgement pages of L’ottava vibrazione claims to have written a book that is accurate in its presentation of historical facts thanks to the support and the guidance he received from historian Nicola Labanca, but portrays a rather stereotypical depiction of female characters (Stefani 2010). The Conclusion addresses these issues in more detail by providing an answer to three interconnected questions: What is the difference between minor and major literature? To what extent can Somali Italian literature be considered ‘minor’? If it is considered as such, how can we change the way in which literature has been conceptualized so far? Notes to Chapter 3 1. I refer to Robert Durling’s English translation of Divina Commedia (Alighieri 2007). 2. Garane probably takes this image from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, where decolonization is problematically described as a new beginning from a ‘tabula rasa’ (Fanon 1967: 35). 3. I refer to Gil Fagiani’s English translation of Ali Farah’s ‘Strappo’, ‘The Strip’ (Ali Farah 2007e). 4. It is interesting to note that the social mobility of Scego’s family as ‘Somali intelligentsia’ might be the result of the importance that translators acquired during Italian colonialism, which some historical research has recently highlighted (Morone 2012). According to Scego’s petition to destroy the monument for the Italian war criminal Rodolfo Graziani, her grandfather ‘had to translate Graziani’s crimes, he was a colonial victim, and had to translate the horror, against his will’ (Scego 2013c). 5. In order to explain the notion of assemblage, Deleuze and Guattari refer to war machines and to the fact that the new assemblage between man, animal, and weapon changed the conception of war between the sixth and seventh centuries bce, although the individual concepts of each of these elements were already familiar (1987: 420–23). 6. It is significant to note that Fred Evans underlines that ‘Bakhtin’s ideas of heteroglossia and monoglossia are like Deleuze’s “absolute deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” ’ (Evans 2008: 189).

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Conclusion v

Becoming To write is to struggle, to resist; to write is to become, to write is to trace maps. (Deleuze and Parnet 2007: 231) Partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differ­en­ tiated, and unmonolithic. (Said 1993: xxv)

Gayatri Spivak’s 1988 essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ has provided perhaps one of the most poignant criticisms of Deleuze and Guattari’s assumption that, as she puts it, ‘the subalterns can speak and know their conditions’ (1988: 272). According to Spivak, the condition of subalternity is connected to the impossibility of speaking or being heard. In my understanding, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ contests the idea that ‘all becoming is minoritarian’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 108), since it does not clearly distinguish the becoming minoritarian of some members of oppressed groups ‘in the First World, under the standardization and regimentation of socialised capital’ (Spivak 1988: 272) from the condition of other minor — or, as Spivak calls them, subaltern — subjects. Spivak does not see subalternity as characterized by undergoing a constant becoming, nor as a condition that can be expressed. In light of Spivak’s observation, it is not possible to define strictly the condition of Somali Italian authors as equal to that of the minority population of settled migrant labourers or refugees they portray in their works. As Somali Italian authors are subjected to the discrimination that most Muslims, women, and people of African origins suffer in the Italian context, they might express their personal experience of this condition. They can speak in proximity with some minor subjects who cannot express themselves or be heard, or imagine doing so thanks to their ability to write and gather the interest of an audience. Somali Italian writers are cosmopolitan intellectuals, who received a higher education, belong to a different social class, and came to Italy under different conditions from those experienced by most Somali immigrants and refugees. Il latte è buono underlines this aspect in an ironic passage in which Gashan accuses European elites of considering every author of African descent as a trustable explicator of ‘their’ culture and people. Although Gashan ‘non amava la cultura a casa’ [did not like his culture at home], in Europe he becomes ‘il signor cultura africana’ [Mr. African Culture] (Garane 2005: 96). Staying with Deleuze and Guattari’s terminology, Somali Italian authors ‘become minoritarian’, as they present ‘a way of thinking new modes of becoming — not as the becoming of some subjects, but a becoming towards others, a becoming towards difference, and a becoming through new questions’ (Colebrook 2000: 12).

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The difference between Somali Italian writers and the minor characters that their works portray is clearly underlined by the presence of characters who cannot speak, like Nadia in the eponymous short story by Kaha Mohamed Aden (2010: 117–35), or decide not to speak, like Barni in Rhoda (Scego 2004c: 155–56). The main character of this novel is described as a person who has an ‘inespresso’ [wordless] life (Scego 2004c: 52), as she decides to become a prostitute and to belong to a group of people who look the same and have no name (Scego 2004c: 20). Moreover, several major characters in Somali Italian literature struggle between silence and speech, like Gashan in Il latte è buono, who speaks Italian f luently but decides to remain silent for a time, thus resembling some immigrants who do not speak Italian (Garane 2005: 83). Similarly, Zuhra in Oltre Babilonia expresses her desire to remain silent forever (Scego 2008b: 445), before accepting the inevitability of dealing with her double linguistic identity. Zuhra identifies two linguistic mothers: Somali, which she is unable to write and is a language related to her blood, and Italian, which she associates with cultural figures such as ‘Dante, Boccaccio, De André e Alda Merini’ (Scego 2008b: 443). Once again, the reference to Italian cultural authorities distinguishes Zuhra from her immigrant mother, who cannot speak or write the Italian language and records her memories on tape in order to communicate them to her daughter (Scego 2008b: 300). Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘becoming minoritarian’ and their reference to minor literature as a literature ‘in becoming’ proposes some changes in how literature has been conceptualized so far, and it might be helpful to identify the position of Somali Italian literature in relation to the canon. As the previous analysis has indicated, Somali Italian literature describes cultural identities that are not constituted but have to be determined. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, Chapter 1 has demonstrated that ‘it is certainly not by using a minor language as a dialect, by regionalizing or ghettoizing, that one becomes revolutionary; rather, by using a number of minority elements, by connecting, conjugating them, one invents a speci­f ic, unforeseen, autonomous becoming’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 106). Similarly, Chapters 2 and 3 have highlighted that the ‘becoming’ of Somali Italian litera­t ure is connected to its potential to assist in changing the Italian national con­sciousness and attitude towards colonialism and immigration. Somali Italian literature shows that ‘the Italian colonial legacy has left a clear mark in the Horn of Africa in the form of a cultural, linguistic and political aftermath’ (Ponzanesi 2000: 16), by fictionally representing the stories of colonized subjects and the memories of members of the Somali diaspora. The fragmented narration of these stories cannot substitute historical research on the Somali diaspora or Italian colonialism but can accompany them. In this sense, they seem the best interpreters of Nicola Labanca’s hope that ‘è davvero giunto il tempo in cui, ad un livello più generale e non solo storiografico, gli italiani conoscano ed ammettano questa storia passata non trincerandosi dietro amnesie, rimozioni, esotismi o addirittura tardive e fuori luogo rivendicazioni’ [the time has now come for Italians to realize and admit their past history, not only on a historiographic but also on a general level, without hiding behind amnesia, denial, exoticisms or even inappropriate and outdated claims] (2002: 474). Somali Italian literature attempts to reconsider Italian and Somali histories critically from the perspective of those who cannot speak.

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The construction of history in Somali Italian literature might be better understood through Deleuze’s concept of minoritarian memory. According to Braidotti, ‘The majority subject holds the key to the central memory of the system, thus reducing “others” to an insignificant or rather “a-signifying” role’ (2006: 167). Conversely, minoritarian memory is a ‘counter memory’, which ‘bears a close link to the idea of a traumatic event’ and ‘functions [...] as a deterritorializing agency which dislodges the subject from his or her sense of unified and consolidated identity’ (Braidotti 2006: 167). Moreover, Braidotti argues that minoritarian memory follows a rhizomatic structure: This intensive, zigzagging, cyclical and messy type of remembering does not even aim at retrieving information in a linear manner [...] It disconnects the subject from his or her identification with logocentric consciousness and it shifts the emphasis from being to becoming. (2006: 167)

Minoritarian memory assumes the shape of a rhizomatic map or pattern, and although it is an act of imagination, it cannot be separated from factual historic events, since history cannot be divorced from its representation and interpretation (Deleuze 1989: 122). Similarly, the fragmentary representation of history in Somali Italian literature challenges the concepts of national spirit, heritage, and home, by negotiating both the notions of ‘Italian’ and ‘Somali’ as a ‘becoming’ rather than a ‘being’. Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of becoming is therefore pivotal in Somali Italian literature: by representing different ideas of belonging, these texts challenge the very notion of Italianness as a monolithic and stable concept. If a nation is a cultural construction that is produced through its narration (Bhabha 1990a: 292), the titles of texts like Oltre Babilonia, Lontano da Mogadiscio, and Fra-intendimenti describe transnational spaces that compete with the canonized national metaphor, which Bhabha (1990a: 293) identifies in the Catholic and familiar narrative written by Alessandro Manzoni: I promessi sposi [The Betrothed] (Manzoni (2010 [1827]). The hybridized language of Somali Italian texts and their concern for redefining the very idea of the nation in terms of language, race, religion, and gender resist the dominant white, patriarchal, and Catholic notion of identity. A further idea connected to Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘becoming’ is that minor literature will not be minor forever, but it might become major. As Deleuze puts it: ‘When a minority models for itself, it’s because it wants to become a majority, and probably has to, to survive or prosper’ (1995: 173). Key to understanding the major-minor dialectical process in Deleuze and Guattari’s theory is the following passage: Indeed, precisely because talent isn’t abundant in a minor literature, there are no possibilities for an individuated enunciation that would belong to this or that ‘master’ and that could be separated from a collective enunciation. Indeed, scarcity of talent is in fact beneficial and allows the conception of something other than a literature of masters. (1986: 17)

The two main ideas in this statement need to be recognized and analysed. First, Deleuze and Guattari believe that minor literature is disconnected from other literary works. As Chapter 3 has demonstrated, this assumption is not valid for

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Somali Italian literature, although their cultural references to other artistic works are not meant ‘to redo the photos, to remake power and law’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 86). In other words, Deleuze and Guattari argue that major literature presents itself as the expression of a formed identity that often coincides with a universal idea of subjectivity or with national spirit, heritage, or home. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari note that the hegemonic identity ‘necessarily exists by means of literature’ (1986: 16). Minor literature, by contrast, is in constant formation: it does not follow established literary standards, but it produces what is not already recognizable, and it imagines the people to come. Secondly, Deleuze and Guattari controversially refer to the supposed ‘scarcity of talent’ or ‘literary value’ in minor literature, which partly explains the disregard of the literary establishment. This reference to minor literature is surprising, since these terms have been used to silence, censor, and repress minorities throughout history. In this regard, Barbara Christian criticizes Deleuze and Guattari and argues that the terms ‘minority’ and ‘discourse’ are located firmly in a Western dualistic or ‘binary’ frame which sees the rest of the world as a minor, and tries to convince the rest of the world that it is major, usually through force and then through language. (Christian 1989: 228)

However, Deleuze and Guattari do not claim that Samuel Beckett, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Edward Estlin Cummings, James Joyce, Franz Kaf ka, Herman Melville, and Marcel Proust — to mention just some of the writers that they considered to be minor — are unskilled, nor do they envision an essentialist separation and immutable difference between minor and major writings. They contend instead that a beneficial difference between minor writings and canonized masters exists: ‘That is the strength of authors termed “minor”, who are in fact the greatest, the only greats: having to conquer one’s own language [...] to place it in a state of constant variation’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 104–05). While major literature refers to previously established models, minor literature reproduces the same force of difference that has created the works of major literature. Minor writings are involved in a process of ‘becoming’ and they ultimately entertain a relationship of continuity with major literature (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 27), but they are initially rejected since they transcend the standards of national literature. In this regard, Ponzanesi clearly recognizes that minority ‘is not an expression of less value but is a figuration for resistance and subversion within the establishment, a position which is inhabited or must be searched for in order to be able to express creativity and innovation’ (2004: 18). Ponzanesi further argues that ‘minor literature is a dialogic process; it is that element of subversion and uneasiness within language that eventually creates “great” literatures, expropriating the mainstream literatures from their throne of canonicity’ (2004: 19). The term ‘minor’, in short, does not refer to a timeless status, but to ‘the revolu­ tionary conditions for every literature within the heart of what is called great (or established) literature’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 18). As JanMohamed and Lloyd indicate, ‘ “becoming minor” is not a question of essence (as the stereotypes of minorities in dominant ideology would want us to believe) but a question of

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position’ (1990: 9). JanMohamed also points out that the label ‘minor’ highlights that ‘the hegemonic formation of minorities is itself based on an attempt to negate them — to prevent them from realizing their full potential as human beings’ (1990: 103). The term minor not only highlights the subordinate position of these writings, but also their capacity to challenge the existing major categories. As a consequence, ‘the minority’s attempt to negate the prior negation of itself ’ subverts the status of minor in which it has been confined, by performing ‘one of the most fundamental forms of affirmation’ ( JanMohamed and Lloyd 1990: 16). In other words, the minor status is characterized by the subversion rather than the passive acceptance of its condition. The critical and commercial success of Igiaba Scego testifies to one of the key aspects of minor literature, namely its change to a major status. Igiaba Scego was awarded the ‘Mondello’ prize in 2010 for La mia casa è dove sono, and her works are published by leading publishing companies such as Donzelli, Laterza, and Rizzoli. As I previously mentioned, La mia casa è dove sono was republished as a didactic book in 2012, and an extract from the first edition of this novel has been included in the additional online activities of an anthology of Italian literature (Scego 2012a). Igiaba Scego’s success is connected not only to her prolific writing, but also to her ability to address different audiences, which include people interested in migrant writings, world literature, transnational feminism, and the representation of the multicultural youth in Italy. The latter audience is particularly noteworthy, since Scego is perhaps the only author of Somali origins who has been able to appeal to younger readers, thanks to her use of social media (Twitter, Facebook) and blogs (she is one of the founders of the A.L.M.A. blog Collettivo ‘Alzo La Mano Adesso!’), her presence on TV shows and in Ascanio Celestini’s movie La pecora nera [The Black Sheep] in 2010, and her direction of the Radio 3 programme Black Italians in 2009. Scego’s activity as a writer cannot be divorced from her work as a journalist: she has written for national newspapers like Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Manifesto, La Repubblica, L’Unità, and Pubblico, inf luential blogs like Nazione Indiana, national magazines like Internazionale, and online magazines specializing in immigration and Africa like Nigrizia, Carta, Migra, Corriere Immigrazione, and El Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione. Scego’s ability to use a diverse range of media and approach different audiences is certainly connected to her linguistic proficiency, her younger age, and to the fact that she is the only writer of Somali origins who grew up in Italy. It is therefore not surprising that in a recent interview Wu Ming 1 included her work into New Italian Epic, thus signalling that it shares many stylistic characteristics and thematic constants with experimental ‘major’ narratives in contemporary Italy (2014: 280).1 Likewise, Scego indicated she felt ‘più vicina a Wu Ming che non ad autori di origine africana, perché abbiamo uno stesso modo di esplorare la storia. Non occorre avere lo stesso colore della pelle per sentirsi più o meno vicino ad uno scrittore’ [closer to Wu Ming than to authors of African origins, because we have the same way of exploring history. One should not need to have the same skin colour to feel more or less close to a writer] (Scego 2013b). The subject matter, function, formal elements and conventions, and audience of Igiaba Scego’s most recent works might well be distinguished from those by other

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authors of Somali origins who still have relatively less access to the general audience. For instance, Cristina Ali Farah — perhaps the writer who has gained most critical success after Scego — faced challenges in publishing her second novel, Il comandante del fiume, which was finally released with a small publishing house, 66thand2nd, even though she was a columnist for the magazine Vogue, and her first novel (awarded the ‘Elio Vittorini’ prize in 2008) was published by Frassinelli, a mid-sized publisher, and translated into English (Ali Farah 2011) and Dutch (Ali Farah 2008a). The fact that all Somali Italian authors whose works have been discussed in this book except Igiaba Scego and Kaha Mohamed Aden now live outside Italy certainly shows that some of them did not find the recognition they might have deserved, and testifies to the minor status of this literature in Italy. Nonetheless, it is misleading to consider the minor position exclusively in relation to the access gained by some of these works to the literary market. According to Jennifer Burns, the interest in migration and postcolonial literature ‘across the publishing industry’ (2013: 199) shows that the literature written by Somali Italian and other diasporic and migrant writers has brought about ‘a significant shift in national literary production from writers of the “centre”, white Italians writing in their first language, to writers from minority cultures’ (2013: 192). Although some have acknowledged and studied the relevance of this cultural shift, the reaction to these works by some prominent Italian literary critics f luctuates between silence (Brioni 2014d; Fracassa 2011) to a more vehement dismissal. For instance, Giulio Ferroni is certainly right to argue that what is marginal or minor is not ontologically better than other cultural expressions (2014: 55). Considering minor literature as the only great and revolutionary form of cultural production might create a reverse elitism. However, as these words were not supported by sustained and close analysis of textual examples, they might have been perceived as a general dismissal of the ‘postcolonial turn’ in Italian Studies and the literature by minorities that still have little have recognition in this country. In a similar vein, writer Piersandro Pallavicini argues that after ten years he understood that: il rinnovamento portato dalla scrittura migrante era significativo quanto un calzino spaiato, e che la stragrande maggioranza di quel che usciva da quel giro nei primi anni zero era interessante solo perché l’autore aveva una biografia esotica e costituiva una curiosità sociale e antropologica. Al fronte di un valore letterario nullo. (2012: 4–5) [the renewal brought by migrant writings was significant as an odd sock, and the large majority of what came out from that circle at the beginning of the 2000s was interesting only because the author had an exotic biography and embodied a social and anthropological curiosity. And with a null literary value.]

I agree with Pallavicini that a supposed tokenism based on the biography of a writer — as well as, I would add, a subservient attitude and fetishist reverence towards the canon — might harm a critical evaluation of literature. Nonetheless, Pallavicini fails to back up his statement with evidence, to prove the point that most literature written by immigrant authors lacks any literary value, and — above all — to define ‘literary value’. Moreover, Pallavicini’s comment controversially considers migrant or diasporic writers as a unified literary group or as a trend rather than

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acknowledging that ‘whether universally welcomed or not, the Italy of today is inescapably multiethnic’ (West 2001: 339). A third argument about the classification of the literature written by immigrants or their descendants come from Filippo La Porta, who argues that the concept of minor and major no longer makes sense, because ‘Internet e la democrazia letteraria rilanciano il lettore comune come critico, la cui unica autorità poggia su argomentazione e persuasione’ [Internet and the literary democracy launch the common reader as a critic, whose authority lies in argumentation and persuasion] (2003: 12). La Porta also claims that ‘siamo tutti minori in quanto individui [...] senza potere’ [we are all minor as individuals [...] who have no power] (2003: 12) and maintains that ‘la letteratura migrante in quanto letteratura minore si è sciolta nella più ampia letteratura della nazione’ [migrant literature as minor literature has melted into a broader national literature] (2003: 17). In other words, La Porta controversially envisions the national cultural environment as an inclusive space, where all social differences can be resolved through the Internet. He suggests that the Internet is an organic and harmonious space, which is not determined — as it is — by social relationships of power and mediated by the companies that own ‘software and hardware, content and computers’ (Žižek 2011: 406). La Porta also analyses the use of language in Cristina Ali Farah and Igiaba Scego’s short stories, claiming that their use of Italian is ‘neutro e un po’inerte, sintatticamente scolastico, come normalizzato’ [neutral and a bit inert, pedantic on a syntactic level, as if it was normalized], and wonders whether this was caused by the fact that Italian is not an ‘elastica’ [elastic] and ‘malleabile’ [malleable] language (La Porta 2003: 15). Chapter 1 has offered enough reasons to dismiss La Porta’s linguistic analysis and to demonstrate that there is no inherent feature associated with any language. Claire Lavagnino further acknowledges that La Porta is ‘blind to who is actually speaking; that is, language systems occlude the uniqueness of the speaker’ (2013: 20). Ferroni’s, Pallavicini’s, and La Porta’s positions express anxiety concerning the modification of the existing categories of minor and major, simultaneously reinforcing and reaffirming the dichotomic difference between ‘us’ — major literary critics and writers — and ‘them’, with all that that implies (major visibility within the cultural market versus the lack of it). Deleuze and Guattari seem to be fully aware of the major shift in our geography of reasoning that minor literature demands, and they refer to the scarcity of talent in minor literature in order to criticize the cultural establishment that sets up supposedly universal and unchangeable principles on the basis of which we must appreciate literary works and determine the talent of writers. In this regard, they argue that ‘majority implies a constant, of expression or content, serving as a standard measure by which to evaluate [the opposition between minority and majority]’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 105). The reference to the scarcity of talent in minor literature is therefore meant to denounce the lack of versatility of hegemonic literary criticism, which excludes minorities from the category of literature and from the textual analysis that it involves. The assumption that minor writers are not recognized as talented since it is more difficult to understand them within the paradigms of national literature is vital when considering Somali Italian

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literature. Parati, for instance, identifies the difficulty in analysing migrant writings in literary terms, in order to defend her cultural approach: Ho rifiutato di discutere del valore estetico dei testi italofoni qui raccolti. Trovo tale argomento irrilevante in questo contesto, mi interessano invece molto di più le complesse questioni teoriche che affiorano nell’emergere di una letteratura minore e nell’ambito della tendenza storica verso una mobilità trans-nazionale. (1995: 4) [I refused to discuss the aesthetic value of the italophone texts collected here. I find this subject irrelevant in this context; I am more interested in the complex theoretical questions that emerge with the presence of a minor literature and within the historical tendency towards a transnational mobility.]

Similarly, Roberto Derobertis argues that in Italian writings by immigrant authors ‘si scolla letteralmente l’adesione tra lingua dell’espressione letteraria e la tradizione letteraria’ [the adherence between the language of literary expression and literary tradition becomes unglued] (2007: 27). I had to face similar problems while writing the present book. These texts resisted the homogenizing force of the Italian national language by engaging in social, cultural, religious, and political ref lections that span national borders, and looking at both Somalia and Italy as complex and f luid domains of self-identification. They therefore required critical theory for their analysis that exceeded the paradigms of the Italian national literature. However, the more the analysis of the cultural negotiation processes involved in Somali Italian literature engaged in a closer dialogue with exocentric theoretical paradigms compared to Italian national standards, the more it seemed that concepts like double consciousness, new mestizo consciousness, intercultural translation, and postcolonial theory could not be introduced into the textual analysis without questioning what is considered Italian literature. In other words, there is another related task that goes far beyond the critical analysis of literature written by diasporic authors and the investigation of national cultures from a postcolonial perspective: this is to rethink the very notion of national literature. Walter Mignolo expresses this idea clearly when he argues that thinking about issues connected to colonialism, migration, and subalternity implies ‘thinking from another place, imagining another language, arguing from another logic’ (2000: 313) and ‘[detaching] oneself from the hegemonic and Eurocentered matrix of knowledge’ (2010: 11), rather than taking ‘coloniality (e.g., colonial matrix of power) [...] as a model, a theory or an object of study’ (2010: 11). The option I propose here — which should be interpreted as one possible approach to the study of Italian literature, rather than an all-embracing project — is to reconsider the notion of Italian literature in the light of the questions that Somali Italian literature and other transnational ‘Italian’ literature ask the readers, and to reconstruct the forms of understanding — concepts, categories, and methods — within which particular literatures are rendered minor in a national literary context. To paraphrase Gurminder Bhambhra’s criticism of comparative historical sociology, postcolonial theory allows the recognition that much of the discourse and structure that permeates [literary] understandings — both in its dominant and postmodern forms — permits the perpetuation of inadequate

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concepts by admitting a multiplicity of forms of inadequacy and turning attention away from the problem of adequacy itself. [Literary criticism has] constructed a particular “scene of inquiry” that has, for the most part, occluded the colonial relations that were integral to the emergence of modern societies and the modern forms of explanation of those societies. (2007: 145)

A future focus of literary studies could be to evaluate critically the field’s role in the reproduction of social and economic inequalities, and to develop self-ref lexive rather than normative paradigms to address emerging writings that challenge the hegemonic categories of identity. Some encouraging paths have been forged in this direction. For example, Parati invites academic discourse and popular culture [to] work together in talking back to the fiction of Italian homogeneity and to the norms that dominant narratives create about origins. The goal is not to construct a privileged position for otherness, but to reveal an internal asymmetry and the artificiality of homogeneity. (2005: 28)

Polezzi also argues that the link between national literature and language excludes the literary experimentation in which linguistic and cultural hybridity are prominent (2008: 115–16). She therefore invites critics to privilege a model which is ‘più f lessibile e inclusivo rispetto alla norma imposta dall’associazione con la lingua nazionale (intesa come standard tendente all’omogeneità)’ [more f lexible and inclusive with respect to the norm imposed by the association with the national language (intended as a standard that is inclined to homogeneity)], which might also include writings by migrants (2008: 122). Polezzi has stated that to put mobility at the centre of the study of Italy represents no dramatic break with the literary history of the country, but rather a recognition that ‘there is and there has always been heterogeneity in “Italian culture”, [...] heterogeneity is a constitutive element of a national construction, not the denial of its historical existence’ (2012: 101). Significantly, she also urges a consideration of the national language in ‘a more fragmented or polyphonic and polycentric view’, and in evolution ‘within multiple lines of development in which local national and international [...] vectors intersect’ (Polezzi 2012: 94). Another contribution to the debate comes from Burns, who has made a proposal to ‘articulate a future for Italian literature which is inclusive of “minority” or alternative expressions of Italian-ness’ and has suggested ‘[displacing] Italian literature from the territorial borders of a nation state’ in order ‘to envisage a transnational Italian literature’ (2013: 196). To consider seriously the study of national literatures from a transnational perspective that puts cultural plurality, migration, and minority at the centre means — to refer to Mignolo’s idea of decolonization — ‘changing the questions being asked with regards to the problems to be solved’ (2011: 190). In my understanding, Somali Italian literature suggests these questions be shaped around ‘the “multiple mediations” (gender, class, race, etc.) that constitute the self to diverse modes of domination (capitalism, patriarchy, racism, imperialism) and to distinct yet inter­ twined social struggles and movements’ (Lao-Montes 2010: 170). In particular, it seems relevant for the literature written in Italian to address the construction of the nation space as ‘constituted of one ethnicity articulated as “whiteness” ’ (Mignolo

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2010: 3), following Toni Morrison’s advice to ‘play in the dark’, and look at ‘the ways in which artists — and the society that bred them, — transferred internal conf licts to a “blank darkness”, to conveniently bound and violently silenced black bodies’ (1993: 38). These questions should also take ‘responsibility for, the unspoken, unrepresented pasts that haunt the historical present’ (Bhabha 2012: 18). According to Ali Abdullatif Ahmida in his remarks about Italian colonialism in Libya, this method of investigation involves awareness that: one could not write the history of Italy without studying the history of its colonies [...] [and] one cannot write the history of [Somalia] without studying the history of Italy. Both Italian and [Somali] colonial and nationalist historiographies are limited, if not distorted, if the nation state alone constitutes the unit of scholarly analysis. (2006: 175)

The broadening of critical analysis towards horizons that many scholars in the Humanities would traditionally not consider is certainly difficult, as it imposes serious scholarly and pedagogical responsibilities [...] We need to learn about, study, be sensitive to a far broader range of audiences, conventions, functions, histories and subjects than has in general been the case in literary analysis [...] we should acknowledge the limitations of our own training. (Lauter 1990: 10)

This task is nonetheless necessary ‘if we are to contemplate “marginalized” litera­ tures with accuracy, let alone respond to them with verve’ (Lauter 1990: 10). Since ‘literary forms are part of the system of cultural representation through which national identities and national subjects come into being’ (Brinker-Gabler and Smith 1997: 17), the creation of an inclusive cultural environment for minor litera­ ture should be of primary concern for those within and beyond academia who are committed to challenge the narratives on which a nation is constructed and some people are excluded from it. The consequence of this change in literary studies might be conceived by referring to Luisa Ricaldone’s assumption regarding the effect of including minorities within the national literary canon: Se il risultato sarà la frantumazione del canone tradizionale, sicuramente se ne avvantaggerà la conoscenza delle cose come si sono svolte. Alla sostituzione di un orizzonte di una tradizione con un altro, ritengo sia da anteporsi, nel futuro prossimo, l’ipotesi di un intreccio reciproco, l’altalena dei prestiti e degli inf lussi vicendevoli, contro la ghettizzazione, contro le esclusioni, in nome della restituzione dei fatti, della realtà, delle concretezze, guardate con occhio il più possibile sgombro e lucido. (2003: 55–56) [If the result were the fragmentation of the traditional canon, the knowledge of things would certainly be a resulting benefit. Regarding the substitution of the horizon of one tradition with another, I believe one should favour, in the near future, the hypothesis of a reciprocal link, a swing of borrowing and mutual inf luxes, against ghettoization, exclusion, in the name of a restitution of facts, of reality, of concrete things, seen through a more lucid and fair gaze.]

The option of remapping the location of ‘Italian’ cultures complicates the traditional and often valuable practices that accompany literary criticism, but this activity should not be seen as something new or threatening. To paraphrase Paul Jay, if we believe

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that ‘literary studies as a field has always thrived on fragmentation and challenges to coherence’ and recognize that ‘the field continually builds on the strength of new critical approaches and paradigm shifts, which may seem at first as though they are fragmenting the discipline when in fact they are renewing it’, we cannot but view with excitement the challenge that Somali Italian literature and other ‘minor’ literatures with their ‘focus on pluralities, differences, hybrid identities, and complicated transnational geographies’ address to what we call ‘Italian’ literature ( Jay 2010: 4). Following these suggestions, an option for the study of literature could be to undertake the urgent task that is expressed in Somali Italian literature, namely ‘not that of addressing a people, which is presupposed already there, but of contributing to the invention of a people’ (Deleuze and Parnet 2007: 217). Note to the Conclusion 1. Wu Ming (2009) defines New Italian Epic in an eponymous memorandum as a body or ‘nebula’ of Italian literature, mostly metahistorical fiction, which has been published between 1993 and 2008.

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Filmography Aulò: Roma postcoloniale. 2012. Dir. by Simone Brioni, Graziano Chiscuzzu, and Ermanno Guida (Kimerafilm) Babel. 2006. Dir. by Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Paramount) Escape from New York. 1981. Dir. By John Carpenter (AVCO) Man in Black. 1997. Dir. by Barry Sonnenfeld (Columbia) La pecora nera. 2010. Dir. by Ascanio Celestini (BIM) La quarta via: Mogadiscio, Italia. 2012. Dir. by Simone Brioni, Graziano Chiscuzzu, and Ermanno Guida (Kimerafilm) Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? 1968. Dir. by Ettore Scola (Titanus) Roma, i fantasmi dell’ambasciata somala. 2010. Dir. by Fabrizio Rizzi and Carlo Rugg­ iero, in ‘youtube’ [accessed 5 January 2015] Zombi 2. 1979. Dir. By Lucio Fulci (The Jerry Gross Organization)

Recordings Almamegretta. 1993. ‘Figli di Annibale’, in Animamigrante (Anagrumba/CNI/BMG) Bob Marley and The Wailers. 1979. ‘Babylon System’, in Survival (Island) Tinariwen. 2004. ‘Oualahila Ar Tesninam’, in Amassakoul (World Village)

Oral Tales and Theatre Plays Kaha Mohamed Aden (perf. and narr.). 2007. La quarta via. By Kaha Mohamed Aden. Cinema Teatro Lux, Pisa, 28 September —— 2006. Specchio, specchio delle mie brame, chi è più abile nel reame? Villa Fiorelli, Prato, 23 August

Radio Programmes Scego, Igiaba (dir.). 2007. Damasco. Radio 3. —— (dir.). 2009. Black Italians. Radio 3.

Websites ARCHIVIO SOMALIA [accessed 5 January 2015] BASILI (Banca Dati sugli Scrittori Immigrati in Lingua Italiana) [accessed 5 January 2015]

CAMPI FASCISTI [accessed 5 January 2015] A.L.M.A. BLOG. COLLETTIVO ‘ALZO LA MANO ADESSO!’ [accessed 5 January 2015]

IGIABA SCEGO [accessed 5 January 2015] THE REFUGEE PROJECT [accessed 5 January 2015]

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INDEX ❖ Abdelkebir Khatibi 125 Abdelmalek Sayad 45 Abdi Mohamed Kusow 1–2 Abiola Irele, Francis 121 Adamo, Sergia 14 AFIS 2–4, 6, 9, 26, 52, 77, 85, 98, 100, 102 African American 15, 46, 60–61, 73, 88, 91, 105–07, 133, 140, 142 agency 85, 141, 147 Ahmed M. Yusuf 127, 135 Ahmed, Sara 1, 5, 63, 75, 82, 134 Aion 104–05 Ali Abdullatif Ahmida 154 Ali Amahan 125 Ali Farah, Cristina Ubah 6–7, 45–47, 108, 138, 151 ‘Af Dabeyl, ovvero bocca di vento’ 121 ‘Kuulla’ 50 Il comandante del fiume 38, 40, 73, 93, 100, 115, 121, 141–42, 150 Madre piccola 26–27, 48–50, 54–55, 59n, 61–62, 65–69, 71–74, 98, 110n, 112, 119–29, 134 ‘Rapdipunt’ 105 ‘Strappo’ 126, 144n Ali Mumin Ahad 65 Alighieri, Dante 35, 116–19, 121, 129, 141, 146 Allam, Magdi Cristiano 7, 17n Almamegretta 65 Alpi, Ilaria 17n alterity 10, 36, 55, 60, 64, 79, 93 Alvisi, Gigliola 17n Amadou Hampâté Bâ 142 Amara Lakhous 76, 123 Amin Mohamed 127, 135 Andall, Jaqueline 108 Anderson, Benedict 15–16 Antar Mohamed 6,12, 93 Anzaldúa, Gloria 13, 129–35, 142 Appiah, Anthony Kwame 14, 20, 27–28 Argenteri, Letizia 85 Artoni, Cristina 8 Ashcroft, Bill 18–19, 28, 36 assemblage 11, 15, 58, 112, 137, 139, 141, 144n authenticity 12, 36 autobiography 15, 70, 119, 130, 137, 140, 141 Bakhtin, Mikhail 15, 103, 113, 142–44 Balibar, Étienne 50, 93, 108 Ballario, Giorgio 109

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Balsamo, Franca 49, 127 Bandia, Paul 14, 18–19, 27–28, 34–35, 50, 53, 55, 121 Bassnett, Susan 19 becoming 11, 16, 69, 105, 110n, 140, 141, 145–48 Bell, Jeffrey 105 Ben Ghiat, Ruth 62 Berlusconi, Silvio 7, 56 Bhabha, Homi 13, 58, 60, 64–65, 105, 109, 111n, 117, 147, 154 Bhambhra, Gurminder 152 Bianchi, Rino 85 Bjork, Stephanie 2 Bodenhausen, Galen 87 Boddy, Janice 6 Bonavita, Riccardo 110 Bond, Emma 9–10 border 27, 71, 90, 96, 142, 152–53 borderland 11, 129–35 Bordwell, David 90 Bossi, Umberto 56 Bossi-Fini Law 8, 39, 74, 90, 95 Braidotti, Rosi 11–12, 140, 147 Brinker-Gabler, Gisela 154 Brioni, Simone 6, 9, 12, 17, 39, 59n, 101, 109, 110n, 139, 150 Brogi, Daniela 13 Burns, Jennifer 5, 25, 48–50, 59n, 81, 115, 125, 139, 141, 150, 153 Cabdulqaadir Xirsi Siyaad ‘Yamyam’ 120 Calavita, Kitty 8 Calle-Gruber, Mirelle 70 Camilotti, Silvia 84 Campani, Giovanna 127–28 canon 150, 154 capitalism 92, 153 Capitani, Flavia 41, 47, 129 Caritas 2, 74 Carpenter, John 40 Carravetta, Peter 43–44 Carroli, Piera 27, 116, 123 Castles, Stephen 77 Catholicism 69, 87, 94, 96, 98, 101 Catozzella, Giuseppe 17n Cavalli, Francesco 17n Cavarero, Adriana 120 Ceci, Lucia 41 Celestini, Ascanio 149

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Index Cerulli, Enrico 1 Chiellino, Carmine 55 Christian, Barbara 148 cinema 27, 111n, 135 citizenship 2, 8, 86, 129, 157 Cixous, Hélène 13, 70–71, 110n, 112, 120, 140 clan 30, 38, 88, 113–16, 119, 124, 165 class 2, 7, 14, 16, 27, 33, 56, 56, 77, 79, 83, 89, 92, 93, 107, 109, 112, 114, 119, 128, 130, 132, 134, 139, 141, 145, 153 Coen, Emanuele 41, 47, 129 Colebrook, Claire 145 colonialism 1, 5, 9, 24, 34, 41, 48–52, 54, 61–63, 70–71, 73, 75, 77, 80, 82, 84–86, 90–91, 93, 98–100, 103, 105–10, 114, 135, 144, 146, 152, 154 Comberiati, Daniele 8, 9, 80, 121 Conrad, Joseph 6, 144 Corngold, Stanley 59n, 142 Cortés, Hernán 132 D’Acierno, Pellegrino 5 Dal Lago, Alessandro 8, 74, 80 Dante, see Alighieri, Dante De Angelis, Rose 54 De Bruycker, Philippe 3 De Mauro, Tullio 23 Degl’Innocenti, Fulvia 17n Del Boca, Angelo 1, 110 Deleuze, Gilles 1, 11–16, 18–20, 51, 54, 59n-61, 104–05, 110n, 112–13, 137–48, 151, 155 Dell’Oro, Erminia 98–99, 129 Dentith, Simon 143 Derobertis, Roberto 152 Derrida, Jacques 14, 20, 36–37, 55–57, 59n, 69, 131 deterritorialization 11, 14, 18–20, 48, 55, 58, 60, 104, 113, 144 Di Bartolomeo, Anna 3 Di Maio, Alessandra 57, 120 diaspora 5–6, 12, 26, 27, 50, 55, 89, 105, 119, 120–25, 129, 139, 141, 146 Dickie, John 118 Domenichelli, Mario 6, 143 double consciousness 15, 60, 106–07, 138, 140, 143, 152 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt 13, 15, 106–07, 138, 140, 143 Duncan, Derek 93 Edelman, Lee 136 Ellison, Ralph Waldo 89, 108 Emanuelli, Enrico 6 Empire 2, 11, 36, 61, 84, 92, 145 empowerment 107, 138 encounter 1, 5, 9, 17, 23, 29, 55, 58, 60, 75–76, 86, 94, 110, 138 ethnocentric 23, 46, 55 Evans, Fred 138, 140, 144n exile 26, 43, 66, 71, 117

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173

exotic 66, 83,160 Fallaci, Oriana 7, 17n, 100 Fanon, Frantz 62, 142, 144n Fargues, Philippe 3 Fascism 63, 100 Fatima Ahmed 17n feminism 81, 149 feminist 12, 77 Ferroni, Giulio 150–51 Finnegan, Ruth 138 Flaiano, Ennio 84, 98, 108–09, 141, 144 Fortunato, Mario 65 Fracassa, Ugo 150 Freud, Sigmund 12, 109 Gabaccia, Donna 71 Garane Garane 6–7, 34–35, 48–50, 61–66, 95, 100, 106, 112–19, 121, 129, 138–39, 141–42, 144n-46 gaze 5, 23, 75, 81–83, 87, 95, 97–99, 116, 154 gender 6, 7, 10–13, 16, 70, 77, 79, 81, 83, 93, 112, 119, 127–30, 132–33, 135–37, 139–41, 147, 153 Ghermandi, Gabriella 84, 93, 109, 129, 141–42 Gilroy, Paul 13, 60–61, 105–06 Giorgi, Chiara 41–100 Giuliani, Gaia 2 Glissant, Edouard 138 Gnisci, Armando 47, 57–58 Goffman, Erving 69 Grassi, Fabio 1 Graziani, Rodolfo 11, 109, 144n Greedharry, Mrinalini 12 Griffiths, Gareth 18, 28, 36 Gritti, Roberto 101 Guattari, Félix 11–16, 18–20, 51, 54, 59n-61, 104–05, 110n, 112–13, 137–48, 151 Guimarães Rosa, João 129 Hale, Dorothy 107, 138, 143 Hall, Stuart 92–93, 112–13, 118, 139–40 hooks, bell 9–91 Habermas, Jürgen 37–38 Habibi, Emile 131–42 Hanley, Gerald 6–108 Hassan Osman Ahamed 16n hegemony 54, 56, 64, 132 Hennessy, Rosema 163 Herman, Judith Lewis 134 Hess, Robert 1, 49 heteroglossia 35, 113, 142–44 history 1, 5–6, 17, 21, 25, 40, 44, 54, 61, 63, 65, 70–71, 87–88, 98, 100, 105, 107–11, 113–14, 118–20, 126, 130–31, 137, 140, 144, 146–49, 153–54 homosexual 59n, 95, 135–37, 167 hybridity 14, 39, 55–58, 93, 153 identity 1, 6, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 26, 37, 40, 43, 45, 47,

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174

Index

50–51, 53–55, 61, 63–73, 77, 82–83, 87, 89, 91, 94–97, 100–01, 103–04, 107, 109, 111n, 112, 114, 118,119, 129–41, 143, 146–48, 153 imagined communities 15–16, 87, 93, 97, 113, 139–41 intertextuality 27, 113 Iñárritu, Alejandro Gonzáles 90,142 Islam 7, 23, 74, 87–88, 94, 100–01, 122 Islamophobia 7, 67, 74 Italian American 5 Italianness 2, 6, 51, 63, 72, 96, 98, 147 James, Cyril Lionel Robert 118 JanMohamed, Abdul 15, 148–49 Janz, Bruce 1, 13 Jay, Paul 154–55 Kafka, Franz 11, 14, 18, 53–54, 59n-61, 110n, 142, 148 Kaha Mohamed Aden 6–7, 9, 38–40, 45, 48, 51, 53, 59n, 61, 75, 77–79, 98, 109, 111n, 118, 125, 138– 39, 141, 146, 150 Kebati, Kety Momaji 7 Kleinart, Susanne 30 knowledge 1, 23, 37–38, 54, 63–64, 84, 86, 94, 107, 112, 152 Kristeva, Julia 95–96, 109, 111n La Porta, Filippo 151 Labanca, Nicola 50, 62, 144, 146 Laitin, David 2, 18, 30, 32, 88, 114 landscape 51, 80 Lao-Montes, Agustin 170 Lavagnino, Claire 111n, 151 Laurenzi, David 97 Lauter, Paul 154 Lee Barnes, Virginia 6 Lewis, Ioan 1, 32, 114 Lewis, Philip 36 Lionnet, Françoise 55 Lloyd, David 15, 148–49 Lombardi-Diop, Cristina 8, 57, 109 Lori, Laura 9, 33, 91, 105, 127, 142 Lucarelli, Carlo 9, 17n, 143–44 Luijnenburg, Linde 97 Makaping, Geneviève 87 Manzoni, Alessandro 147 Marchetti, Sabrina 82 Mari, Lorenzo 116 market 5, 8, 46, 81, 82, 150–51 marginalization 8, 33, 74, 92, 137 Marley, Bob 91 Marrocu, Luciano 109 Martino Moreno, Mario 1 masculinity 51 Matala De Mazza, Ethel 96 maternal 42, 116, 124 Mauceri, Maria Cristina 34, 82, 95, 96, 165, 168

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Mellino, Miguel 8 memory 43, 75, 101, 108, 109, 125, 139, 147 Meneghello, Luigi 43–44, 141 Merosi, Mauro 41 meticcio 6, 16n, 26, 49, 67–69, 72, 86, 93, 98–99, 133–34 Mezzadra, Sandro 108 Middleton, Richard 91–92 Minuz, Andrea 92 migration 2, 5–7, 10, 21, 28, 45, 48, 57, 69, 106, 123, 127, 129, 133, 141, 150, 152–53 Mignolo, Walter 142, 152–53 Miller, Christopher 11 mimicry 64, 85, 117 minority 11, 14–16, 18, 35, 54, 56, 60, 105, 110n-11n, 146–51, 153 modernity 7, 49, 76, 108 Mogadishu 5–9, 16n-17, 26, 34, 40, 48–49, 51–52, 61–62, 64, 85, 101–04, 117–18, 124, 139 Mohamed Abdulle Hassan 50 Mohamed Aden Sheikh 88 Mohamed Siad Barre 3, 7, 34, 40, 80, 85, 88–90, 92, 130 Moretti, Franco 142 Morone, Antonio Maria 2, 41, 86, 88, 100, 144n Morrison, Toni 73, 129, 142, 154 Mostern, Kenneth 106–07 motherhood 71–72, 124, 134, 136 Mubiayi Kakese, Ingy 26 multiculturalism 25, 79 Muslim 7, 8, 16n, 61, 74, 86, 94–97, 100–01, 111n-12, 145 Mussolini, Benito 50, 63, 85, 90 myth 36, 62, 75, 131, 135 Nadifa Mohamed 6 Nandy, Ashis 116, 135 Nasi, Guglielmo 2 nation 20, 55–56, 58, 63, 88, 113, 118, 147, 153, 154 New Italian Epic 149, 155 Nida, Eugene 14, 20, 44–45 nomad 18, 21, 51, 105 nomadic 61, 71, 113–14 Nura Farah 6 Nuruddin Farah 6, 88, 113, 116, 118, 120, 129, 142 Očkayová, Jarmila 44 Onofri, Sandro 16n orality 113–14, 119–21, 138–39 Orton, Marie 56, 74, 139 Orwell, George 40 Osman Yusuf Kenadid 88 otherness 9, 60, 82, 83, 153 Pallavicini, Piersandro 150–51 Parati, Graziella 15, 45, 56, 74, 96, 112, 152–53 Parenzan, Ramona 71

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Index Parnet, Claire 110n, 145, 155 Passerini, Luisa 140 patriarchal 71, 113, 127, 129, 147 patriarchy 153 Patton, Paul 11 Pavese, Cesare 141 Pease, Donald 118 peripheral 2, 11, 106, 118, 142 Petrovich Njegosh, Tatiana 106 Petrucci, Pietro 88 pharmakon 69 Pinkus, Karen 63 Pinzuti, Eleonora 136 Polezzi, Loredana 14, 21, 51, 98–100, 121, 153 Ponzanesi, Sandra 9,10, 13, 23, 25, 57, 75, 80, 89, 146, 148 Portelli, Alessandro 15, 25, 33, 45, 131 Porzio, Giovanni 16n postcolonial 5–6, 8–12, 16, 18,-21, 32, 44, 45, 47, 54–55, 58, 63, 64, 71, 79, 84–85, 91, 98, 104, 106–07, 109, 111n, 150, 152 postcolonialism 106 Pratt, Hugo 109 Proglio, Gabriele 113 Prono, Luca 135 queer 94, 135–37 race 2, 7, 11, 13, 16, 18–20, 47–48, 58, 60, 62, 68, 70, 72–73, 77, 79, 83, 87, 93–94, 107–10, 117, 130, 132–33, 135, 137, 139, 141, 147, 153, racial 2, 10, 14–15, 35, 49, 60, 61, 72–73, 76, 80, 83, 86, 93–95, 98–99, 104–05, 107–09, 112, 117, 132–34 racism 6, 13, 24–25, 49, 59, 61, 63, 75, 76, 79, 83, 89, 91–94, 96, 98, 100, 105, 106, 110, 137, 142, 153 Ragusa, Kym 133, 142 Ragussis, Michael 54 Rajchman, John 105 readership 5, 20–21, 23–24, 30–31, 34, 37, 39–41, 44, 46, 80, 83, 89–90, 95, 103, 117 refugee 3, 5, 16n-17n, 25–26, 29–30, 38, 51, 57, 111n, 117, 122, 126, 145 Renza, Louis 13 resistance 20, 23, 35, 48, 54–55, 64, 70, 78, 84, 86, 89, 91, 99, 132, 148 Reynolds, Jack 110n rhizome 104, 138 Ribka Sibhatu 9, 21, 23–26, 59n, 141 Ricaldone, Luisa 154 Rimbaud, Arthur 17n Rispoli, Francesco 17n Riva, Maurilio 17n Rivera, Annamaria 17n, 94–95 Rizzi, Fabrizio 16n Rizzo, Marco 17n Rizzo, Stefano 16n

Brioni.indb 175

175

Romani, Gabriella 23 Rome 3, 6–7, 11, 16n, 17n, 24, 26, 32–33, 35, 40, 41, 49–51, 62, 64, 66, 74, 76, 85, 89, 97, 105, 109, 115, 127 Romeo, Caterina 8 Rowbotham, Sheila 140 Ruggiero, Carlo 16n Said, Edward 13, 83, 117–18, 145 Said Sheikh Samantar 1 Salah Methnani 65 Salecl, Renata 71 Salma Khadra Jayyusi 131 Santachiara, Roberto 17n Sartori, Giovanni 7, 17n Scarlini, Luca 7 Scego, Igiaba 7, 45–46, 48, 65, 100, 106, 108, 144n, 150, 151 ‘Dismatria’ 6, 41–44, 47, 59n, 141 ‘Identità’ 51, 93–95, 97, 111n ‘Il disegno’ 51 ‘L’igienista verbale’ 50 La mia casa è dove sono 38, 41, 51, 90, 95, 129, 130, 139, 141, 142, 149 La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock 21–26, 33, 96, 160, 168 Oltre Babilonia 28–35, 37–38, 40, 49–50, 61, 79, 84–93, 112, 123, 127, 129–31, 133–39, 141–42, 146–47 Rhoda 26–29, 33, 49, 51, 61, 79–84, 90–91, 93, 96, 109, 123, 138, 141–42, 146 ‘Salsicce’ 47, 61, 93–98, 101, 105, 111n Scholliers, Peter 96 Scola, Ettore 97 Sestigiani, Sabina 50–51 Seyan, Azade 60 Shirin Ramzanali Fazel 6, 7, 38, 45, 48–49, 59n, 62 Lontano da Mogadiscio 8, 12, 21, 35–36, 93, 105, 118, 125, 141, Nuvole sull’equatore 26–27, 61, 98–101, 111n, 139 Sinopoli, Franca 43 Sirad Salad Hassan 6–7, 8, 13–14, 21, 49, 100, 111n, 123, 127, 129, 141 sisterhood 123–24, 134–35, 137 Smith, Shirley Ann 9 Smith, Sidonie 141, 154 Sollors, Werner 93 Sonnenfeld, Barry 142 space 5, 16, 19, 38, 44, 50–54, 58, 60–61, 70, 76, 89, 98, 103, 104, 105, 125, 130–33, 138, 147, 151, 153 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 13, 125–26, 145 Stefani, Giulietta 75, 81, 84, 93, 135, 144 struggle 33, 48, 67, 91, 127, 132, 143, 146, 153 subaltern 85, 107, 128, 137, 142, 145 subjectivity 13, 15, 38, 53, 82, 95, 104, 112, 137, 140, 148 Suad Omar Esahaq 21

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176

Index

Suleri, Sara 91 talent 147–48, 151 Tatti, Silvia 43 terrorism 7, 74, 132 Thomassen, Bjørn 59n Tiffin, Helen 18, 28, 36 Tinariwen 31 Tomasello, Giovanna 5, 80 transnational 5, 11–12, 16, 19, 48, 55, 58, 72, 104–07, 110, 118, 123, 129–31, 137, 147, 149, 152–53, 155 translation 12–14, 19–21, 23, 26–39, 44–46, 48, 50, 53–54, 57–59, 67–68, 70, 111n, 113, 120, 124, 131, 133, 139, 144n trauma 91–92, 134 Tripodi, Paolo 1–2 Tuakli-Wosornu, Taiye 32 Tymoczko, Maria 19, 53–54 Unali, Lina 16n uncanny 94, 105, 109, 111n

Brioni.indb 176

Valetti, Roberta 21 Vaccaro, Giovan Battista 104 Venuti, Lawrence 14,18–20, 44–46, 54, 58–59, 113 Walker, Alice 142 Ward, David 93 West, Rebecca 151 Williams, John 113 Willman, Kate 6 Wood, Sharon 59n Wright, Derek 113 Wu Ming 6, 9, 155 Wu Ming 1: 17n, 149 Wu Ming 2: 6, 12, 51, 93 Younis Tawfik 80–82, 123, 141 Zabus, Chantal 35 Zamberlin, Mary Frances 142 Žižek, Slavoj 79

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