Image: Nazanin Rastan, "Maggio." Courtesy of the artist.
This issue presents writing by Afro-Italian women. In the face of xenophobic rhetoric and policies, Black Italians have pushed their country to confront its colonial past and engage with its present diversity. The writers featured here plumb both contemporary and historical experiences of Blackness within Italy. Igiaba Scego recalls her experience in the Italian school system as the Black daughter of a Somali immigrant. Ubah Cristina Ali Farah depicts a Muslim teen in Rome discovering an unexpected connection to an alleged terrorist. Marie Moïse describes her search for her Haitian roots in her doubly displaced family history. And Djarah Kan gives voice to a Malian immigrant murdered by a Calabrian white supremacist. We thank our guest editors, Candice Whitney and Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, who with their fellow translators Aaron Robertson and Hope Campbell Gustafson provide an instructive introduction.
Afro-Italian Women in Translation: An Introduction
Looking to the future, when we think of national literature, we must always ask: what stories are not being told?
My Home Is Where I Am
I hopped like a cricket from one language to another and felt a thrill whenever I said things to my mother that the grocers didn’t understand.
Soumaila Sacko: Story of the Good Life
But if you drink and breathe and sweat and love in a country that is no longer yours, then you are not a migrant. You are a man.
Bambi
"In your opinion, why'd he do it?"
We Cried a River of Laughter
I have suffered a strange sense of nostalgia for the pain of a journey I have never taken.
Graphic Nonfiction
Dear B.
I still miss you after all this time.
Book Reviews
Returning Home in Palestine: On Sahar Khalifeh’s “My First and Only Love”
Reviewed by Max Radwin
A new novel by the celebrated Palestinian writer travels back and forth in time, across decades, examining the way family, politics, and friendship in her homeland are shaped by violence and war.
A Pioneer of Decolonial Poetry, Jorgenrique Adoum Finally Gets His Book-length (Post)English Debut
Reviewed by Olivia Lott
Linguistic experimentation and political rebellion went hand in hand in the work of the Ecuadorian Adoum, a leading figure of the Latin American neo-avant-garde who wrote his verses in what he called "postspanish."