Search results for "African diaspora"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
Prefazione al romanzo di Jumoke Verissimo, Memoria e desiderio
2021
A well established and renowned poet residing in Canada, Jumoke Verissimo debuted with her first novel, A Small Silence, in 2019. The Preface to the Italian edition elucidates how in Verissimo's fictional account of a dissident intellectual released from prison after the end of Abacha's dictatorship, and in his friendship with a young woman studying at the local University, we find a portrait of today's Nigeria trying to survive its post-independence, post-colonial, post-dictatorship era.
Bridge over Troubled Water: Italy and the Black Mediterranean
2022
Since ancient times, Italy has served as a bridge between Africa and Europe, facilitating exchanges of goods, crops, legends, human beings, and deities. In recent decades, this role has come back to everyone’s attention because of the flows that have turned the Mediterranean into one of the main crossroads on the global migratory chessboard. Several young Africans have embarked the Mediterranean Passage. Some have arrived to the opposite shore, whereas some have not. The survivors have reshaped the history of the African Diaspora. The history of the Black Mediterranean resonates with that of the Black Atlantic. Moreover, the considerable presence of an African Italian community inevitably l…
La fiaba del Mediterraneo Nero: Quando il cielo vuole spuntano le stelle di E.C. Osondu
2022
Pubblicato in prima mondiale in italiano nel 2020, Quando il cielo vuole spuntano le stelle del nigeriano E.C. Osondu racconta, attraverso lo sguardo e la voce di un giovane africano di un paese non meglio identificato, uno dei fenomeni più significativi della nostra storia contemporanea, l’odissea di chi sfida il Mediterraneo per raggiungere l’Europa. Il protagonista di questo classico romanzo di formazione dai toni fiabeschi sogna di arrivare a Roma, città sacra nota per la sua bellezza. Per raggiungerla, il giovane attraverserà il deserto e il mare, incontrando un’umanità in movimento, con cui condividerà storie, esperienze, aspirazioni. Il viaggio è rito di passaggio intimo ma anche con…
"Dis poem shall call names names": Naming in reggae culture, the example of dub poetry
2013
International audience; The question of names and naming emerged as a crucial concern in the cultures of the African diaspora as a way to resist the anonymity and loss of identity imposed upon slaves. Through examples taken from reggae culture and the subgenre known as dub poetry, this paper looks at how names imply a political and poetic use of language in black Atlantic cultures.
“Le voci dell’Africa nelle lettere italiane”
2007
By referring to the postcolonial and diaspora studies, the essay analyzes the rise of a multicultural literature in Italy where Africa's literary voices contribute to a transformation of the national canon, opening it up to the contemporary notion of a transnational literature that crosses languages, territories and cultures.
Framing Migrant Memories: Lampedusa's Fragmented Archives
2022
The small island of Lampedusa, a key destination of the Central Mediterranean Route connecting Africa to Italy, offers a special observatory on the contemporary trans-Mediterranean odyssey of migrants, although often transformed into a “border spectacle.” Upon landing, migrants are stripped of their belongings, as these are impounded by the authorities. Such an act of dispossession is intended to deprive them of their histories, family ties and cultural identity. Photographer Mario Badagliacca has portrayed a selection of these lost and retrieved items in his work Fragments (2013). Each object reveals expectations, fears, desires, endurance, but cannot tell a full story. They are fragments …
'Sinking Hopeful Roots into Difficult Soil': Caryl Phillips' Crossing the River.
1998
This article proposes a reading of Caryl Phillips Booker-shortlisted novel Crossing the River as an exemplary text of the African Diaspora.
The Black Mediterranean: A View from Sicily
2021
While Italy has recently experienced nationalist drives, Sicily and in particular the City of Palermo, one of the major ports of refuge for countless migrants arriving in Europe from the African shores, has distinguished itself as an experimental site where to rethink and challenge notions of residence, mobility, citizenship and belonging. Through a series of cultural initiatives, Palermo has become a hub for frontline artists, writers, intellectuals, and activists who have gathered to explore the historically and contemporary ways in which black voices have been silenced and black bodies have been ambiguously imagined in Western-dominated global culture. Investigating these questions is fu…