9 - Afro-Italian Literature: From Productive Collaborations to Individual Affirmations

Summary

This chapter considers literary production by Africans in Italy. While the work of contemporary francophone African writers in France has been dealt with in great detail by Odile Cazenave in her 2006 work Afrique sur Seine, the work of Africans in Italy has most often been placed in the same category as the general phenomenon of letteratura della migrazione. Here, I wish to follow the lead of Sabrina Brancato and focus specifically upon the work of writers from Africa in the Italian language. That said, Africa is no more united socially or linguistically than Europe, and, as I will show in this chapter, there are a variety of groups of ‘Africans’ operative in literature in the Italian language, and published in Italy today. This chapter represents an attempt to outline who these are and the challenges they have faced in publishing literary works over the last forty years, during which time they have been arriving in increasing numbers to Italy. While Italy's colonial past in East Africa has meant that some Afro-Italians have lived in Italy since the immediate posts-Second World War period, a wave of new migration into lo stivale (the boot, as this country is often nicknamed) followed crushing post-colonial poverty and often political persecution in North, West, East and Central Africa. Many of these migrants have had to learn Italian from scratch upon arrival, yet have received opportunities to publish works on their experiences as immigrants and, increasingly, more fictional works based on the literary styles and traditions of their ‘home’ countries.