In the Winter of 2022, after Igiaba Scego’s sojourn at Duke that fall semester as a visiting scholar, we sat down for an interview that eventually was published by Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International. During the conversation, we talked about the work of Italian writers whose familial origins lie in the “elsewhere” of Italy’s colonial empire. In the extensive discussion,  I asked questions that invited Igiaba to consider the fraught nomenclature affixed to different generations of Italian writers; in doing so, we grappled with the layered identities that her writings uncover. In this conversation, Igiaba offers the beautiful, complex, destroyed, and disappeared cities of her imagination and everyday world. It was an honor to think alongside her.

The interview is here: Author Meets Translator: Igiaba Scego and Barbara Ofosu-Somuah.