My name is Tony. I’m a third year PhD student at UNC in the Department of American Studies. My journey back into Italian and into Igiaba Scego’s “Race, Class, and Family in Contemporary Literature” class has been an interesting one. I majored in Italian in undergrad but didn’t use it and ultimately lost most of the language that I learned. However, the culture remained a consistent interest over the years. I’m currently interested in studying cultural products from or dealing with African Americans and how Afro/Black Italians use them for their own purposes by replication, repurposing, or recreation. It was an incredible opportunity to learn from and with an incredible author and person at Duke.
I remember walking into the lecture room at Chapel Hill and being thrilled to be able to hear Igiaba Scego speak for the first time outside of our classroom at Duke, especially since this was taking place at UNC. I majored in Romance Languages there, specifically Italian, in undergrad. I really enjoyed my classes and the people I met. However, I never had a chance to think about Blackness in Italy until my senior year in a film class focusing on migration. Of course, the films we watched that dealt with Blackness were only those as migrants, coming to Europe from the continent of Africa and those that settled working in exploitative conditions. But that was the first time I thought about Black people in the country.
Over time I learned more about the possibilities of Blackness in an Italian studies curriculum and the department at UNC made efforts in diversifying the content taught and explored in the field. That’s why I was ready to hear Igiaba speak on campus. As always though, I recognized right away that there were only a handful of visible people of color in the audience. This has been typical in my experience at UNC and Duke where places try to racially diversify spaces, but I wonder if the efforts have been enough or if there are other ways places should be trying to outreach. Alas, I wasn’t going to let that distract me from the content of the talk.
As the talk began, she was introduced and immediately her work or, maybe even, her identity were placed into specific genres. It was said she writes migrant literature, women’s literature, and more. She, the individual, does what she cans to avoid labels in her life. One piece that I think was left out of the introduction that I always heard Igiaba say when describing herself and her work was that she is Italian and writes Italian literature. No hyphens, no added words, no caveats. An Italian that writes Italian literature. Sure, there are times that she may add something to include her Somali-ness, but it seems that society must add that identity in order to understand a possible claim to Italian-ness.
That somewhat showed up again in the questions and answers when someone mentioned her writing for others or the unvoiced. She claimed that she was writing to understand life. Parts of her life, perspectives, and situations. She doesn’t necessarily see herself as being a voice for the people, but for her own self. At the same time though, she makes it clear that there is a separation of self from characters in the stories she writes. That the two are not equivalent, even though people try to claim it as such.
I am grateful for this experience at UNC. It was a wonderful opportunity for the communities to learn about Italy and Blackness (as separate entities but also encompassing identities), the impact of colonialism, and the transnational networks of understanding beyond just the Black Atlantic.
