I’m Yinqi, a master’s student in humanities, and I come from China. I’m drawn to the class because I want to know more about Italian literature and because I hadn’t paid particular attention to the aspect of race in Italian literature, which I’m curious about.
From Igiaba Scego’s class, I’ve learned a wide range of things that never occurred to me about Italy. I am blown away by the precariousness of citizenship, which I discovered in Igiaba’s short story “Sausages” and from the event “What is Citizenship?” One might turn 18 and no longer be a citizen of the country which one always identifies as their home country – I cannot find the words to contain my shock, but how could this happen?
Above all, throughout the month, I am most grateful for Igiaba Scego’s vivid introduction to Rome. I’ve just visited Rome this summer. Where I stayed was near Piazza Navona. Almost every day I walked for half an hour, across the city and passing all the historic sites, to the Termini to dine in Chinese restaurants. (I feel that Italy has the best Chinese restaurants in Europe, but that’s beside the point.) I had the vague impression that the urban and ethnic landscape around the Termini is different from that around Piazza Navona, but I never reflected on that. I never asked why the Chinese restaurants are around the Termini – and I am grateful that Igiaba, in her introduction, mentions the Chinese immigrant community as well. From Igiaba’s class, I’ve learned, for the first time, the contemporary urban history of Rome, especially around the Termini – the part of Rome’s history that is not in its glorious past and not in the audio guides. It is Rome in its presence, which I missed when visiting as a tourist. For instance, I’m familiar with the name of Piazza dei Cinquecento (probably from the bus), but I know nothing about it until Igiaba talks about how it is actually Rome’s memorial to its 500 fallen colonial soldiers. With this discussion in mind, I find it easier to relate to the plots and characters (as well as their complex feelings for Rome) in Igiaba’s writings (Adua and The Color Line) for I now understand more of the historical significance of the names of places. For instance, rereading the plot of a seagull tearing Adua’s turban (which I interpret as a shackle of some sort) right in Piazza dei Cinquecento, I am now clearer about its significance. And while reading the very first scene of The Color Line, I now understand how it maps onto history and why it is important to introduce it as the context and the texture of Rome’s urban history. After this class, I feel the imperative to visit Rome again with all this knowledge in mind.
Among everything that we’ve read and watched in Igiaba’s class, I am most touched by the documentary Emicida: AmarElo – It’s All for Yesterday. When Emicida explains to the camera why he chooses São Paulo’s Theatro Municipal as the venue of his concert, he talks about the gentrification and ghettoization of the city that keeps black communities from entering the theatre, the venue of what is often conceived as “high art”. It seems that, in literally every place of the world, gentrification and ghettoization go on and on under the name of modernization. The government is always talking about how to make the city a better place, but the people it is addressing are only the ones that would benefit from the intensifying inequality. Here in this documentary, Emicida’s wish to bring his people into this venue to be comfortable with and proud of themselves strongly resonates with me. And this wish finds echoes in the other things we’ve been talking about in class, for instance, the street boys’ desire to affirm their identity, belonging, and history in the city when they do graffiti on the archaic walls. In a sense, this quest for identity and combat against invisibility brings our discussions of race, sexuality, and gender together. And here, life and literature again map onto each other.
