Migration Literature in Italy: African Diasporas and Postcolonial Traces

Traditionally a country from which millions of people migrated, Italy has only recently become a land of immigration. This exhibit in three cases presents these narratives of immigrants’ experiences and life stories in the context of an emerging history of contemporary Italophone culture. By combining literary texts and images, it returns the voice to Africa that has been forgotten by Italians, reconstructing an often omitted past.

The writers’ narratives offer an original, multifaceted, and complex portrait of contemporary Italy, where the African community is becoming larger in number, while providing insights into the ways in which migrants express their feelings of belonging, loss, and possible aspirations towards the nations from which they or their parents come. They are new voices in the discourse on an Italian multicultural identity and point out that the nation’s alleged homogenous identity is nothing but a deliberately constructed myth.

Curator

Fadil Moslemani, graduate student, Romance Languages and Literatures, The University of Chicago