Re-writing history in the literature of the Ethiopian diaspora in Italy

Abstract

The paper offers an overview of the Italian-language literary production by diasporic writers of Ethiopian origin, focusing in particular on Gabriella Ghermandi’s 2007 novel Regina di fiori e di perle (‘Queen of flowers and pearls’). This output will be contextualized within the field of Italian postcolonial and ‘migrant’ literature, which emerged in the 1990s but has yet to receive a proper recognition in Italian academic circles. The exploration of themes such as conflicting identities and multiple belongings is grounded, for Italophone postcolonial writers, in Italy’s inability to critically process its colonial past, and has therefore a prominent historical dimension. The paper will analyse in particular how Regina di fiori e di perle rewrites the historiography of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa, and how it engages with earlier literary representations of this history. Central to Ghermandi’s literary project is the attempt to create a historical identity able to preserve difference, and contrast forceful assimilationist attempts, but at the same time also able to accommodate similarities, and fight against an essentialization of that difference.

Keywords:

• writers of Ethiopian origin
• Ethiopian diaspora
• Italian colonial historiography
• Ethiopian history
• Italian postcolonial literature
• Gabriella Ghermandi
• multiculturalism

Notes on contributors

Sara Marzagora is a postdoctoral research fellow at SOAS, University of London. She has completed her PhD at SOAS on the history of twenty-first-century Ethiopian political thought, and has published on Amharic literature, Ethiopian philosophy, Ethiopian intellectual history as well as on African literature and African critical theory.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Garane (Somalia, Il latte è Buono, 2005), Igiaba Scego (Somalia, Rhoda, 2004; Oltre Babilonia, 2008; La Mia Casa è Dove Sono, 2010), Cristina Ali Farah (Somalia, Madre Piccola, 2007), Shirin Ramzanali Fazel (Somalia, Lontano da Mogadiscio, 1994; Nuvole sull’Equatore, 2010), Kaha Mohamed Aden (Somalia, Fra-intendimenti, 2010), Fatima Ahmed (Somalia, Aukuì, 2008), Sirad Salah Hassan (Somalia, Sette gocce di sangue. Due donne somale, 1996), Ali Mumin Ahad (Somalia, Memorie del fiume e altri racconti, 2008), Hamid Barole Abdu (Eritrea, Seppellite la mia pelle in Africa, 2006), Erminia Dell’Oro (Eritrea, L’abbandono, 1991; Asmara Addio, 1997), Ribka Sibhatu (Eritrea, Aulò, 1993), T.F. Brhan (Eritrea, L’ombra del poeta, 1997; La signora monologa, 1999; Macchie della pietra, 2002; Alida, 2006; La sposa, 2007), Habté Weldemariam (Eritrea, La terra di Punt. Miti, leggende e racconti dell’Eritrea, 1996), Elisa Kidané (Eritrea, Ho visto la speranza danzare, 1994; Fotocopia a colori, 1999; Orme nel cuore del mondo, 2004; Parole Clandestine, 2009), Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher (Eritrea).

2. All translations from Italian are mine.

3. Graziani was condemned to 19 years of imprisonment for his leading role as Minister of Defence in the pro-Nazi Repubblica di Salò in Northern Italy during the Second World War. Even then he only stayed in jail for four months. He was never tried for the crimes he committed in Ethiopia.

4. Term by which Italian soldiers (‘soldato italiano’, plural ‘soldati italiani’) were called by Ethiopians.