Igiaba Scego

The Black Body is the story of Anna Maria Gehnyei, also known as singer Karima 2G. Anna was born in Rome to Liberian parents, hailing from the Kpelle people -- among the first to leave their native lands for Europe. Despite being born Italian, the people of northern Rome treated her poorly: children made cruel jokes, the teachers ignored the needs of Anna and her twin, employers expressed shock at her prolific (in fact, native) Italian, policemen racially and sexually harassed her. Carrying her through these experiences are the stories about Liberia that her mother told her as a child, of a magical land rich in resources and the hidden rituals of her father's village. Anna Maria, a Black Roman child, dreams of Africa.The Black Body tells the story of a Black girl's coming of age, marked by continual, painful negotiation of two cultures: the Italian one which does not accept her and the African one to which she does not fully belong. Gehnyei's is the story of a generation made up of those who are seen only as immigrant children, and not as full citizens. Composed of memories, sounds, love, and shame, this political and personal memoir, creatively documenting the increased sophistication of the young Anna Maria's thinking as she grows from girl, to teen, to woman, has been translated into English for the first time by Eilis Kierans and Sandra Waters.

The Black Body is the story of Anna Maria Gehnyei, also known as singer Karima 2G. Anna was born in Rome to Liberian parents, hailing from the Kpelle people -- among the first to leave their native lands for Europe. Despite being born Italian, the people of northern Rome treated her poorly: children made cruel jokes, the teachers ignored the needs of Anna and her twin, employers expressed shock at her prolific (in fact, native) Italian, policemen racially and sexually harassed her. Carrying her through these experiences are the stories about Liberia that her mother told her as a child, of a magical land rich in resources and the hidden rituals of her father's village. Anna Maria, a Black Roman child, dreams of Africa.The Black Body tells the story of a Black girl's coming of age, marked by continual, painful negotiation of two cultures: the Italian one which does not accept her and the African one to which she does not fully belong. Gehnyei's is the story of a generation made up of those who are seen only as immigrant children, and not as full citizens. Composed of memories, sounds, love, and shame, this political and personal memoir, creatively documenting the increased sophistication of the young Anna Maria's thinking as she grows from girl, to teen, to woman, has been translated into English for the first time by Eilis Kierans and Sandra Waters.

African Venice is the first guidebook to the extensive historical and contemporary African presence in the city of the lagoons. A set of ten walking tours highlights images of Black people in Venetian art from the Middle Ages to the present, the afterlife of Shakespeare’s Othello, the painful local legacies of slavery and Italian colonialism, and the remarkable visibility of African and Afro-descendant artists at the Venice Biennale. These tours are enriched by more than twenty essays, poems, and reflections that celebrate, question, and reimagine Venice’s Black past and present. From premodern paintings and sculpture to contemporary artworks, African Venice will show you the city as you have never seen it.The book includes contributions from Marilena Umuhoza Delli, Rita Dove, Emiliano Guaraldo, Eddy L. Harris, Lorenzo Lazzarini, Ibrahima Lö, Vittorio Longhi, Olga Manente, Tony Mochama, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Caryl Phillips, Sandra Stocchetto, Sami Tchak, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Alessandra Viola.

Nineteenth century Europe an audacious American Black woman decided she wants to become and artists and moves Europe.

Inspired by true events, this gorgeous, haunting novel intertwines the lives of two Black female artists more than a century apart, both outsiders in Italy. It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn't let that stop her. The daughter of a Native American woman and an African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the rare opportunity to study, travel, and follow her dreams, thanks to her indomitable spirit, but not without facing intolerance and violence. Now, in 1887, living in Rome as one of the city's most established painters, she is ready to tell her fianc about her difficult life, which began in a poor family forty years earlier. In 2019, an Italian art curator of Somali origin is desperately trying to bring to Europe her younger cousin, who is only sixteen and has already tried to reach Italy on a long, treacherous journey. While organizing an art exhibition that will combine the paintings of Lafanu Brown with the artworks of young migrants, the curator becomes more and more obsessed with the life and secrets of the nineteenth-century painter. Weaving together these two vibrant voices, Igiaba Scego has crafted a powerful exploration of what it means to be "other," to be a woman, and particularly a Black woman, in a foreign country, yesterday and today.

Once a young girl in Somalia who wanted to be in films and escape the domineering grasp of her father, Adua is now an "Old Lira," a woman who immigrated to Italy during the first wave in the 1970's. With the end of the Somalian civil war, Adua begins to seriously consider returning to the country of her birth. Sitting at the foot of the elephant statue that holds up the obelisk in Santa Maria square in Rome, she recounts her story, attempting to make sense of the past forty years and what the future might hold. When she first arrived in Rome and her film dreams ended in failure and shame, she knew she could not return to totalitarian Somalia and the vice-like purview of her father. Once a translator for the Italian colonial regime, her father's past in Italy and the rest of his life in Somalia were characterized by attempts to live fully under the punishing hand of regimes, while Adua was left to reckon with the after-effects of his choices.Adua is the unforgettable story of a father and daughter grappling with the implications of colonialism, immigration and racism that have bisected both of their lives.

Introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri Recipient of a prestigious 2018 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant An epic spread across three nations, Beyond Babylon casts a probing, endlessly perceptive eye on the lasting effects of traumas both national and personal. Telling the engrossing lives of two half-sisters who meet coincidentally in Tunisia, their mothers, and the elusive father who ties all their stories together, Igiaba Scego's virtuosic novel spreads thickly over Argentina's horrific dirty war, the chaotic final years of Siad Barre's brutal dictatorship in Somalia--which ended in catastrophic civil war--and the modern-day excesses of Italy's right-wing politics. United by the Italian government's attempts to establish authoritarian politics in Somalia, Argentina, and at home, Scego's kaleidoscopic plot investigates deep questions about our complicity in the governments that we often feel powerless to affect. In its myriad characters, locations, and languages, it brings new definition to identity in a fast-changing world of migrants and political upheaval. Most of all, Scego's five poignant lives anchor this sprawling work as they fight to build family ties while overcoming past violations, including governmental torture and sexual assault. A masterwork equally as adept with the lives of nations as those of human beings, Beyond Babylon brings much-needed insight, compassion, and understanding to our turbulent world.

A searing novel about a young immigrant woman's dream of freedom in Rome and the legacies of her African past.