“Race, Activism and Culture in the Black Mediterranean”
The Program in Italian Studies at the University of San Diego Presents
The Black African Diaspora in Italy:
A Conversation with Togolese Italian Writer,
Kossi Amekowoyoa Komla-Ebri
Monday, October 3
5:30-6:50 p.m.
Humanities Center,
Saints Tekakwitha and
Serra Hall 200
Abstract:
Black African Diaspora in Italy
A “double absence” between “no longer and not yet”
Kossi A. KOMLA-EBRI
The Argentine poet Clementina Sandra Ammendola1 defines the experience of
emigration as: "… like shifting a soul from one body to another"
Those who leave their homeland to seek better living conditions, the migrant, the ones
who depart, shatter both time and affections.
Those who leave go away convinced they are leaving behind a void, a space which
remains frozen, fixed in time. In reality those they left behind wipe away their tears,
continue to live and erase the absence or rather open themselves to occupy its place. It
is as if the migrant were leaving the line, and in an instant, those remaining tighten
around and that space he used to occupy no longer exists.
The ones who leave goes to face another existence, to live another life. Under different
skies, they take on the shoes of another character, they enter another stage to interpret
another version of the self in a new context: another climate, another landscape, other
acquaintances, other affections, other sounds, smells, noises, other rhythms.
This presentation will explore certain aspects of the migration experience in Italy and
examine such questions as:
Why do people choose to migrate to Italy? What are the “push” and the “pull” factors?
What is the history of the black African diaspora in terms of Italy? How does racism
create race (and not the other way around?)
How does the diaspora affect parents who have migrated (especially migrants from
Africa) and their children who are raised in Italy? What issues arise in families as
children become adolescents and adults?
1
“Per fare teoria” Clementina Ammendola
