Afropean Female Selves: Migration and Language in the Life Writing of Fatou Diome and Igiaba Scego

Description

Afropean Female Selves: Migration and Language in the Life Writing of Fatou Diome and Igiaba Scego examines the corpus of writing of two contemporary female authors. Both writers are of African descent, live in Europe and write about lives across Europe and Africa in different languages (French and Italian). Their work involves episodes from their lived experience and complicates Western understandings of life writing and autobiography. As Hogarth shows in this study, the works of Diome and Scego encapsulate the new and complex identities of contemporary "Afropeans." As an identity coined and used frequently by prominent authors and critics across Europe, Africa and North America, the notion of "Afropean" is at the cutting edge of cultural analyses today. Yet each writer occupies unique and different positions within this debated category. While Scego is a "post-migratory subject" in postcolonial Europe, Diome is an African writer who has migrated to Europe in her adult life. This book examines the different trajectories and packaging of these two specific postcolonial writers in the Francophone and Italophone contexts, pointing out how and where each author practices life writing strategies and scrutinizing the trend that emphasizes the life writing, autofictional, or autoethnographic strategies of African diasporic writers. Afropean Female Selves offers a comparative study across two languages of a notion that has so far been explored mainly in English. It explores the contours of this new discursive category and positions it in regard to other notions of Afrodiasporic identity, such as Afropolitan and Afro-European. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Afropean By Any Other Name? Categorizing African and European Cultural Connections Strategically Conflated Categories? Migrant Writing and Afro-Italian Literature as New Discursive Categories in Italian ... French and Francophone Afropeans? Generational Diversity Within a Category in France Notes References 1 Life Writing and Writing Lives “Salie, C’est Moi?”: Fatou Diome’s Fiction and Life Writing Igiaba Scego: Afropean Writing and Writing Africans in Italy Notes References 2 Afropean Homes: Representations of Belonging Fatou Diome’s Afropean Women: From Economic to Refuge-Seeking Migrants Scego’s Afropeans: Unpacking Generational Belonging Notes References 3 Gender and Migration: Opportunities for Afropean Experience Who Are the Female Afropeans? Women and Mobility in Celles Qui Attendent Women Telling the Story of (Afropean?) Migration Diome’s Alternative Afropean Families Male Mobility Versus Female Stasis: The Gendered Availability of Afropean Experience Nomadic Helpers: Female Enablement of Migration in Igiaba Scego Notes References 4 Language and Afropean Identity Igiaba Scego: “Letteratura Della Migrazione,” “Italophone” Literature and Marketing of the Multilingual Migrant Text Fatou Diome’s Translingual Writing: A Peculiar Form of Linguistic Inclusivity French and the Language Question in Postcolonial Senegal French and Vernacular Languages in Fatou Diome’s Translingual Imagination Notes References 5 Writing and Engagement Afropean Engagement: A Burden of Commitment? Igiaba Scego: Editing as Commitment Scego’s Memoir: Life Writing, Commitment and Pedagogy Engagement and Decolonizing Fatou Diome: Engagement and Renewed Notoriety Commitment and Popularity: Recent Packaging of Diome and Scego Conclusions Notes References Conclusion: Afropean Languages and Locales The European Language(s) of Afropeans Brazen, But With Some Borders References Index