Activist by Default

Abstract

This interview with Igiaba Scego, renowned Italian author and journalist of Somali descent, explores the relationship between letteratura della migrazione, the italophone migrant literary movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, and migritude, a burgeoning global literary genre and field of scholarship that addresses contemporary discourses of migration and their colonial histories. Scego discusses her resistance to the category of “migrant writer” and the challenge of retelling stories of postcolonial African diaspora to Italy in the context of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa. She discusses what it means to claim the city of Rome as one’s own as a black Italian, and places stories of flight and belonging in a global and historical context. This interview was conducted over WhatsApp, transcribed, and translated into English in February 2019.