UCLA

This dissertation analyzes works by two African Italian women writers of Somali descent, Ubax Cristina Ali Farah and Igiaba Scego, with a particular focus on representations of the voice and the body. Ali Farah and Scego, two of the most prominent authors of Italian postcolonial literature, address Italy's historical amnesia in their works through the personal stories/testimonies of their characters. The voices of Ali Farah's and Scego's protagonists narrate the intertwined histories between Italy and Somalia from Somalia's inception as an Italian colony in 1908 up to more recent events of civil war, piracy, and famine. The dissertation examines how multimodal storytelling in these authors' works helps capture the complexity of such histories, especially in the context of the Somali diaspora, which often requires a multitude of narrative modes in order to maintain personal bonds with a pre-civil war Somalia and with the people who have been killed or dispersed by war. The voice is also examined as a counterpoint to the voiceless representations of East Africans that span from Italy's beginnings as a nation to today in literature, visual media, and journalistic reports in Italian.

Drawing from Adriana Cavarero's A più voci. Filosofia dell'espressone vocale [For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression] (2003), the dissertation explores the interplay between orality and vocality, language and speech in two short stories and a novel by Ali Farah--"Rapdipunt" [Punt Rap] (2005), "Un sambuco attraversa il mare" [A Dhow Is Crossing the Sea] (2011) and Madre piccola [Little Mother] (2007)--and a short story and autobiographical novel by Scego--"Identità" [Identity] (2008) and La mia casa è dove sono [Home is Where I am] (2010). The "mashup," the process of layering/mixing together two or more narrative modes to transcend conventional meaning, is also considered as a narrative framework.