Festival Internazionale: strong African participation

Italian weekly “Internazionale” has organised its festival, as it does every year in Ferrara. The festival which hosted many Africans artists, writers, poets and journalists ended last 5 October.

This year Italian-Ethiopian writer Ghermandi took part together with writer Waberi from Gibuti and poet Patel from Kenya.

Igiaba Scego, an Italian writer with Somali origins, said during a conference in Ferrara that in Italy nowadays it is often easy to feel as a stranger “in my own country”. In this video by InterculturaTV there’s her speech and a summary of the event.

Igiaba Scego was born in Rome in 1974. She freelance for the weekly “Internazionale”, for the daily “il Manifesto” and the magazine “Nigrizia”. She has also published in Italy Rhoda e La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcok. Published by Terre di Mezzo she also wrote with Ingy Mubiayi, Quando Nasci è una roulette, a report about the second generation of Afro-Italians.

Also Gabriella Ghermandi participated in Ferrara’s festival. She is an Italian writer with Ehtiopian origins. She was born in Addis Abeba in 1965 and she published in 2007 “Regina di fiori e di perle“.

Abdourahman Waberi is a writer from Gibuti. “He wrote novels, essays, poems, and he teaches English. He also freelance for many magazines and for Le Monde Diplomatique“, as written on Internazionale.it. Gli Stati Uniti d’Africa, published in 2007, and Transit, published in 2005, are his latest books.

Also writer and journalist Binyavanga Wainaina was present. He is the founder of webzine Kwani? and he also write every week for Internazionale. As a Kenian journalist he works for the Southafrican Mail & Guardian. Wainaina won Caine prize for African writing.

Poet and artist Shailja Patel performed in Ferrara for the three days event. Migritude I: when Saris speak is one of her best performances as it got so much success during the Social forum in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2006 and across the world in Vienna, Austria, Zanzibar and San Francisco.

Photos of Waberi by www.edition-nautilus.de, of Wainaina by Flickr.com of sundaysalon, of seralf