Writing the Nation: Migration Literature and National Identity

Abstract

Just as the physical presence of migrants in Italy’s national space has prompted re-evaluations of how national identity is formulated, migration literature in Italy calls into question those overarching discourses that inform cultural constructs of nationality and national literature. This paper traces the ways in which the works of five migrant writers interrogate the intertwined and mutually reinforcing assumptions that have traditionally shaped the idea of national literature: first, that the construction of national identity and national literature require exclusion of otherness; second, that national identity and national literature style themselves as ahistorical; and third, that national identity depends of a social construction of space that binds identity to a single territory. This paper examines how the writings of Komla-Ebri, Khouma, Scego, Ali Farah, and Lakhous give visibility to the hidden racial exclusions, the obscured historical and colonial memory, and the invisible spatial assumptions that have all served the construction of italianità.