Tuesday 17 September 2013

Ocean wide


In the morning the place looked clean and pleasant. The children were nicely dressed and smelled of almond oil. The girls had newly braided hair and the boys shiny scalps. Their bellies were full of the first daily meal – a pap of cereals and milk with added vitamins – and they looked content. Some of them were given small toys to play with, others were placed on the sew-saw, the smaller ones lied on a blanket in a shadowy corner of the balcony and sucked their fingers or made noises, in conversation with the bluest sky I had ever seen.

It is difficult to say if our children recognized us when we came into the room that second day. They gave us a puzzled look: either they had no clue who we were or they were surprised we had showed up again. The nounous had left them in their cradles for us to pick them up. Nene was lying on her belly and playing fish, bobbing her head up and down and kicking the air with her thin legs (too thin for a baby of her age). Dele was standing still, holding the bars, his head slightly falling to one side. Dele's legs were even thinner than his twin sister's, almost bony, but his belly was not as swollen as hers. They had suffered heavy malnutrition in the first months of their life. Madame Mimy told us that when the social workers brought them to the orphanage the little ones were almost at the last stage. Nene had to be immediately hospitalized and when she came back she was fed personally by Madame Mimy, what apparently was a very special treatment. In fact, among all the children, Nene had become her favorite and now and then she would be allowed to sleep in the big bed with Madame. I was immensely grateful to Madame Mimy: she had saved our daughter's life, and that was something I would remember even when our relationship would start to get rocky. She could have all the faults in the world, but none of her faults could invalidate the fact that she had been a great mama to my baby.

It felt good to see our daughter's eyes following Madame Mimy's every movement. For us it meant that she had at least some experience of love and care, that she had an attachment. We had read so much about post-abandonment and deprivation trauma and had come across the most terrifying reports of so-called 'failed adoptions' that what worried us most was not to be strong and competent enough to parent a child with reactive attachment disorder, a child most likely to be unable to form bonding. But that this would not be the case was something we knew for sure after only a few ours with our children. Their eyes carried the weight of long and deep suffering, of loneliness, fatigue and resignation. Yet at moments there was a sparkle in their look, and for us that was the sparkle of recognition and expectation. True, we had been waiting for them for years, while for the little ones we were something new, unexpected and unpredictable, but we felt they sensed somehow that we were there for them and that this was going to be forever.

The moment I held my daughter in my arms for the first time, the world around me ceased to exist. It was only the two of us, looking straight into each other's eyes. I was so overwhelmed with tenderness – Ou belle oui! Ou belle anpil, ti fi an mwen! – that I missed the second precious moment with Dele being placed in his dad's arms. It was only a few minutes later that we could sit together on the couch, the four of us, in Madame Mimy's living room, and I could touch my son and feel his body getting warm from emotion. My son and I – I would realize in the following days – have this in common: our body temperature rises and we sweat heavily when thrilled or scared. This is the only tangible sign of anxiety. Otherwise, our features might appear unmoved, as if we were not concerned a single bit. Dele had the same frozen look and warm and sweaty body for the following three days. Then, he slowly began to relax and look around and play, and when that evening I brought him to bed, he looked into my eyes so long and deep that I knew that was the right moment to whisper my promise: I'm your mom now, timoun an mwen, and I will never ever let you down.

They don't call it orphanage. They call it crèche. To me, though, being used to the meaning of crèche as day-care, it sounds like a bizarre euphemism. True, most of the children there are no orphans, not in the literal sense of the word. Most of them have at least one family member (usually a young mother), who has gone the legal way to give up her child for adoption. Not so for our children. Nene and Dele's parents are unknown. Sometimes I wonder how they will live with this huge gap in their history and if we will be capable of accompanying them in grieving their loss. Their parents do not feel completely unknown to me though. In the first pictures we have of them, Nene and Dele are four-months old and yet they do not look like babies. Maybe because they are so small and have already been through so much hardship in life, they look like miniatures of messed-up adults, the features of their mother and father resurfacing here and there. Nene has a look of terror and outmost loneliness, a look of a woman helpless and distressed, wondering what will become of her. Dele's contorted expression seems to echo the grimace of pain of a man carrying a load much heavier then his strength allows. When a child's history has been erased from the records, their body speaks volumes.

In our first family picture only two of us look cheerful. The paradox of adoption is that in the moment of the first encounter feelings do not match. While parents have a reason to celebrate, children are mourning a new loss. We knew our children were terribly scared, even if they did not show it (so small and already adroit at hiding their emotions), but we had been longing to become parents for such a long time that we couldn't restrain from rejoicing in their presence. The sheer touch of their tiny fingers holding ours, the softness of their bodies on our lap, the sweet taste of their breath brought a sense of wholeness and peace and renewal, like coming to life again with strong roots and powerful wings.

We stayed with them for a week. A week of kissing and smelling and caressing each other, a week of cuddling and babbling, a week of unprecedented bliss.
We knew that leaving would not be easy. The adoption process would take approximately nine more months (same as with a pregnancy, only your child is out there, with a whole big ocean in between). Nene was standing up in her bed and cheerfully waving bye-bye with her tiny hands. Dele was with nounou Denise, sweating heavily again (and so was I). We kissed them goodbye – stay well, little ones, we love you ocean wide  and disappeared down the stairs hand in hand, gave a hug to the older children in the yard, stepped reluctantly into Madame Mimy's car and there, in the heat and dust of the long drive to the airport, our resolution to stay strong collapsed and we realized that for the following nine months we would be living in limbo, waiting for the final bliss, but with the constant fear that something might go wrong.


Monday 12 August 2013

Les Afriques


Maman, raconte-moi l’Afrique !

Quelle Afrique, mon petit ?
L’Afrique des girafes ou l’Afrique des poulets ?
L’Afrique des pluies ou l’Afrique des soleils ?
L’Afrique des déserts ou l’Afrique des grands lacs ?
L’Afrique des boubous ou l’Afrique des sapeurs ?
L’Afrique des griots ou l’Afrique des rappeurs ?
L’Afrique des marabouts ou l’Afrique des pasteurs ?
L’Afrique du foufou ou l’Afrique de l’injéra ?
L’Afrique des Dogons ou l’Afrique des Xhosas ?
L’Afrique de ta grand-mère ou l’Afrique de papa ?

Mais Maman, raconte-moi une Afrique de ton choix !

Wednesday 17 July 2013

Cry, beloved country: of racists and apes and the denial of racism


One of the most disturbing (in fact, disgusting) expressions of the racist imaginary and its imagery is the association of Black people with apes. In many countries across the world the use of such an outrageous trope by the media or in public discourse would be unthinkable. Not so, apparently, in Italy, where the public sphere shamelessly accommodates the most blatant forms of racism.
A few months ago the newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport published a cartoon depicting Mario Balotelli as King Kong. Complaints from readers prompted the newspaper to apologise. However, the racist abuse was not acknowledged. The newspaper merely apologised for offending readers who might have ‘misinterpreted’ the cartoon. One might wonder, of course, what there was to misinterpret in such a clear-cut insult.
Now another such racial slur is following a similar course. Referring to the current Minister of Integration, Cécile Kashetu Kyenge, the senior rightwing senator Roberto Calderoli publicly affirmed: “When I see her, I can’t help but think of an orangutan”. Again, some sort of pseudo-apology followed, not for the abuse itself but for a “little joke” that the offender refuses to recognise as racist.
The long sequence of insults directed at Minister Kyenge by several politicians since she took office is evidence of an ingrained racist and xenophobic ideology. What is most worrying is that in the XXI century such ideology can still find expression in an institutional framework without this resulting in tangible consequences. The fact that Calderoli can, instead of resigning, get away with a spurious apology at the Senate and a bouquet of roses sent to the Minister is a depressing and distressing sign of the bad habit of dismissing racism as a minor offence, or worse, as in this case, of not acknowledging it at all. 

Tuesday 16 July 2013

The best way to say ‚good night’


K’an kelen-kelen wuli!
Of all the wishes, greetings and farewells the Bamana People bestow on each other and their guests this is the one dearest to me.
May we get up one by one!
As with many Bamana blessings, this one does not merely concern an individual but the whole community: if nothing unexpected happens during the night, if no disrupting event interrupts our sleep, we will wake up naturally, one by one, each at their pace.
Is there a better way to wish for peace?

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Rassismus und Kunst


Am letzten Sonntag habe ich an einer Führung zur Ausstellung „Faszination Fremde“ im Museum Giersch teilgenommen. Die Ausstellung präsentiert 130 Werke von 40 Künstlern und Künstlerinnen aus dem Rhein-Main-Gebiet, die sich im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert mit der Repräsentation der Fremde beschäftigten.
Die Führung war zwar interessant, aber im Großen und Ganzen auch enttäuschend.

Da die Ausstellung zentral mit dem Thema Rassismus zu tun hat und da einige Bilder und deren Titel sehr explizit die rassistische Ideologie ihrer Zeit vertreten, finde ich etwas verblüffend, dass das Thema in der Führung nie deutlich angesprochen wird, wohingegen Begrifflichkeiten wie „Stereotypisierung“ und „Exotik“ benutzt werden, die ziemlich harmlos klingen. Auf diese Weise wird die Konstruktion des Weißseins, die viele Bilder in der Ausstellung stark ausüben, übersehen und das privilegierte weiße Subjekt daher nicht nur als normativ, sondern auch als normal empfunden.

Ethisch angemessen finde ich, dass in der Führung bei einigen Bildern mit problematischen Titeln die rassistischen Begriffe nicht verwendet wurden, die den entsprechenden Rassismus weiter reproduzieren würden. Eine Ausnahme war aber das Zi.-Wort, das anscheinend ohne Bedenken mehrmals verwendet wurde. Ich bin überzeugt, dass dieser Begriff von vielen Menschen nur deshalb nicht als empörend empfunden wird, da Antiziganismus in unserer Gesellschaft eine leider noch legitime Form von Rassismus ist. Wenn man in der Führung zum Beispiel das N-Wort verwendet hätte, wäre das für die meisten Teilnehmer bestimmt schockierend gewesen. Bei dem Zi.-Wort hat dagegen kaum jemand die Augenbrauen gehoben, was sehr bedauerlich ist. Wenn man bedenkenlos ein solches Wort verwendet (wenn auch ohne die Absicht, jemanden zu beleidigen), geht man offensichtlich davon aus, dass sich unter den Anwesenden keine Person befindet, die sich angesprochen fühlen könnte. In diesem Fall geht man also davon aus, dass Roma, Sinti, Manusch oder Kalé keine potentiellen Museumsbesucher sind. Anschließend geht man natürlich auch davon aus, dass alle Teilnehmer mit dem Begriff zurechtkommen.

Die Ausstellung hätte eigentlich viel anzubieten, nur aber wenn man sich mit Rassismus offen und kritisch auseinandersetzen kann.

Saturday 8 June 2013

My Inspiration: A Tribute to (my favourites) Black Writers


People (mostly whites, as a matter of fact) often ask me why I am so passionate about all things African, inter- as well as extracontinental, including Black Diasporas around the world. No, not djembé, pata-pata or injera and tajine or voodoo statuettes and rasta hair, nor any western-made tale of desolate lands and ungovernable people, but yes, literature and languages and the arts and any genuine beautiful creation grounded in history and politics and social formations rather than in the vestiges of an ideology of white superiority reducing all things supposedly African (alas, including people as “things”) to tokens of exoticism and commodities for a new ethno-chic trend. And why – the same people ask – am I constantly ranting about racism where they see none?
My answer to the first question: it is about role models, and, hey, my role models happen to be Black. If I can boast of any quality at all, it is because throughout my life I could draw inspiration from exemplary men and women who have made history – Black history and the history of humanity.
My answer to the second question: because racism (still) pervades all facets of our life, and if we are not able to see it, it is because we have not yet become aware of it, and, hey, if we believe we are not imbued with prejudice ourselves, we are more of a problem than the declared racist round the corner.
As a white southern European, I grew up in a quietly racist context. In fact, in my community (a rather non-cosmopolitan urban neighbourhood), there were hardly any Black people around when I was a kid, but that does not mean anything. Racism comfortably sat (and still does, though maybe less comfortably) in our language, our stories, our ideals, our mental structures – in short, our imaginary. Most of us, of course, did not even know. Our conscience was clean. We could take pity, over buoyant dinner conversations, of the starving children in Biafra, without any suspicion of racism having anything to do with it (Who could locate this place on a map, by the way? And only later I would learn that the civil war in Biafra had ended before I was even born, but by the time I was ten, the region’s name was a signifier for utmost disgrace). We could watch Roots on TV and release our compassion without ever being touched by the thought that compassion of that kind is far from being a feeling to be proud of (Why, otherwise, was Kunta Kinte an insult among us kids?).
Then, it happened. Black people started coming over. And our racism became more visible, the expression of it almost inevitable. And yet, strikingly, our conscience did not stop feeling clean. If anybody was to blame, it was certainly not we. Racism was never openly mentioned. There were talks of irreconcilable differences. There were talks of social inequalities. There were talks of failed integration. Anybody who was not white was made ethnic. Anything that was not western was made ethnic. Not too bad, after all, for food or clothes or music or anything which can find advantages in a consumerist society, but when it comes to people and their languages and their cultural backgrounds, then, sorry, but there is an urgent ethical problem there, because making someone ethnic means depriving them of the dignity of a legitimate history. And so we find ourselves back to square one, with Hegel declaring that “Africa has no history”. Yes, Hegel, one of the founding fathers of racism, who not so long ago was echoed by French president Nicolas Sarkozy affirming that “the African has not yet fully entered history” (Dakar, 2007). Back to square one, with racism fundamentally engrained in our worldview. What? That is the what. Shall we move forward?
In spite of all odds, some of us did somehow move forward. In my case, that mainly happened through reading. Books which came to me almost by chance, books which were not visible in bookshops but hidden in second-hand market stalls, books which opened a window on the big world and a far-reaching worldview. I would like to say I read Achebe and Emecheta and Ngugi wa Thiong’o before I read Conrad, but it wouldn’t be true. And yet, I can say confidently that Achebe and Emecheta and wa Thiong’o had a much stronger impact on me than Conrad. And I did read Jamaica Kincaid and Richard Wright and Flora Nwapa and Amadu Hampaté Bâ and Zora Neal Hurston before I read Hemingway, Calvino or Simone de Beauvoir. And I read Césaire and Fanon before Freud and Jameson, which – I must say – made Freud and Jameson all the more interesting. So what? It is of course not my intention to denigrate or downplay white authors, not to mention the many authors from other non-western regions of the world I eagerly read and admire. However, it was mainly Black authors from the African continent and the Diasporas who opened that window for me. It was through their stories that I envisaged a path to follow. It was their example that helped me actively shape my personality rather than accepting what was given. Before them, my world was narrow, provincial and oppressive.
I come from Naples, a semi-failed city in a nation-state whose international popularity rests on remnants of past glories, and grew up in a social and familial context marked by pessimism and passivity as much as by corruption and subterfuge. Things are what they are, gloomy, and there is not much you can do about it, so just play into the system, low profile, and get your way. My prescribed way, as a middle class educated young woman, was to get myself a decent job, a decent husband and a decent level of wealth and status (which would include a holiday house, a cleaning lady, a couple of children, and possibly a dog). Never get involved in politics, never question your elders, never look farther than your nose. That was the philosophy I grew down with. Growing up, that is, came later. It came with them.
Reading about people’s lives in contexts far more burdensome than mine gradually made me aware of both my privileges (as white, middle class, and European) and my limitations (as mentally colonised by my own people). I sensed a tension, a contradiction, in my spontaneous identification with stories and contexts that were in fact so divergent from my own. What exactly was going on then? Soon, it all became clear to me: I had let myself get enslaved in a free world, whereas the books I was reading presented people who fought to preserve their freedom even under the worst oppressive conditions. They did not succumb to their circumstances. They made brave choices, went against the grain, no matter the price to pay.
Please don’t misunderstand. Not all Black authors write of suffering and oppression; not all of their protagonists come from underprivileged contexts; not all their stories are tales of striving and resilience. Yet (and the reason is to be found in the history of the past three centuries), most of their works – all of their works I would dare say – are “committed” in a way that can turn even a purely erotic or science fiction story into a political statement. This comes, it came to me, in many forms, many voices, many views. I suppose I absorbed the ones I most needed.
These are some of the values my sources of inspiration brought home to me: honesty, courage, self-determination, the obstinacy to remain truthful to oneself, the commitment to fight for justice and equality, and, perhaps most important of all, a sharp sense of humour and a celebratory attitude without which life would not be bearable. For all this and more, I owe tribute.

Monday 13 May 2013

African Diasporas: many voices with a common ground


One of the first scenes in Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono (My home is where I am) portrays a family reunion. Somalis from different parts of Europe, of different generations and nationalities and speaking different languages meet in Manchester and sit around a table trying to grapple with a sense of loss which cannot be expressed in words. What brings them together is the memory of a distant past, of an imaginary, fragmented homeland, a homeland some of them belonging to the younger generation have not even physically experienced. A sheet of paper on the tea-table and, taking turns, each of them marks a site out of memory, from what they remember personally or from what has been described to them by someone else: a cemetery, a hospital, a monument, a school, a theatre, a cinema, the parliament building. It is a map of Mogadiscio, a map of a city which is no more (no longer there in that form at least) and yet comes to constitute the primary signifier of their bond. Igiaba Scego is from Rome, but not only. Identity and roots are more complex. And Rome is not simply the Italian capital. Somehow Rome is also African. “Rome and Mogadiscio, my two hometowns, are like Siamese twins separated at birth. One includes the other, and vice versa.” In fact, in the following chapters and all through the book, Scego sketches a map of Rome (a map which also envelops Mogadiscio). Each chapter is a site or a monument, one of those well known sites marked in tourist guidebooks, but what she tells us about these sites is not to be found in any Lonely Planet or Globetrotter Travel Pack. Every site marks a moment in her personal biography as well as a significant moment in history, bringing to the foreground the deep historical entanglement of the eternal city with Africa as well as the impact of African Diasporas on the configuration of the metropolis and its daily life.
Let us move to the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. In Catalonia, an autonomous region in Spain with a strong sense of cultural identity, a little boy asks his mother: “Am I Catalan, mum?” Najat El Hachmi cannot provide an immediate answer for her child. This is not a matter of yes or no, neither a matter of yes but. Again, identity and roots are more complex. In Jo també soc catalana (I am Catalan too) El Hachmi explores the intricate patterns of self-definition and the contradictory feelings often accompanying the sense of belonging here and there: Morocco and the Berber world, Spain and Catalonia. As with Scego, El Hachmi’s assertion of identity and belonging moves in the direction of the notion of inclusion, rather than integration, and of individual stories rather than collective histories. Rather than fragmenting, a background different from that of the dominant group provides a plus, an additional tool of understanding: “Before you were born, long before you were even conceived, your father and I decided we would speak Tamazight with you. Not for any patriotic fervour, no, but rather in order for you to have another tool at you disposal to interpret the world.” Taking clear political stands with regard to the way identities are conceived and defined, for example firmly rejecting the denomination of ‘second generation’, El Hachmi depicts a Catalonia of the XXI century whose dominant discourses on cultural roots do not match the reality of a plural society and the life stories of many who in fact do belong. The dominant ideologies El Hachmi targets and deconstructs are not only the ones whose nationalistic rhetoric leaves no room for dialogue and actual change, but especially the ones using a celebratory rhetoric, for example the tendency of a liberal sector of Western society to stress superficial elements of difference, reducing ‘other’ cultures to a folkloric spectacle. Having long lived in Catalonia myself, I get a sense of what she is talking about. The festa de la diversitat (festival of diversity), organized every year by the city council and several NGOs, is a big event which receives a large number of visitors. However, diversity there is mainly reduced to gastronomic and musical curiosities, so you eat your tajine, dance to the sound of a djembé and go home with a sense of having opened up to the world without the need of actually opening up to your Black or Muslim neighbours. Even more problematic than this unproductive folklore is the representation of People of Colour promoted by NGOs and charity organizations to raise funding in the West and which has an impact on the position People of Colour come to occupy in a predominantly white society and on their self-perception. For this reason the identity politics articulated in the literatures of the African Diasporas necessarily engages with issues of representation.
always remember/ whatever they think of you is/ what they will think of you/ all.” The lyrics collected in Philipp Khabo Köpsell’s Die Akte James Knopf start off, as the title indicates, from representation and stereotyping. The poet persona, constructed as the angry counterpart of the popular children’s book character Jim Knopf, strikes back and defends the necessity of self-representation: “I speak, so you don’t speak for me”. He also reminds us of the vulnerability of black people in Europe: “James goes jogging with a knife,/ ‘cause he thinks he might need it/ when he goes jogging and outside there are skinheads standing at the corner”. The knife is not only a weapon of self-defence in the face of blatant and violent racism but also symbolic of the need to take up arms against much subtler attacks to one’s own dignity. Philipp Khabo Köpsell’s verses speak up against prescriptive ways of conceiving identity, against the everyday racism experienced by Germans who, because of their looks, skin colour or religion, are not perceived as ‘authentic’ Germans: “I, German like Kartoffel and Buterstulle/ languages I switch and codes/ I am like you –/ Diaspora./ Exile seed of comrade trouble/ and that here, that black earth/ is and was and stays/ my land.
This is yet another statement, another way of affirming belonging.
It is somehow arbitrary to put together under the same umbrella these very different texts. These are different literary genres, the authors come from different linguistic and cultural contexts, adopt different narrative strategies, address different readerships. And yet, their primary concerns and the stands they take do have quite a lot in common, and it is this fundamental link which constitute a common ground in the literatures of the African Diasporas.
Because they are situated at the crossroads of continents and cultural heritages, because of their inherently rhizomatic nature, and because of their epistemological multi-perspectivism, the literatures of the African Diasporas make a crucial contribution to contemporary culture, not only at the artistic level of aesthetic exploration (where a particular narrative refinement and a great deal of experimentation are to be found) but also at the level of hermeneutic exploration, that is, in the analysis of human behaviour and social institutions, and at the level of ideological exploration, both in the form of scrutiny of the nature and origin of ideas and in the form of an innovative drive and a visionary quality in the envisagement of future configurations. In Europe these literatures intervene exactly where the set of dominant discourses constituting the core of the continent’s self-definition fear to tread, that is, in acknowledging the existence of racism in our society and analysing its dynamics and impact, and in highlighting the productive potential of cultural exchange and of non-essentialist notions of national identity as well as the fulfilment of the every-day practice of conviviality, presented not as a possibility to be debated but rather as an essential element of human history.

Friday 26 April 2013

Rockatone at ribber bottom


“Rockatone at ribber bottom no know sun hot” is a Jamaican proverb stressing that the ones who find themselves in a privileged position cannot be aware of the distress of the ones in less fortunate circumstances. It comes to my mind today, as I sit by the swimming pool at Hotel Villa Creole in Pétionville, an affluent suburb of Port-au-Prince. I am here only for a two-day sojourn (otherwise I’m staying in a much less pretentious hotel in Delmas) and I seem to be the only guest who is not here in the context of a humanitarian project. Around me quite a number of NGOs’ workers savor delicious juices and discuss the fate of the country. Health, housing, education  and relief from poverty are among their major concerns. Needless to say, the vast majority of international helpers are white, while the totality of the hotel’s personnel attending upon them are black Haitians. Haiti provides, probably more than any other country, fertile ground for the civilizing impetus of modern missionaries and saviors of various kind. Quite obviously the country’s wretchedness makes the fortunes of a lucky few. But, even if not wanting to question the good will of NGOs’ workers (though good will is, in my view, mostly harmful in this kind of context), I nevertheless wonder how this bunch of ‘rocks at the bottom of the river’ can possibly appreciate the sufferings of the poor they are pretending to help.

Monday 15 April 2013

Fighting racism through literary texts


 One of the most valuable contributions of Afroeuropean literatures is the commitment of many authors to undermine stereotypes and prejudices, which weigh not only on relations between Europe and Africa but also on interpersonal relationships between individuals and on the daily lives of European citizens perceived as foreigners according to racial criteria presented in the form of cultural essentialism. This is an antiracist commitment voted not only to counter the blatant and violent racism of right-wing extremism, but also to implement a process of deconstruction of the structural racism of European and Western imaginary, as it emerges in language, thought, representations and in the dynamics of interaction, a hidden racism as it is revealed also in the so-called 'positive' stereotypes on Africanness. This commitment operates at two levels: on the one hand through an analysis and an explicit reflection on this phenomena, and on the other hand, implicitly, by means of alternative representations that ‘disturb’ the expectations of readers (especially those who perceive themselves as non racist) and thus come to undermine certain prejudices.
An example of the first modality, that of explicit reflection, can be found in Fatou Diome’s La Préférence Nationale, a collection of stories whose protagonist is an educated Senegalese young woman working as housemaid in Strasbourg. In the first place the text reflects on how Black people in Europe are easily deprived of their individuality and seen as a prototype of the African as it exists in the collective white imaginary inherited by centuries of racist conceptions: “The face is an airport, an entry, and its décor never reveals the labyrinth it hides. The face, receptacle of genes and cultures, a racial and ethnic identity card. So that is why they looked at me so much: the whole of Africa, with its real or imaginary attributes, had engulfed me, and my face was not mine but its window on Europe.” The human face as an airport, therefore anonymous in principle, not revealing what is inside, the net of interconnections. The African face as deprived of that mysterious identity, a face denied that complexity of interconnections. The face not of an individual but of a continent, and not a continent in all its richness but a continent in all its poverty, reduced to that homogeneous image which hardly ever corresponds to anything realistically African. In the second place, Diome constantly reminds the (white) reader that it is all too easy to dismiss racism as something belonging to the past, as most white people’s perception is, in fact, distorted: “When one has the nose of Cleopatra and the skin of Anne of Austria, one does not feel the racism of France with the skin of Mamadou”. As a servant in private households, the protagonist of the stories, considered by her employers an ignorant savage, unmasks the worst sides of human nature, which are often not visible in more public spheres, and can thus conclude: “I assert that all Freud’s study on the human being is approximate because he addressed people convinced of his intelligence; yet people in the social sphere do not reveal themselves than when they consider you totally unable to think and make judgements. If Freud, armed with his knowledge, had adopted the apron in society, he would have learned more and better about human nature.
An example of the second modality, alternative representations that ‘disturb’ the reader’s preconceptions, can be found in a beautiful short story by Chica Unigwe, “On the train from Leuven”. Two women sit on a Belgian train, face to face. One is the narrator, a young woman from Enugu (Nigeria), the other a white Flemish woman. The white woman is eager to socialise and starts asking questions, although hers are assumptions rather than questions (and rather arrogant ones). She has been to Africa once, she says, and she has learned some Swahili. She assumes her fellow traveller, being African, must speak Swahili. Informed of the contrary, she still doesn’t give up and insists in showing up her knowledge (which is in fact limited to the one sentence - Naomba unipe pesa - for ‘friend give me money’), and cannot hide her disappointment (even anger) at not getting the expected response: “But you are African, she accuses… Surely your language is similar to Swahili. Her voice rises a bit.” She assumes that what she has seen, as a tourist, is representative for the whole of Africa, and, consequently, assumes her fellow traveller is surely better off in Belgium: “You like it here because this place is rich, ja? Houses are bigger, ja? not huts, like I saw in Africa.” She assumes all Africans are poor and carefree, she assumes she knows all about the person in front of her: “… you, she continues, looking at me as if I were some trophy she has picked up, you look like you do not have a care in the world. Just like the people she saw in Africa, she says. The women were always singing, the children always playing even though they were all barefoot and wore torn shirts and some had no clothes on at all. Africa, she says again, no stress. Then, she adds in a giggle, no dress, no stress.” The story proceeds alternating the white woman’s stupid (but unfortunately quite widespread) assumptions about Africa and the stream of thought of the narrator with her memories of back home, which are surely very far from matching the image the white woman has in her head, as well as with her reflections on her present life and with inner responses she does not bother to externalise, such as: “I do not tell her that Africa is a continent, like Europe is” or “I do not tell her that I have never seen a hut in my entire life”. The tale is all the more bitter since the white woman’s preconceived image of happy carefree Africans sharply contrasts with the deep sadness engulfing the narrator, who, as we learn in the end, is coming back from a medical appointment, having been just then announced that she has cancer. In this story, therefore, Unigwe skilfully dismantles the prejudices of people who do not generally conceive of themselves as racist. As I have had the occasion of experiencing, by using this story in several university courses, this strategy actually works. As sympathetic white readers are confronted with a caricatural representation of their own assumptions, they are forced to reflect upon the absurdity of stereotypes (even so-called positive ones) and upon the arrogance of Eurocentric attitudes in the interaction with Black people.

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Maschio nero

Te gustan los negros?’ Non so più quante volte ho sentito questa domanda. L’ho sentita in varie lingue e varie salse, e non smette mai di provocarmi un sentimento di stizza. Chiedere se a una piacciano o meno gli uomini neri non è esattamente come chiedere se un uomo ti piaccia bruno, biondo o rosso, cicciotto o stecchino, con gli occhi chiari o scuri, col naso in su o col pene storto... No, si tratta di tutt’altro tipo di domanda. E che una sia da anni felicemente accompagnata da un viso pallido non fa giungere nessuno alla conclusione che le piacciano i bianchi. Poiché infatti non è questo il punto. Non ho mai sentito nessuno chiedere a una donna (di qualsiasi colore) se le piacciano i bianchi. In primo luogo perché si dà per scontato che i bianchi, in senso generale, piacciono a tutti, per forza. È uno dei principi del razzismo: non si mette in discussione che il bianco (che in realtà è grigio, rosa, beige) possa non piacere. In secondo luogo perché, mentre il bianco è a tutti gli effetti un uomo, il nero non è altro che un maschio. Il bianco, dunque, è da sposare; il nero, invece, da scopare. Un po’ come la storia della vergine e la puttana, la donna angelo e la strega (maschilismo e razzismo del resto seguono le stesse logiche perverse). Nella domanda posta in spagnolo tutte queste implicazioni sembrano più esplicite che in altre lingue (forse è per questo che la trovo particolarmente offensiva). In spagnolo per altro ‘tirarse a un negro’ è un’espressione molto frequente, anche se di fatto statisticamente il fenomeno non è altrettanto frequente. È il mito del buon selvaggio in versione erotica, la vecchia fantasia coloniale del corpo nero ipersessuato. È il corpo africano visto come bene di consumo per un occidente assetato di primitivismo. Ve la ricordate quell’orribile canzone di Vasco sull’occasione persa perché la ‘troia’ se n’era andata a casa con il ‘N.’? Diceva: “L’ho vista uscire mano nella mano con quell’africano che non parla neanche bene l’italiano ma si vede che si fa capire bene quando vuole...” Ma di certo non si sentono razziste le giovani donne radical chic quando ti chiedono con la malizia di chi confonde l’emancipazione femminile col sessismo ribaltato: “¿Te gustan los negros?” Dovresti rispondere di sì per mostrare che non sei razzista? E se poi ti capita di far l’amore con un uomo nero bassino e rachitico che non corrisponde alla quintessenza della virilità selvatica che hanno in mente loro, va bene lo stesso?

Friday 22 March 2013

22M: shadows


On a sunny day
I walk         with my shadow

Moving at a steady pace
my shadow                  does not reveal
any sign of distress

My shadow could even be
SMILING
as if untouched
by recent events

My shadow seems not to know
of a coup

the coup that might mean
the end of my dream

Walking with my shadow
on a sunny day
I see my dream fading
         my hope diluting

BUT MY SHADOW is the sign
Of my RESILIENCE



It was an outrageously sunny day in Frankfurt one year ago, when I received the news of the military coup in Mali. I had shortly been back from Bamako, where I had spent a pleasant week with old friends, and I thought I would be going there again soon. Needless to say, I haven’t been back since. It was the first time that an historical event had such a disruptive impact on my life and future plans. It was also the first time that I realised what it means to be in love with a country and suddenly lose access to it, the first time I had a remote sense of the tragedy of exile and a very sharp sense of the extent of my privilege as a voluntary expat. I might go back one day, maybe soon, yet it will never be the same as back then. Only shadows stay the same.
One year later, Mali is still at war. Struggling for peace, waiting for happiness.
Heremakono.

Thursday 21 March 2013

Starting off blind


In 1995 I graduated in English literature with a dissertation on a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel carries an infamous title and the story revolves around the responses of a (white) crew to the illness a black sailor on board the ship Narcissus. The issue of race is so central in this narrative that only a blind can fail to see it. Well, I must have been blind then, and so must have been the professor who supervised my work and the whole committee that awarded me a summa cum laude. In fact, the highly racialised depiction of the protagonist, the use of racist terminology and the process of construction of whiteness through the use of the black character featured only marginally in my dissertation, as if the racial imagery were a footnote to much more important issues. It was, in short, a dissertation that assumed racism somehow as a normal (maybe even acceptable) feature of human interaction, a dissertation that was based on a racist understanding of language and culture, a dissertation that, by not recognising racism, ensured its reproduction. Not a single voice in the committee raised the question and I was left with the certitude of having produced a perfectly valuable piece of work. This, however, was not merely proof of the deep-seated indifference towards racial matters of an itself marginal academic context. It was, more significantly, a sign of the racial blindness of literary studies, since none of the sources I had consulted in the library had awakened my concern in this respect.
The eye-opener came a few months later, when I finally came across Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark. This little and dense book provided a much needed initiation into Whiteness Studies. As a matter of fact, even if I had long been reading Black authors from the Americas and had grown passionate about the many stories of emancipation and self-determination, I had still not paused to reflect upon “the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it” and I was therefore not ripe for that shift in perspective that can only occur once you give up the assumption of whiteness as the norm and start coming to grips with the privilege conferred by that normativity. Interrogating the role of the “invention and development of whiteness” in the construction of (American) identity, Morrison challenges the “silence and evasion” of literary criticism with regard to race matters and observes that “the habit of ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, even generous, liberal gesture.” For me, overcoming that habit and breaking the silence has implied a fresh start: a new understanding of literary criticism as well as a more accurate self-positioning as a reader. Okay, better late than never, but shouldn’t my teachers have pointed out that fault?

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Don’t feed the children


Color My World, an autobiography by Donald Vaughn, documents the life’s journey of an African-American from Detroit to Frankfurt am Main and covers a span of more than half a century across two continents. It is an open window into a piece of history and definitely, for a relatively new Frankfurt dweller like me, a valuable reading to get a sense of how much has changed and how much has stayed the same in this city of many nations.
A scene from the book, in particular, strikes for ringing bitterly familiar. Here, Mr Vaughn describes his children playing in the front garden:
Sitting in their sandbox, the children were also an attraction for passersby. People would stop and observe them like something exotic in a zoo. The children were certainly not undernourished but people would give them ice cream or candy from the kiosk across the street, and I wanted to put a sign on the fence: “Please do not feed the children.”
Referring back to several decades ago, this episode is not especially surprising as much as it is, obviously, disturbing. Curiosity and intrusiveness often go together, but if black children in such an international city as Frankfurt are not any longer regarded as ‘exotic’, they are often still object of unwanted attention from impertinent strangers. In my personal statistics (informal data collection based on various testimonials) of intrusive behaviours towards black children from offenders who pretend to be well intentioned, ‘being fed’ comes second only to ‘hair touching’ (the latter, however, involves even adults). “A white lady was eating an apple and, on seeing my child, gave her the bitten apple, without even acknowledging my presence.” The mother who reported this episode added that, when she protested, the woman had the nerve of showing outrage at such a reaction to her generosity!
As someone who grew up being obsessively told by all family members to never accept any food from strangers, I cannot disentangle the offering of food from the purpose of deceit and I therefore tend to become over alarmed when witnessing unrequested food offerings to minors. Here, however, there is something more at stake and this something has all to do with the racial imaginary assimilated by white people, which makes them associate black children with need and hunger. This kind of imaginary is so deeply rooted that it seems to come into play regardless of the context and regardless of the situation of the particular child, so deeply rooted that even in such an international city as Frankfurt episodes of the kind described by Mr Vaughn are still common occurrences. I witnessed one personally not so long ago in a clothes shop downtown. A mother was looking at clothes, her child in the buggy behind her. A white woman approached, eating a sandwich, and gave a piece to the child. I must have opened my mouth and eyes so wide in disbelief that the mother immediately turned back and realised what was going on, grabbed the piece of sandwich from the child’s mouth and walked away.
One might wonder whether in such cases one should say something to the offender, but in general I believe that walking away is the most appropriate response. Why would you want to lecture strangers in the street? Anyone with a little common sense would understand that offering food to children without asking parents or caretakers is not appropriate, and if it’s chewed food they are offering, they must be nuts!

More info on Donald Vaughn's book at: www.colormyworld.de

Thursday 7 March 2013

Fragerei


Ich sitze in der S-Bahn. Hinter mir unterhält sich eine weiße Frau mit zwei schwarzen Kindern (Junge und Mädchen, ungefähr sechs bis sieben Jahre alt). Sie fragt, freundlich, aber beharrlich, alles Mögliche. Besonders interessiert ist sie an der Herkunft der Kinder. Während die Kinder miteinander über irgendein seltsames Tier sprechen, unterbricht die Dame mehrmals mit ihren Fragen: Und wo kommt ihr her? Kommt ihr aus Afrika? Da die beiden Kinder perfekt Deutsch sprechen, scheint mir die Neugier erst recht unangemessen zu sein. Die Kinder erzählen aber dann gerne, dass sie in den USA geboren sind. Das scheint trotzdem nicht zu genügen, und die Dame fragt nach der Herkunft ihrer Eltern weiter. Sie seien Afrikaner, sagen die Kleinen. Ach so, ruft die Frau aus, als hätte sie endlich ein wichtiges Ziel erreicht, und woher in Afrika? Die Kinder scheinen nun ratlos. Afrika-Afrika, erklären sie. Ja klar, aber woher genau? Kenia? Namibia? Äthiopien? Die Kinder überlegen ein paar Sekunden, dann sagt das Mädchen entschlossen: Ja, meine Mutter kommt aus Äthiopien! Die Reaktion lässt nicht auf sich warten. Ach, Äthiopien ist ein sehr armes Land, seufzt die Dame voller Mitgefühl.
Mir wird es jetzt zu viel. Ich stehe auf, möchte der Frau mitteilen, dass Äthiopien mehr als nur ein sehr armes Land sei und dass sie am besten aufhören solle, die zwei Kinder mit ihrer blöden Fragerei zu belästigen. Dann bleibe ich aber stumm. Die Kinder sind nicht allein. Die Mutter ist auch dabei und sieht gar nicht verärgert aus. Ich frage mich erstaunt, wie sie das alles nur aushalten kann. Beim Aussteigen scheint die Familie dennoch so amüsiert, dass ich mich überzeuge, sie sind an solche Ereignisse so gewöhnt, dass sie die vielleicht als nicht so störend erleben; oder doch, aber sie haben vielleicht die ganze Herkunftsgeschichte extra erfunden, um aus der Belästigung einen Spaß zu machen. Und die Kinder wissen bestimmt selbst schon bescheid, dass Äthiopien viel mehr als nur ein sehr armes Land ist.

Wednesday 6 March 2013

ETHNIC PORNOGRAPHY


(on being sick and tired of seeing charity posters picturing hungry black children)

it is not a picture from old times
not a picture from colonial times
it is a picture from today
XXI century in the prosperous world
the missionaries are among us
the missionaries are always white
their victims always black
black, brown, shades of orange
but never ever ever white
save the world
give us your money
purge your guilt
and sleep sweet dreams
plan international
brot für die welt
unicef
hilfe für afrika
give us your money
we’ll take care about the rest
children
children smiling a sad smile
children and women
women powerless
children, more children
all black
sometimes brown, shades of orange
but never ever ever white
million children
that one child
black
all over the place
smiling a sad smile
looking hungry
looking powerless
in her mother’s arms
mother powerless
smiling a sad smile
at the bus stop
in my mailbox
wherever I go
that one child
million children
black
while the white guy
dignified
shameless
stands in a corner
plan international
brot für die welt
unicef
hilfe für afrika
give us your money
relieve the world
children
black
sometimes brown, shades of orange
all over the place
exposed

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Can the foreigner speak?


Some of the most vexing moments of my life in Germany are the situations which plainly reveal how much the fact of being a non-German affects the interaction with natives and the treatment one gets from some of them. Typically, the native interlocutor (sure, not all, but many) starts off on the wrong foot, i.e. a set of assumptions about who you are and what you want from them (no matter the legitimacy of the request, foreigners are generally treated as if they were trying to obtain something they are likely not to be entitled to). With such a beginning, productive interaction is often irremediably hampered. Even more so if the interlocutor is not prepared nor willing to revise their assumptions, which would merely require on their part the willingness to listen.

This morning I accompanied my husband to an orthopedical clinic. He had made an appointment and was there to see the doctor. The secretary at the desk asked for his insurance card and on seeing it blatantly declared this was no insurance card and he would have to pay cash on the spot. He tried to explain that his card was from a private insurance company operating internationally, but the lady did not let him speak, waved the card in the air, repeatedly saying this was no card, and insisted on cash. Since I am more fluent in German than my husband is, I tried to intervene on his behalf, but, again, the lady would not listen nor was she willing to check for further information. We left angry and dismayed and headed off to another doctor.
If such occurrences were sporadic and with little consequence on our life, we would not pay too much attention and would simply be annoyed at the absurdity of the situation. Unfortunately, however, it happens all too often to foreigners to be arrogantly dismissed without being given the chance to speak. And, all too often, this does have consequences beyond mere annoyance.
When, some months ago, I called the Jugendamt (youth welfare office) of a neighbouring city to inquire about the possibility of taking a child in foster care, I certainly did not expect that not being native German speakers would be decisive for my husband and I to be rejected a priori. I had decided to call this particular office because they were massively advertising their search for loving and responsible families with whom to place children from various backgrounds (including children from non-German families). The social worker I talked to had a reputation of being especially friendly and open-minded (this I knew from friends who were going through the accreditation process to become a foster family), but, with me, this proved not to be the case. The call was short and, for me, very frustrating, because the lady made a decision without even asking who I was, what I did for a living or what my motivation for fostering was. All the conversation revolved around was fluency in German. Of course, in spite of my southern-European accent, the fact that I speak German quite well was obvious, but I made the mistake of openly declaring that my husband is not very fluent. That alone was enough for the lady to put an end to our talk. She politely informed me that they were not interested in families where German was not spoken fluently. When I tried to protest on the ground that we speak six other languages and that our international experience and personal involvement in intercultural matters might be an advantage to children from non-German families (I was not given the chance, however, to explain the details of our social commitment), she interrupted me, told me not to take this personally and added that they wanted children to be placed in a German context (Umfeld was the word she used) because foster children already were in a difficult enough situation for a start. Then, she briskly wished me a nice day and hung up.
Three simple and absurd assumptions lie at the basis of such arguments. Assumption number 1: Not speaking fluent German translates into not being able to provide a loving and supporting family context for children growing up in Germany. Assumption number 2: Foreigners who reside in Germany do not live in a German context. Assumption number 3: Non-German parents are an added problem for children (with or without difficult situations). Of course, as the lady said, I should not take this ‘personally’, and in fact I don’t. This is no personal matter, rather an institutional one, and one which should require me to file a complaint for institutional discrimination. The reason why I did not have the nerve to do it back then is beyond the scope of this reflection. Personal circumstances make it sometime far too difficult to fight back institutionally, as ‘fighting back’ already absorbs much of one’s energy at a personal level, and, after all, one is not here to fight a war on an everyday basis.
The disturbing truth is that many natives (not only in Germany, I assume) tend to dismiss foreigners without making the effort to listen to what they have to say. Therefore I ask: Can the foreigner speak? But maybe we should rather ask: Can the native listen?

Monday 4 March 2013

Mister Spielberg, che Storia è mai questa?

Difficile guardare l’ultimo film di Spielberg e resistere all’impulso di lasciare la sala. Che storia è mai questa? La storia del presidente Lincoln che si batte per far passare l’emendamento sull’abolizione della schiavitù, daccordo. Ma la storia manca compleatamente di contesto. Per essere più precisi, mancano i personaggi che hanno reso possibile questo evento storico, manca la storia della resistenza afroamericana. Dato che il percorso dell’emancipazione afroamericana è ormai da decenni documentatissimo, il silenzio di Spielberg a riguardo è oltraggioso. Il film non fa alcun riferimento all’opera dei grandi personaggi neri che hanno dedicato la loro vita a questo obiettivo. Nessun riferimento a Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass (eppure quest’ultimo ha avuto su Lincoln un’influenza cruciale). E oltre al silenzio, che di fatto si traduce menzogna, lo scherno: i pochi personaggi neri presenti nel film ricordano quelli delle vecchie narrative bianche come La capanna dello zio Tom e Via col vento: soggiogati, accondiscendenti, passivi e per giunta assurdamente riconoscenti verso il generoso padrone bianco. Una rappresentazione poco dignitosa e decisamente offensiva. Alla Storia questo film fa più danno che altro. Forse Mister Spielberg farebbe meglio a tornare ad occuparsi di extraterrestri e dinosauri.

Sunday 3 March 2013

Which beasts? And how wild?


I must admit that Beasts of the Southern Wild is not a bad film. It is not a bad film in the same way as Heart of Darkness was not a bad novel. And yet.
Heart of Darkness was, in my view, an impressive novel indeed, but my view is that of a white person, who can (unforgivably) still allow herself to gloss over a more than questionable depiction of Black characters. Because if, on the one hand, HoD staged a harsh critique of the European colonial system, it did so by resorting to the very core of racialist thinking typical of its age (and yet, even then, there were people who were able to think outside the box and condemn racism for what it was: "The Horror! The Horror!") and failed to recognize that colonialism and racism go hand in hand. HoD is definitely racist, as Chinua Achebe has largely demonstrated, and yet many of us readers still find it impressive (I would find it hard, however, to describe it as beautiful). So, can a racist narrative still be appreciated? Should the answer be no, we would have to discard most white narratives on earth as unreadable, unseeable, unbearable. And maybe we should. But surely it would be more helpful to make the effort to understand (discern) the dynamics of racialist thinking as expressed in past narratives in order not have them reproduced all over again in a world that some fancy to be post-ethnic and colorblind (alas, some do buy into that fantasy).
Now to the point. Even if I was somehow suspicious of its title, I went to see Beasts of the Southern Wild with great expectations, genuinely convinced I would like it. I did indeed enjoy most of it, but at the same time I found it highly disturbing and left the cinema with a growing sense of discomfort: had I been ‘enjoying’ a racist narrative? Don’t get me wrong, but, if you are white, you must ask yourself that kind of question, because this is the only way to start being actively anti-racist. Anti-racism must start from inside, by scrutinizing the structures of power and pleasure which have made their way into our unconscious. I, a white spectator among an exclusively white crowd, had found the little angry girl sweet and pleasurable, and her alcoholic and violent father equally charming. Would I have experienced the same delight, had these two characters been white? Definitely not. Had the two protagonists been white, I would have freaked out at the abuse the child is subjected to by her instinct-driven father. I would have found the animal-like representation of the two characters outrageous. And probably I would not have found the two of them utterly breath-taking in their beauty. But BotSW is fantasy, one might argue. Sure, and so was HoD. And yet.
Why should a fantasy film resort to that kind of primitivism that we tried so hard to get rid of when we realized that the ‘noble savage’ was an invention of racialist thinking? Why do the same old stereotypes of angry Black femininity, violent Black masculinity and the association of Black bodies with nature reemerge one more time and still strike a chord? Why is it still fine for us (whites) that bestiality and wilderness should have a Black face?
If racialist thinking were, as many pretend, a thing of the past, I suspect we wouldn’t find such a film particularly enjoyable.