Draft:Shirin Ramzanali Fazel

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Shirin Ramzanali Fazel (Mogadishu, 1953) is an Italian poet and novelist. Her work is often classified as Italian migrant literature. Translingualism is an important aspect of Fazel’s writing, with the presence of Somali vocabulary in her Italian and English texts.

Biography

Fazel was born in 1953 in Mogadishu to a Somali mother and a Pakistani father when Somalia was a United Nations Trust Territory administered by Italy (Amministrazione fiduciaria italiana della Somalia). Two years after the 1969 Somali military coup, Fazel moved to Novara together with her family. Having lived in Italy, Somalia, Zambia, Kenya, the USA, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia, Fazel currently divides her time between Birmingham, Padua, and Kuala Lumpur.

Lontano da Mogadiscio

Fazel’s first novel Lontano da Mogadiscio [Far from Mogadishu, 2016] was published in 1994 by Datanews. The autobiographical account is considered to be one of the first postcolonial texts published in Italy and in Italian. The book's genre is highly experimental, blending personal memories, poetry, anecdotes, and socio-historical reflections. The novel contemplates Italy's colonial history and explores the experiences of migrants in the country. As Simone Brioni points out in the afterword of the English version, ‘Far from Mogadishu played a fundamental role in decolonising the Italian imaginary... [...] Shirin's text is the testimony of a black person's life story in Northern Italy [...] in a period which precedes more widespread African immigration to these areas'.

Lontano da Mogadiscio received two reprints by Datanews between 1997 and 1999. It was later released in an expanded bilingual (Italian and English) and digital form by Laurana Reloaded in 2013. An English paperback version was published in 2016.

Other works

In her second novel, Nuvole sull’equatore. Gli italiani dimenticati. Una storia (2010), Fazel deals with the issues of meticciato and racial discrimination in the aftermath of Italian colonialism. Fazel published an extended English version of the novel, Clouds over the Equator. The Forgotten Italians, in 2017.

In 2017, Fazel published her first book written in English, a poetry collection entitled Wings. The poems in the collection are divided into three thematic sections: 'Diaspora,' centring on Mogadishu; 'Caught in the Middle,' examining the concept of home; and 'Migrants,' contemplating the condition of migrants. In 2018, Fazel translated the collection into Italian and published it as Ali spezzate [Broken Wings], preserving the original structure of the English version.

Scrivere di Islam. Raccontare la diaspora [Writing about Islam. Narrating the Diaspora], authored in partnership with Simone Brioni, was published digitally in 2020. The book reflects on the experience of being a Muslim woman in Italy and the UK.

Fazel published her most recent poetry collection, I Suckled Sweetness – Poems, in August 2020.

Fazel has published her short stories in the online magazine El Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione.

Other activities

Fazel is a member of Writers without Borders, a Birmingham-based multicultural group of writers, and has served on the advisory board for the project Transnationalizing Modern Languages, which received funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

In 2018, Fazel took part in the documentary Memories of Mogadishu, directed by Asha Siad, a Somali-Canadian journalist and filmmaker. The documentary is a collection of stories and memories of the global Somali diaspora, offering a subjective reconstruction of Mogadishu.

Fazel's poem Mare Nostrum, originally published on the website of the migrant-led organization Migrant Voice in 2016, served as the inspiration for Silentium Nostrum, a 2018 flute composition by the French composer Elizabeth Bossero.

Further reading

• Benchouiha, Lucie. ‘“Dove è la mia casa”: Questions of Home in Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Lontano da Mogadiscio’ (Quaderni del ’900, 4, 2004, pp. 35-46)

• —: ‘“Il colore della mia pelle”: Renegotiating Identity in Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Lontano da Mogadiscio’ (Forum Italicum, 39, 2005, pp. 119-136)

• Brioni, Simone. The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian Literature (Cambridge: Legenda, 2015)

• —: ‘“Un dialogo che non conosce confine né di nazionalità, né di razza, né di cultura”: temi, impatto e ricezione critica di Lontano da Mogadiscio’, in Lontano Da Mogadiscio/Far from Mogadishu (Milan: Laurana Reloaded, 2013, pp. 171-199)

• Di Carmine, Roberta. ‘Italophone Writing and the Intellectual Space of Creativity: Shirin Ramzanali Fazel and Lontano da Mogadiscio’ (Quaderni del 900, 4, 2004, pp. 25-34)

• Welch, Rhiannon Noel. ‘Intimate Truth and (Post)Colonial Knowledge in Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s Lontano da Mogadiscio’, in National Belongings: Hybridity in Italian Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures, eds. Jacqueline Andall and Derek Duncan (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010, pp. 215-234)

External links

• Shirin Ramzanali Fazel. Author page, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW), Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

See also

• Somali people in Italy
• Italian Somaliland
• Immigration to Italy

References

• Brioni, Simone, ‘A Dialogue that Knows No Border Between Nationality, Race or Culture’, Afterword to Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Far from Mogadishu, 5th Edition, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016, pp. 149-164.