Literature Of The Somali Diaspora

The author, a Somali, recounts the stories of Somali refugees and others whose lives were uprooted or terribly transformed by the anarchy in Somalia during the early 1990s.

The first study of Anglophone and Italian novels by Somali diasporic authors, offering a new critical framework for multilingual and transnational analysis of Somali literature. Building on the latest scholarship about multilingual contexts, diaspora studies and the rapidly expanding field of Italian postcolonial studies, Marco Medugno examines Somali diasporic literature with a comparative perspective. Considering works written in English and Italian, he argues that Somali diasporic authors share similar themes and aesthetics, thus creating an interliterary community within the diaspora space. By using multilingualism as a starting point, Medugno provides significant insights into how Somali national and individual identities are constructed in diasporic, global contexts through geography, style, form, language and the re-writing of national histories emerging out of colonization and independence. Analysing acclaimed Somali novels such as Nuruddin Farah's Links and Crossbones, Igiaba Scego's Adua and Cristina Ali Farah's Little Mother, he questions any definition of 'local' as 'provincial', instead considering it a site for interrogating global concerns. Literature of the Somali Diaspora is organized around three themes: spatiality, language and resistance help to contextualize authors, forced by the decades-long Somali Civil War, to write outside Somalia and in different languages – including Somali, Italian, English, German, Dutch and Arabic – within global literary circuits. Their work thus creates a literature not confined within national borders but an interliterary global community, a transnational and multilingual space in which they share world aesthetic ideologies, challenge and engage with literary traditions in different languages and show an interplay between diverse cultures.

This book is about Somali mothers and daughters who came to Britain in the 1990s to escape civil war. Many had never left Somalia before, followed nomadic traditions, did not speak English, were bereaved and were suffering from PTSD. Their stories begin with war and genocide in the north, followed by harrowing journeys via refugee camps, then their arrival and survival in London. Joanna Lewis exposes how they rapidly recovered, mobilising their networks, social capital and professional skills. Crucial to the recovery of the now breakaway state of (former British) Somaliland, these women bore a huge burden, but inspired the next generation, with many today caught between London and a humanitarian impulse to return home. Lewis reveals three histories. Firstly, the women’s personal history, helping us to understand resilience as an individual, lived historical process that is both positive and negative, and both inter- and intra-generational. Secondly, a collective history of refugees as rebuilders, offering insight into the dynamism of the Somali diaspora. Finally, the forgotten history and hidden legacies of Britain’s colonial past, which have played a key role in shaping this dramatic, sometimes upsetting, but always inspiring story: the power of women to heal the scars of war.

Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic detail, Stephanie Bjork offers the first study on the messy role of clan or tribe in the Somali diaspora, and the only study on the subject to include women's perspectives. Somalis Abroad illuminates the ways clan is contested alongside ideas of autonomy and gender equality, challenged by affinities towards others with similar migration experiences, transformed because of geographical separation from family members, and leveraged by individuals for cultural capital. Challenging prevailing views in the field, Bjork argues that clan-informed practices influence everything from asylum decisions to managing money. The practices also become a pattern that structures important relationships via constant--and unwitting--effort.

This book illustrates how diasporic media can re-create conflict by transporting conflict dynamics and manifesting them back in to diaspora communities. Media, Diaspora and Conflict demonstrates a previously overlooked complexity in diasporic media by using the Somali conflict as a case study to indicate how the media explores conflict in respective homelands, in addition to revealing its participatory role in transnationalising conflicts. By illustrating the familiar narratives associated with diasporic media and utilising a combination of Somali websites and television, focus groups with diaspora community members and interviews with journalists and producers, the potentials and restrictions of diasporic media and how it relates to homelands in conflict are explored.

The first study of Anglophone and Italian novels by Somali diasporic authors, offering a new critical framework for multilingual and transnational analysis of Somali literature. Building on the latest scholarship about multilingual contexts, diaspora studies and the rapidly expanding field of Italian postcolonial studies, Marco Medugno examines Somali diasporic literature with a comparative perspective. Considering works written in English and Italian, he argues that Somali diasporic authors share similar themes and aesthetics, thus creating an interliterary community within the diaspora space. By using multilingualism as a starting point, Medugno provides significant insights into how Somali national and individual identities are constructed in diasporic, global contexts through geography, style, form, language and the re-writing of national histories emerging out of colonization and independence. Analysing acclaimed Somali novels such as Nuruddin Farah's Links and Crossbones, Igiaba Scego's Adua and Cristina Ali Farah's Little Mother, he questions any definition of 'local' as 'provincial', instead considering it a site for interrogating global concerns. Literature of the Somali Diaspora is organized around three themes: spatiality, language and resistance help to contextualize authors, forced by the decades-long Somali Civil War, to write outside Somalia and in different languages – including Somali, Italian, English, German, Dutch and Arabic – within global literary circuits. Their work thus creates a literature not confined within national borders but an interliterary global community, a transnational and multilingual space in which they share world aesthetic ideologies, challenge and engage with literary traditions in different languages and show an interplay between diverse cultures.

Critical Realism, Somalia and the Diaspora Community equips new researchers with a simplified knowledge of critical realism suitable to the degree of their comprehension. Moreover, it offers a step by step example of research using all levels of critical realism. This book resulted from the endeavour of a researcher, new to critical realism who, however, sought to apply all parts and phases of critical realism to his subject matter. The book is divided into three parts: Part 1 provides an outline of the three phases of critical realism: original/basic critical realism, dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality. Part 2 presents a case study that applied critical realism as a research-theory framework. The case study explores the formation of the Somali Community Organisations in the UK and develops a retroductive model that outlines their role in engaging the Somali Diaspora Community with the issue of sustainability. Part 3 presents reflections towards the geo-historical study of Somalia and explains the origins of the civil war and the dispersal that resulted in the formation of Somali Diaspora Communities in different parts of the world. This book will be of interest to Critical Realists, researchers on and in Africa, agencies interested in Somali affairs, researchers on diaspora and refugees, Somali Community Co-ordinators and local council authorities in the UK and Europe.

Explores the balancing act of living as a Muslim in the west. It is a comparison of the Somali communities in London, England and Toronto, and is based on a series of in-depth interviews with over 80 Somali women, men and teenagers in those cities.

Return migration has received growing levels of attention in both academic and policy circles in recent years, as the African diaspora's role in contributing to the development of their country of origin has become apparent. However, little is known about the lived experiences of those who come back, and even less about the ways in which their return shapes socio-political dynamics on the ground. This book aims to unpack the complexities of migrant transnational experiences as situated in global political and economic processes. In particular, the book takes the case of the return of skilled and educated Somalis from Western Europe and North America, in an attempt to recast the idea of diaspora return and transnational ethnography in a more political light, and to show how these returnees are both subject to and generative of important political conditions that are transforming Somaliland society. Overall, the book captures the complexities of the migrant's position, showing that "return" is rarely permanent, and that success comes from perpetuating the transnational stance. This book will appeal to scholars of migration, diaspora, development and African studies, as well as to those interested in the Somali case specifically, the third biggest community of refugees in the world.

The recent histories of Italy and Somalia are closely linked. Italy colonized Somalia from the end of the 19th century to 1941, and held the territory by UN mandate from 1950 to 1960. Italy is also among the destination countries of the Somali diaspora, which increased in 1991 after civil war. Nonetheless, this colonial and postcolonial cultural encounter has often been neglected. Critically evaluating Gilles Deleuze and F x Guattari‘s concept ofminor literature as well as drawing on postcolonial literary studies, The Somali Within analyses the processes of linguistic and cultural translation and self-translation, the political engagement with race, gender, class and religious discrimination, and the complex strategies of belonging and unbelonging at work in the literary works in Italian by authors of Somali origins. Brioni proposes that theminor Somali Italian connection might offer a major insight into the transnational dimension of contemporaryItalian literature andSomali culture.