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    • the dreaming machine – issue number 16
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  • Poetry
    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems –  Yuliya Musakovska

    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems – Yuliya Musakovska

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Hence, the walruses will keep our memories – Poems from Ikaro Valderrama’s Tengri: The Book of Mysteries

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    “When Crimea Was Not a Grief”: Six Poems by Lyudmyla Khersonska, from 21st Century Ukraine

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Ratko Lalić’s painting, a little Noah’s ark –  Božidar Stanišić  

    The region suddenly turned into a deciduous forest. Poems by Paulami Sengupta

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A False Dimension: regarding the empty walls – Aritra Sanyal

  • Fiction
    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Importance of Being Imperfect – Haroonuzzaman

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A Mirage of a Dream – Kazi Rafi

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    Between Two Lives – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    The Amatory Rainy Night – Kazi Rafi

    Chapter 1 of “Come What May”, a detective story set in Gaza, by Ahmed Masoud

    Come What May, chpt. 11 – Ahmed Masoud

  • Non Fiction
    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    That is the Face – Appadurai Muttulingam

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Understanding the Quintessential Divinity: Binding the Two Geographies – Haroonuzzaman

  • Interviews & reviews
    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as  Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism.  Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism. Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

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    • Intersections
    • Interviews and reviews
    • Non fiction
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    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Area Sacra at Torre di Largo Argentina —or, Calpurnia’s Dream – Laura Hinton

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    From The Stony Guests, Part IV: SIRAN BAKIRCI and SAIT B. KARAKAYA – Neil P. Doherty

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Chaos Theory – Michele Carenini

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Once the veil of artifice falls away: Poems by Haroonuzzaman

  • News
    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5:  Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5: Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

  • Home
  • Poetry
    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems –  Yuliya Musakovska

    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems – Yuliya Musakovska

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Hence, the walruses will keep our memories – Poems from Ikaro Valderrama’s Tengri: The Book of Mysteries

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    “When Crimea Was Not a Grief”: Six Poems by Lyudmyla Khersonska, from 21st Century Ukraine

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Ratko Lalić’s painting, a little Noah’s ark –  Božidar Stanišić  

    The region suddenly turned into a deciduous forest. Poems by Paulami Sengupta

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A False Dimension: regarding the empty walls – Aritra Sanyal

  • Fiction
    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Importance of Being Imperfect – Haroonuzzaman

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A Mirage of a Dream – Kazi Rafi

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    Between Two Lives – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    The Amatory Rainy Night – Kazi Rafi

    Chapter 1 of “Come What May”, a detective story set in Gaza, by Ahmed Masoud

    Come What May, chpt. 11 – Ahmed Masoud

  • Non Fiction
    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    That is the Face – Appadurai Muttulingam

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Understanding the Quintessential Divinity: Binding the Two Geographies – Haroonuzzaman

  • Interviews & reviews
    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as  Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism.  Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism. Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

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    • Non fiction
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    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Area Sacra at Torre di Largo Argentina —or, Calpurnia’s Dream – Laura Hinton

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    From The Stony Guests, Part IV: SIRAN BAKIRCI and SAIT B. KARAKAYA – Neil P. Doherty

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Chaos Theory – Michele Carenini

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Once the veil of artifice falls away: Poems by Haroonuzzaman

  • News
    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5:  Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5: Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

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Home Non Fiction

A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

May 1, 2023
in Non Fiction, The dreaming machine n 12
A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini
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To remember Carla Macoggi, in the tenth anniversary of her passing.Translated by Pina Piccolo, first published in la Macchina Sognante, issue 23 on January 1, 2022

Getting my thoughts in order. July seventy-seven my first time in Italy. Three months at the home of Terza and Astolfo. November seventy-seven in Africa, again. In the summer of the following year, the West forever. With Romana. A few days in Rome, almost a month in the Apennines. And then to Bologna. Without Romana. At the home of a nun dressed like a nun and one dressed like a plainclothes correctional officer. September 19xx at Lucrezia and Gregorio’s home. December 19xx again in my frescoed house in Bologna until a few days after my eighteenth birthday. And then all the desertion and abandonment in the world, bearing Romana’s signature. Something I would have never encountered if I had stayed in Africa. Today, in the year 19xx, was like any other day in my twenty-four years of life.

I lay down on the bed and, without even going under the sheets, I lay down like a stone. (The Nemesis of the Redhead, p. 88).

I.

For anyone wishing to address the vast question of the “postcolonial” in literature, crossing through Carla Macoggi’s writing is a necessity. It is almost a compulsory step that allows one to penetrate an intimate space containing the unfolding of a deep and irrepressible pain, imprinted on the body of authorial subjectivity itself. Pain that turns into the tracks left by the violence linked to the colonial experience and its subsequent fallout or ‘afterlives’, even many years after the end of that experience, in a territory only seemingly less hostile but, nevertheless, actually marked by abandonment, loss and deep trauma.

This is a trend in Italy in some recent books written by Afro-descendant authors and some who are not. I am thinking of Sangue giusto by Francesca Melandri, but also of novels by Igiaba Scego, Cristina Ali Farah, even Erminia Dell’Oro (I wrote about her latest novel here: https://www.labalenabianca.com/2021/11/08/su-nel-segno-della-falena-di-erminia-delloro-jessy-simonini/). The “colonial past,” opaque and difficult to locate, flows back into the present, making itself a living thing, appearing as a concrete reality that the author’s subjectivity must come to terms with. Not a colonial past, but rather a “colonial present” determining a trauma by colonizing, in its turn, the body, and configuring itself as a deep fracture in one’s identity (“subdividing a man” is Urqhart’s formula in the epigraph opening Macoggi’s novel  La nemesi della rossa.  It is undoubtedly so, for Carla Macoggi who is transfigured into the character of Fiorella, “the redhead” to be sure, who at the beginning of Nemesis wants to find out the truth about the first years of her life and the long concealed circumstances of her arrival in Italy in the late 1970s:

Fiorella went to the bureaucrats. With a question that was both formal and naive.

-Tell me what it says in your records. About me. Tell me what happened during those years when I was unhappy and unable to have answers to my questions. […]

No, no. I lived a life that was not mine. Nothing that is written there speaks of me. Nothing that is written has ever been crossed by the motion of my heart and the flow of my blood.

II.

Today we are left with only a few writings by Carla Macoggi, including two volumes published by the Sensibili alle foglie press, I am referring to La nemesi della rossa and Kkeywa. Storia di una bambina meticcia, both being novels that have stirred the interest of critics and readers alike. We are also left with some other materials preserved in one of her blogs, almost like a crystallized trace of her rapid passage on this earth: https://cmacoggi.blogspot.com/. The last article dates back to the summer of 2011, more than a decade ago. In the last years of her life she had settled in Imola, an opaque town in the province of Romagna, and passed away there in 2013. She had come to Italy in the late 1970s, having been born in Addis Ababa in 1965 from the union between an Ethiopian woman and an Italian man.

Over the past few years, a number of critical studies dedicated to her writing have appeared, including those by Carla Cornette (https://www.gendersexualityitaly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/13.-Cornette-Carla.-Colonial-Legacies.-AuthorApproved123120.pdf ) and Teresa Solis (https://revues.univ-tlse2.fr/pum/lineaeditoriale/index.php?id=477). In addition to the aforementioned papers, Carla Cornette has produced a doctoral thesis-discussed in 2018 at the University of Wisconsin- containing an analysis of Macoggi’s literary production, along with that of two other Italian authors of African descent,  Scego and Ali Farah.

The aforementioned studies testify to some critical interest in Macoggi, albeit in foreign academic settings, a sign of how very difficult it still is to graft a postcolonial discourse into Italian academia, especially in the literary sphere. Carla Cornette, who identifies Macoggi’s production as part of a semi-autobiographical writing (a definition that can certainly be shared), argues that:

By hybridizing fact and fiction in the form of semi-autobiography, the author submits her personal experiences as representative of the collective, as allegorical for other disenfranchised women and children whose families are fractured whether by war, poverty, differential access to migration, or international adoption, as in her case. This analysis proffers a heuristic line of inquiry for the interrogation of additional texts of Italian postcolonial literature that feature how abject positionalities (as configured by race, economics, gender, geography), statuses which were essential to the construction of modern nation-states and still dictate blood-based notions of citizenship in Italy, are determined in making or breaking some familial relations (Carla Cornette, gender sexuality Italy, 7 (2021), p. 188)

It seems to me that in the above quote she is offering  an effective working outline, an operational possibility that is useful not only as far as Macoggi’s writings are concerned, but also for other postcolonial writings or narratives published in recent years. To add a further element to this insight, it can perhaps be said that Macoggi’s texts crisply express the reproduction of colonial dynamics even in non-colonized territories, far from those countries in East Africa colonized by the Italian state, many years after the end of that historical phase. Erminia Dell’Oro, who is perhaps the best-known author (although belonging to a completely different generation), sharply reproduces the colonial mechanisms of domination that persist in the Eritrean capital, Asmara: see Asmara, addio (recently republished by Tartaruga) or even her most recent novel, Nel segno della falena. Macoggi, on the other hand, shows how colonization can continue long afterwards, in Italy, as a form of domination and annihilation of identity of particular subjects. In both novels, colonial violence is first and foremost perpetrated by Romana, who is responsible for Fiorella’s uprooting, but it is also practiced by many other characters who pass through Fiorella’s life, taking advantage of her, emotionally abusing her. About Romana, responsible for wrongdoing, Macoggi writes:

Selamawit [the African mother of the protagonist] signed all the papers that were placed under her uncertain hand, and Romana gave a few coins to the false witnesses and extras who were participants in that farce, which was registered as a certificate of adoption by the Court. Romana promised the Ethiopian state that she would be Fiorella’s new mother. She had bought Fiorella. For nothing.

The character of Romana is the crucial node in the narrative as she embodies both “systemic” colonial violence and the more personalized violence of a woman who tears a daughter away from her mother (“the ‘adoption’ was the first official annulment of Fiorella’s mother”).  But the same violence can also be traced to the other figures who succeed each other in Fiorella’s life: they are not simply symbols of systemic or structural racism, but for all intents and purposes, traces of the colonizer’s violence  that is exercised deliberately for the umpteenth time, on the colonized. In this case, it is even stronger, even more painful and traumatic because it is a harbinger of a severance, an erasure indeed.

III.

It seems to me that Macoggi’s writings are aimed at the search for a truth, or rather the truth about one’s own origins and one’s own “identity,” if this word still means anything; a search that appears to be accompanied or even performed by the writing itself, that is revealed in its making, in its very expression as a quest for meaning. This quest includes a demand for self-subjectification and recognition, thus generating a very deep wound, distributed like a nervous system throughout Fiorella’s psychological life. The need to understand, to know, pushes her toward the paths of trauma and deep deconstruction of the self. And the act of writing is to be understood as an attempt at “recomposition” (p. 18, Nemesis), not so much of a “story,” but rather of oneself:

I want to set order to this confusion. Write to clear inaccuracy. Rethink everything to erase disarray. Remove with words the inconsistency of life. New words to replace those never uttered, never spoken, words that have become painful silence. Silence so intense that it became irrepressible pain. Up to bordering on a sense of death. Until it became real death (p. 19, Nemesis)

It has become clear by now, that in my opinion, Macoggi’s work, in spite of its meagreness, can  by no means be reduced to the category of migrant writing, and neither is it only part of  postcolonial studies, a tendency that is very slowly contaminating Italian literary discourse. Since Macoggi did not consider herself a “migrant” at all, but rather a full-fledged Italian, what critics  actually need to do, is to divest themselves of all categories, consider the text  only for its literary merit, grasp its lyrical fluctuations, and highlight the transparency of this semi-autobiographical writing that testifies to the writer’s profound inner turmoil. And we must consider her an Italian author, while not forgetting how dense and structurally problematic such category truly is From Kkeywa, p. 43:

When I was nine years old, we were on our third move. Each time I lost something: a hair clip, a colored pencil, a notebook, a drawing. But no one could separate me from three objects that my father had given me: an abacus with colored balls, that he had used to teach me how to count, the national commemorative medal from a war he had participated in as a young man, which was kept in its sober, dark case, and the olive-green passport that bore the words Italian Republic written on the cover, in gold lettering.

IV.

As someone who frequently visits archives, indeed likes to frequent them for study and research, I was greatly struck by the material dimension of  Carla Macoggi’s search for self, expressed through documentary sources. This is evident in both Nemesis (p. 13) and Kkeywa (p.9) where photographs of archival documents related to her  past are featured. These documents, formally original, “authentic” as an expert of diplomacy would put it, actually contain a deep falsification: what is written on the document does not correspond to reality, to Fiorella’s real life. The archives then become the center of a falsification, a structure that is complicit in that concealment and erasure that I mentioned earlier.

They are “your archives,” Macoggi writes at the beginning of Nemesis. Yours, because  they are a thing that belongs to others, to bureaucrats, perhaps the accomplices of her trauma.

V.

Walking around Imola a few years after Carla Macoggi’s death, I look for something to connect me with her, but I can’t find it. I never knew her. I have, however, met people who were friends with her. I have had gifts of her books and objects that had belonged to her, but mostly some memories, some splinters of her life. In the future I will write more about her, from a literary critic standpoint, in a more accomplished way, especially if it may be helpful to understand something new about her writing and the life that glows in those pages.

Oddly enough, in the center of the city of Imola stands a statue dedicated to Francesco Azzi, a lieutenant during the Ethiopian War, a convinced fascist who had joined early on, and who was awarded a gold medal for military bravery for the following reasons, described in a plaque:

In a long and fierce battle over impassable terrain, he identified a small enemy fortification and galloped toward it, leading by daring example the spahis [cavalry units recruited among the colonized in Libya and Algeria]  in his battalion. Overcoming the wall of defense with irresistible impetus and discharging all the rounds of his gun, he rushed into the midst of an enemy position that was superior in strength, charging them with his saber and routing them. Mortally wounded, stoically aware of the severity of his wound, he pushed away the attendant who tried to rescue him, shouting, “Leave me and keep firing at the enemy.” He then expired the next day, after extolling the combat and victory with manly words of pride. Splendid example of legendary bravery. Selaclaca, December 25, 1935.

Under Azzi’s statue, reading about his “legendary bravery,” in this anonymous, gray city, far from Addis or Selaclacá, I find that point of contact I was seeking, the fuse; I find a trace of Carla Macoggi and it becomes all the clearer why I should read about her, make others read her, and continue writing about her.

Jessy Simonini was born in 1994 in the province of Bologna, Italy.  After pursuing doctoral studies in Medieval Literature at the ENS in Paris he is currently  completing his Ph.D. in Italy. “Campi di battaglia” is his first poetry collection. He is is a frequent contributor to literary journals and conferences, both with his literary criticism and poems.

Tags: author's subjectivityautobiographyCarla CornetteCarla MacoggicItalian colonialismCristina Ali FarahdisassociationEastern AfricaErminia dell'OroEthiopiaIgiaba ScegoItalyJessy SimoniniKkeya. Storia di una bambina meticciaLa nemesi della rossaliterary criticismNon fictionpost colonial studiestrauma
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Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from "Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia" and "Nemesi della rossa"

The Dreaming Machine

Writing and visual arts from the world.

Photogallery of Irene De Matteis Oneiric Artwork
Poetry

Still Drunk With The Storm (Part I) – Five poems by Ndue Ukaj

Noah’s Ark   Noah’s Ark was not emptied even when the rainbow scintillated over the sea and the winds stopped and ...

November 29, 2019
I have gone too far inside a dream – Poems by Animikh Patra for Villa Romana
Poetry

I have gone too far inside a dream – Poems by Animikh Patra for Villa Romana

Animikh Patra for Villa Romana Project   A Real Calling   Send me a real calling Which summons life to ...

December 1, 2020
Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action
Non Fiction

That is the Face – Appadurai Muttulingam

Translated from Tamil by Megana Kumar. Cover image: Painting by Calixto Robles, "The road to Ixtlan", 2010. Everyone has a ...

May 2, 2025
Let the Rivers Speak! – Lucia Cupertino and the Poetry of the Global Souths, by  Pina Piccolo
Out of bounds

Excerpts from “In What Light Will They Fall?” – Gabriele Galloni

Excerpt from Antonio Bux’s introduction to Gabriele Galloni's collection In che luce cadranno?   The prayers and short rituals contained in ...

May 16, 2022
POEMS FOR PEACE, by Hamid Barole Abdu
Non fiction

lost forgotten places – séamas carraher

lost forgotten places   “back in mayo a blighted tree bone dry and white on a dry river-bed – dead…” ...

November 29, 2020

Latest

Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as  Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

May 6, 2025
Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

Area Sacra at Torre di Largo Argentina —or, Calpurnia’s Dream – Laura Hinton

May 5, 2025
The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

The Importance of Being Imperfect – Haroonuzzaman

May 5, 2025
from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

May 4, 2025

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Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live
News

Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

by Pina Piccolo
6 months ago
0

December 24, 2024 marks ten years since the premature passing of Brazilian/Italian writer Julio Monteiro Martins, important cultural figure from...

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