Writing/Reading the Black Mediterranean

Abstract

Conceived to re-animate and expand the discourse on African displacement and what it entails, this essay explores how issues of migration, diaspora, border, mobility, citizenship, and human rights are represented within the Black Mediterranean context. In particular, it proposes an analysis of the collective poetry/photo anthology Migrazioni/Migrations: An Afro-Italian Night of the Poets (2012; 2016). In this text, renowned Italian and Nigerian poets headed by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka tell the choral story of how Africa and Europe have always been united by a common sea, histories, myths, and a shared experience of migration. Investigating these questions is relevant to an understanding of what is happening today in the Central Mediterranean Route and the global migratory chessboard. The final goal is to inscribe the contemporary history of the Black Mediterranean in that of the African Diaspora, showing that it consitutes only its most recent chapter.