Abstract
Abu Bakr Khaal’s African Titanics (written in Arabic) and Jonny Steinberg’s A Man of Good Hope (written in English) track diasporic movements from the former Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somalia. Focusing on mobility as well as memory, both books trace complicated and unpredictable patterns of forced displacement and precarious settlement. African Titanics charts the journey from Eritrea to the shores of the Mediterranean and the sea crossing to Europe, while A Man of Good Hope follows the movement overland from Somalia to South Africa. Both texts delineate communities networked across national borders and propose an alternative geography formed by cultural commonality rather than geopolitical division. The essay draws on Christina Sharpe’s concept of the ‘wake’ as a means of understanding how migrant subjectivity and community are formed through the multiple forms of racialized violence experienced in transnational mobility.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 96-109 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Forum for Modern Language Studies |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 23 Dec 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2020 |
Keywords
- Italian postcoloniality
- Transnational mobility
- Migration
- Eritrea
- Somalia
- The wake
- Creative practice
Access to Document
- Duncan_2019_FMLS_HornofAfrica_AAM
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqz055
