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Shirin Ramzanali Fazel (courtesy of the author)

Shirin Ramzanali Fazel is a novelist and poet. She was born in Mogadishu to a Somali mother and Pakistani father in 1953, when Somalia was still under Italian administration (AFIS – Amministrazione fiduciaria italiana della Somalia – a Trust Territory) as declared by the United Nations after the end of World War II. In this context, Fazel attended schools run by the Italian Ministry of Education (middle and high school), studying aspects of Italian culture and history, as she emphasised in her first book Lontano da Mogadiscio (1994; Far from Mogadishu, 2016).

Fazel and her husband moved to Novara, Italy, in 1971. Here are her first impressions of Italy: ‘My arrival in Italy was a disaster. It was late autumn. I had never seen fog before. I only knew the clear blue sky of Mogadishu. The oppressive, leaden Novara, lost in the paddy field was for me an unknown Italy, far from the idea I had in my mind.’ (Far from Mogadishu, 26). Nonetheless, Italy became their base in the following years when the family went on to live in several different countries such as Zambia, the United States, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.

Lontano da Mogadiscio [Far from Mogadishu, 2016] was published in 1994 by Datanews. This autobiographical account traces Fazel’s life across different countries, combining personal memories and anecdotes, socio-historical reflections, and poetry. As one of the first postcolonial texts in Italian, Lontano da Mogadiscio sheds light not only on Italy’s colonial past, but also on the life of migrants in Italy. Simone Brioni pointed out in the afterword to the English version: ‘Far from Mogadishu played a fundamental role in decolonizing the Italian imaginary, and in finally coming to terms with a history which research begun in the seventies showed to be full of atrocious crimes. […] 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’ (Far from Mogadishu, 151). The relevance of Fazel’s first book is also proven by the fact that it was reprinted twice by Datanews (1997–1999), in an extended bilingual (Italian and English) digital version by Laurana Reloaded (2013), and in an English paper version in 2016. In both formats, the text was translated or, better, re-written, by the author herself. Lontano da Mogadiscio is mentioned in Nuruddin Farah’s novel Links (2003), the story of a Somali man who returns to Mogadishu after an absence of twenty years.

Since the publication of Lontano da Mogadiscio, Fazel has written several short stories, many of which have appeared in the online magazine El-Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione. In 2010, the year in which she and her family moved to Birmingham, UK, Fazel published her second novel, Nuvole sull’equatore. Gli italiani dimenticati. Una storia. The novel tells the story of Giulia, a girl with a Somali mother and an Italian father, focusing on issues of race, meticciato, and identity in the aftermath of Italian colonialism. An extended version in English, translated by Fazel, was published in 2017 entitled Clouds over the Equator. The Forgotten Italians. In Birmingham, Fazel joined the group Writers without Borders) and started writing in English. She also sat on the advisory board of the project Transationalizing Modern Languages funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, collaborating with different universities and participating in community events.

Fazel’s first book in English appeared in 2017, a collection of poems entitled Wings. The poems in Wings are divided into three thematic areas: ‘Diaspora’, with a particular focus on Mogadishu; ‘Caught in the middle’, with writings that interrogate the idea of home by evoking memories of life and people in her country of origin, as well as experiences in the current location; and ‘Migrants’, with poetic reflections on the migrant condition. In a reverse process to her previous works, Wings was translated into Italian by Fazel and was published as Ali spezzate [2018], maintaining the structure of the original English version.

Fazel has taken part in the documentary Memories of Mogadishu (2018) directed by Somali-Canadian journalist and documentarist Asha Siad. This short documentary collates the stories and personal memories of members of the Somali diaspora around the world, providing a personal and fascinating reconstruction of Somalia and its capital city Mogadishu.

In 2018, the French translation of Fazel’s poem ‘Mare Nostrum’, initially released on the webpage of the migrant-led organisation Migrant Voice in 2016, inspired a composition for flute by French composer Elizabeth Bossero entitled Silentium Nostrum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnwxrLchsqc).

The volume Scrivere di Islam. Raccontare la diaspora, written in collaboration with Simone Brioni, came out digitally in 2020. This volume critically questions what it means to be Muslim (and more specifically a Muslim woman) in Italy and in the UK, combining personal experiences with sociological reflections. The English translation was published in 2023 under the title Islam and Me: Narrating a Diaspora. A new collection of poetry, I Suckled Sweetness – Poems, came out in August 2020. Some of her latest poems have appeared in bilingual anthologies in 2022 (see Bibliography).

Fazel has recently contributed essays to publications focusing on belonging and language. She has been an invited speaker at the first Festival of Italian and Irish Literature in Ireland, taking part in a round-table discussion together with Italian-Indian author Gabriella Kuruvilla and Irish journalist Sally Hayden (September 2023), and at the CCWW symposium ‘Women and Islam: Agency in Francophone and Italophone Autobiography’ (October 2023). 

Among the first voices of so-called ‘migration literature’ in Italy, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel writes in different languages and across different genres, gracefully narrating the benefits and challenges of our transnational reality.

Compiled by Chiara Giuliani (Cork)

Bibliography

Novels

Lontano da Mogadiscio (Rome: Datanews, 1994; reprinted 1997;1999)

Nuvole sull’equatore. Gli italiani dimenticati. Una storia (Cuneo: Nerosubianco, 2010)

Lontano da Mogadiscio/Far from Mogadishu [e-book] (Milan: Laurana Reloaded, 2013)

Far from Mogadishu [5th Edition] (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016)

Clouds over the Equator: The Forgotten Italians (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017)

Collections of Poetry

Wings: Poems (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017)

Ali spezzate: Letture poetiche (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018)

I Suckled Sweetness – Poems (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2020)

Poems published Individually (Selection)

‘Mare Nostrum – a Poem’ (Migrant Voice, 2016) available online at https://www.migrantvoice.org/index.php/art-culture/mare-nostrum-290616094031

‘I Got into Trouble at School’ in Doors. Writing for Refugees (Bromsgrove: Bromsgrove Printing, 2020, p. 20)

Selected poems in Alibi. Prima Antologia bilingue di poesia italiana nel Regno Unito ed. by Marta Arnaldi and Luca Paci (Rome: Ensemble, 2022)

Selected poems in Tempo: Excursion in 21st-Century Italian Poetry [bilingual edition] ed. by Luca Paci (Cardigan, Wales: Parthian Books, 2022)

Short Stories

‘Gabriel’ (El-Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione, 5.23, 2009) available online at http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=2&issue=05_23&sezione=2&testo=4.html

‘Il Segreto Di Omdurmann’ (El-Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione, 5.23, 2009) available online at http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=2&issue=05_23&sezione=2&testo=2.html

‘La Spiaggia’ (El-Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione, 5.23, 2009) available online at http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=2&issue=05_23&sezione=2&testo=0.html

‘Mukulaal’ in Roma d’Abissinia. Cronache dai resti dell'Impero: Asmara, Mogadiscio, Addis Abeba ed. by Daniele Comberiati (Cuneo: Nerosubianco, 2010 [2005], pp. 13-23)

‘Villaggio globale’ (El-Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione, 7.30, 2010) available online at https://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=1&issue=07_30&section=1&index_pos=4.html

‘Dna’ (El-Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione, 8.33, 2011) available online at http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=1&issue=08_33&section=1&index_pos=2.html

‘Gezira’ in Sandwell’s Book of Happiness [2nd edition] (Birmingham: Sandwell NHS, 2012, p. 16)

‘New Generation’ (El-Ghibli. Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione, 10.40, 2013) available online at https://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=1&issue=10_40&section=1&index_pos=14.html

‘Foggy dreams under the sunshine’ in Moments in Time ed. by Writers Without Borders (Lulu.com, 2015, pp. 56-59)

Non-Fiction Books and Essays

Scrivere di Islam: Raccontare la diaspora [with Simone Brioni] (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2020) available online at https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/libri/978-88-6969-410-3/

Islam and Me: Narrating a Diaspora [Translation of Scrivere di Islam: Raccontare la diaspora by Simone Brioni and Ramzanali Fazel] ed. by Simone Brioni (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2023) 

[with Simone Brioni] ‘Lontano da Mogadiscio and Nuvole sull’Equatore: Belonging, Language and the Market’ in Contested Communities: Small, Minority and Minor Literatures in Europe ed. by Kate Averis, Margaret Littler, and Godela Weiss-Sussex, Studies in Comparative Literature, 57 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2023, pp. 121-136)

‘Radio Muqdisho’ in REPOSITORIES. Per un contro-archivio della colonialità tra storia, arti e visualità ed. by Beatrice Falcucci, Lucas Iannuzzi, and Gianmarco Mancosu (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2023, pp. 51-57)

‘Foreword: Living and Writing between and across Multiple Languages’ in Adrián Bravi, My Language is a Jealous Lover (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2023, pp. xiii-xxi)
 

Criticism

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)

–: ‘Hybrid Identities? Immigrant Women’s Writing in Italy’ (Italian Studies, 61.2, 2006, pp. 251-262)

—: ‘Woman, Black, Other: Definitions of Identity in Immigrant Women’s Writing in Italy’ in Women’s Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy ed. by Adalgisa Giorgio and Julia Waters (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp. 417-430)

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 [ebook ] (Milan: Laurana Reloaded, 2013, pp. 171-199) available online at https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5708/

—: ‘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).

—: ‘An Introduction to a Meticcio Text’ in Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Islam and Me: Narrating a Diaspora ed. by Simone Brioni (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2023, pp. xxvii-xlviii)

Burdett, Charles: ‘Foreword’ in Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Islam and Me: Narrating a Diaspora ed. by Simone Brioni (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2023, pp. xi-xxvi)

Burns, Jennifer: ‘Mapping Transnational Subjecthood: Space, Affects and Relationality in Recent Transnational Italian Fictions’ (California Italian Studies, 8.2, 2018, pp. 1-17)

—: Migrant Imaginaries. Figures in Italian Migration Literature (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013)

Curti, Lidia: ‘Voices of a Minor Empire: Migrant Women Writers in Contemporary Italy’ in The Cultures of Italian Migration ed. by Graziella Parati and Anthony Julian Tamburri (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011, pp. 45-58)

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)

Fotheringham, Christopher: ‘A Nation of Narratives: Soomaalinimo and the Somali Novel’ (Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 57.1, pp. 56–66)

Hopkins, Rebecca: ‘Transnational Global Culture in La spiaggia by Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’ (Scritture Migranti. Rivista di Scambi Interculturali, 1, 2007, pp. 15-23)

Parati, Graziella: Migration Italy: The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005)

Polezzi, Loredana: ‘Mixing Mother Tongues: Language, Narrative and the Spaces of Memory in Postcolonial Works by Italian Women Writers (Part 2)’ (Romance Studies, 24.3, 2006, pp. 215-225)

Romeo, Caterina: ‘Italian Postcolonial Literature’ (California Italian Studies, 7.2, 2017, pp. 1-43)

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 ed. by. Jacqueline Andall and Derek Duncan (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010, pp. 215-234)

Interviews/in the Media

Brioni, Simone: ‘Orientalism and Former Italian Colonies: An Interview with Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’ in Orientalismi italiani ed. Gabriele Proglio (Piobesi d’Alba: Antares Edizioni, 2012, pp. 215-225)

—: ‘Letteratura oltre i confini. Clouds over the Equator: A Forgotten History e Wings di Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’ ed. Maria Luisa Venuta (Nazione Indiana, 19 July 2017) available online at https://www.nazioneindiana.com/2017/07/19/letteratura-oltre-confini-clouds-over-the-equator-forgotten-history-wings-shirin-ramzanali-fazel/

Hopkins, Rebecca: ‘Somalia: passato, presente e futuro. Intervista con la scrittrice Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’ (El-Ghibli: Rivista online di letteratura della migrazione, 4, 18, 2007) available online at http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=1&issue=04_18&section=6&index_pos=1.html

Morassutti, Serena: ‘Intervista a Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’ (Kumà. Creolizzare l’Europa, 17, 2009)

Parati, Graziella: ‘Intervista di Graziella Parati a Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’ (Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe/Italian Studies in Southern Africa, 8, 2, 1995, pp. 108-114)

Pesarini, Angelica: ‘Dinamiche neocoloniali di genere, “razza” e migrazione. L’universo femminile di Shirin Ramzanali Fazel in Nuvole sull’Equatore’ in Donne e Sud. Percorsi nella letteratura italiana contemporanea eds. Ramona Onnis and Manuela Spinelli (Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2018, pp. 127-136)

Scego, Igiaba: ‘Shirin Ramzanali F. Scrittrice Nomade’ (Internazionale 732, 22, February 2008, p. 60)

Taddeo, Raffaele: ‘Intervista a Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’ (El-Ghibli: Rivista di letteratura della migrazione 5, 23, 2009) available online at http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=2&issue=05_23&sezione=3&testo=0.html

Venturini, Monica: ‘Incontro con Shirin Ramzanali Fazel: tra Italia e Somalia’ in Controcànone. Per una cartografia della scrittura coloniale e postcoloniale italiana (Rome: Aracne, 2010, pp. 137-146) available at http://www.aracneeditrice.it/pdf/9788854836952.pdf