Postcolonial Intellectuals: Exploring Belonging Across Borders in Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono (My Home Is Where I Am)

Sandra Ponzanesi () and Maria Auxiliadora Castillo Soto
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Sandra Ponzanesi: Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, 3512 EV Utrecht, The Netherlands
Maria Auxiliadora Castillo Soto: Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, 3512 EV Utrecht, The Netherlands

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-12

Abstract: This article focuses on the life writing narratives of diasporic writers in Europe, such as the Italian writer of Somali descent Igiaba Scego, who, through her writing and public role, manages to create powerful interventions on issues of belonging, diversity, and creativity, contributing to a renewed understanding of gender knowledge and cultures of equalities in localized as well as global contexts. This article focuses on her role as a writer as well as a postcolonial intellectual, as she is not just a spokesperson for her community, nor simply a promotor of universal values, but someone who straddles complex positionalities in their location in imperial–colonial orders. We align ourselves with the notion of postcolonial intellectuals as those who speak truth to power on issues of cultural integration and gender equalities). In her autobiographical work titled La mia casa è dove sono , published in 2010, Scego draws a subjective map of different places inhabited by her family: Somalia, Italy, and Great Britain, contributing to the understanding of unbelonging and transnationalism through topics of migration, biculturalism, gender, race, and identity.

Keywords: biculturalism; culture of equalities; gender knowledge; memory studies; migration; postcolonial intellectuals; transgenerational storytelling; transnational authors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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