Afro-European Literature(s): A New Discursive Category?

Author(s): Sabrina Brancato

Source: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 1-13
Published by: Indiana University Press
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 Afro-European Literature(s):
A New Discursive Category?
SABRINA BRANCATO
Goethe Universit?t-Frankfurt

ABSTRACT

The corpus of texts produced by Afrosporic in Europe

authors is character
ized in the first place by plurality: of the languages used, of the
plurality
authors' African heritages, and of their European locations, all this adding
to the specificities of individual Moreover, litera
experience. Afrosporic
tures in different European countries at different times and follow
develop
very different patterns. Does itmake sense then, at a time when even the
notion of Europe itself is called into question, to talk about an Afro-Euro

pean literature? This essay seeks to trace commonalities and differences of

in different European contexts and argues
Afrosporic literary production
that a comparative perspective at both a diachronic and level
synchronie
is paramount to the understanding of new literary
across
configurations
linguistic and national boundaries.

The field of studies in itself is certainly not a but the

Afro-European novelty,
terms and are used in
"Afro-Europe" "Afro-European" being
increasingly
recentyears, parallel to the debates on the
European identity accompanying
consolidation of the European Union. More attention is to
being devoted marginal
or and more work is that
marginalized spaces, scholarly being produced explores
themultifaceted cultural forms emerging within Europe, signaling the need to
bridge the gap between the imperialism of postcolonial anglophone studies, on the
one hand, and the traditional reluctance of more academic contexts to
peripheral
move localisms and in a constructive debate on the international
beyond engage
on the other. I am
referring here
level, to the importance of comparative perspec
tives in the of the new literatures and to the of more lin
study urge incorporating
guistic contexts other than the and the into
anglophone francophone postcolonial
discourse. A comparative would not so much the emergence of
approach signal
a new field as a of that had remained nameless and
systematization something
fragmented, the coming together of previously isolated efforts to shed light on

RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES, Vol. 39,No. 3 (Fall 2008). ? 2008 ?

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 -
2 * RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES VOLUME 39 NUMBER 3

the African and on soil. The act of this

experience creativity European naming
field and defining its scope is something that should not be taken forgranted and
needs to be debated.
With this paper Iwould like to touch upon a number of critical issues that
emerge in research work within the field of Afro-European
involving comparative
literary studies. In the firstplace Iwill attempt to sketch the boundaries of this
area of study, defining the historical meaning ofAfro-Europe, exploring how dif
ferent understandings and uses of the term to ethnic, or
(according geographical,
cultural criteria) give way to alternative configurations of the field and its scope,
and showing towhat extent thiskind of approach intersectswith other fields such
as Diaspora Studies and Postcolonial Studies. In the second place Iwill interrogate
the of the term literature" as a for the study
legitimacy "Afro-European category
of a large and diverse corpus of textsproduced indifferent languages and within
different contexts. from Southern and Western Iwill
Providing examples Europe,
address a number of problematic issues intratextual
(constituted by both elements
and extratextual factors) that are of paramount importance to a comparative
the of locations and the diverse
approach: heterogeneity heritages, allegiances,
of concepts such as race and ethnicity in different national and
understandings
cultural contexts, the different frames and discourses in which texts
Afrosporic
are inserted, the diversity of historical developments, and the role of publishers,
and educational and cultural institutions in the configura
readerships, shaping
tion of the literatures in question. Finally, I will try to suggest possible direc
tions of a comparative approach and Iwill call for the necessity of establishing
as a central within studies.
Afro-Europe category European
From an historical about an means trac
perspective, talking "Afro-Europe"
ing the African presence in Europe, uncovering the silenced histories concerning
Africans and their descendents from early modern times to the present. It also
means bringing to light the contribution of people of African origin in shaping
culture and as well as how crucial the exis
European thought acknowledging
tence of Africa was and is to the very notion of Europe. Itmeans, therefore, fore

grounding the reciprocal embeddedness of the histories of the two neighboring

continents. But what does the "Afro" in Afro-European stand for? Ifwe privilege
a then we are to Africa as a continent, and
geographical perspective, referring
the "Afro"would include all people whose origins are located within theborders
of the continent, without distinction between northern and sub-Saharan Africa.
The prefix Afro-, though, has traditionally been used to indicate a sub-Saharan
African connection, as in "Afro-American" or "Afro-Caribbean," and associated
with the black If the "Afro" is taken to mean "black," then the ques
diaspora.
tion arises of whether one should consider all black people located in Europe
to be Afro-European, including diasporas from the Americas and elsewhere.

Following this ethnic principle, one would consider Caryl Phillips (black Carib
bean, located in Britain) to be an writer, Africa does not
Afro-European although
feature in his work, but not so Doris Lessing (African-born, white,
prominently
located inBritain), although herwork has all todo with Africa and with European
involvement in Africa.

Tracing the Afro-European ethnic lines may be quite problematic

along
and may lead to a revival of old racial categories that do not do justice to the
complexities of identity. It should be recognized that cultural affiliation and

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 SABRINA BRANCATO * 3

are in some cases interrelated and that this association may be

ethnicity deeply
useful and in certain contexts, for example in the notion of
extremely productive
theBlack Atlantic, which foregrounds the transnational dimension of a diasporic
counterculture born out of the intercontinental connections of black diasporas
worldwide, or in the of blackness in 1980s Britain,
pluriethnic conceptualization
when nonwhite minorities were more than ever aware of their common concerns
in response to the alarming rise of racism. Nevertheless, the binomial culture

ethnicity becomes much more slippery and ambiguous in other cases. Itwould be
a strained for to as such a locally
interpretation, example, identify Afro-European
rooted author as Antonio born in southern from a black Ameri
Campobasso, Italy
can father and an Italian mother, since, his work blackness
although foregrounds
as a mark ofmarginality, ithas practically nothing to do with Africa. Of course
there is no prescription about how the term Afro-European is to be used. Whatever
we mean it, the term is doomed to be either too inclusive or too exclusive. But
by
it is important that one is aware of the principles on which the use of the term is
based and of the arbitrariness of any effort of categorization.
The notion of Afro-Europe cannot be disentangled from the general debate
around multiculturalism, which is a central issue in the policy of the European
Union. nations have carried out divergent with
European traditionally politics
regard to the integration of ethnic minorities. Stemming from fundamental dif
ferences in the colonial approach established in imperial times, contemporary
multicultural in the different member states
represent variations of the
politics
two models Britain and France
in the postcolonial era, which
opposing adopted by
can be as difference-oriented
briefly described respectively ("plural monocultural
ism," in the words of economist Amartya Sen) and assimilation-oriented. In the
of recent events
(home-grown terrorism in Britain, banlieue in France,
light rioting
murders and threatsby Islamic fundamentalists in theNetherlands), both models
are now believed to have failed. Caught between an
widely alarming resurgence
of extreme right-wing politics and the pressing demands of a common suprana
tional policy, needs to reassess its
Europe urgently colonial/imperial legacy and
tofind alternative ways of dealing with cultural diversity and effective strategies
of inclusion of new citizens.
Within the context of heated debate around multiculturalism, the European
scene is witnessing a of narratives which address issues of
literary proliferation
migration, diversity, conviviality (in the original meaning of convivere, "living
together"), citizenship, and cultural conflict.Apart fromhighly praised works of
indisputable literaryquality such as Zadie Smith'sWhite Teeth and Monica Ali's
Brick Lane, one must observe with that high sales concern sensa
regret usually
tionalist narratives negative stereotypes about
reinforcing immigrants (especially
African or Muslim These texts, which take the form of testimoni
groups). usually
als or a feed a Western
autobiographies authored by Western ghost writer, white

eager for third-world victim stories. One known is

readership widely example
former top model Waris Dirie's series of bestsellers {Desert Flower, Desert Dawn,
Desert Children),which have generated worldwide public debate around female
genital mutilation.
The critical literature on the emerging field of studies reveals
Afro-European
relevant intersections both with Diaspora Studies and with Postcolonial Studies.
This literature,however, is for themoment still quite modest in quantity and

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 4 M RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES VOLUME 39 NUMBER 3

unbalanced. In fact, with a few texts deal

geographically exceptions, significant
almost with Britain and France. Works focused on Britain are very
exclusively
much nation-oriented, committed to a for the recognition of minorities
struggle
and their inclusion in the notion of Britishness. The between race
relationship
and nation is at the heart of Paul of racial discourses accom
Gilroy's exploration
panying the black settlement in Britain in 'ThereAin't no Black in theUnion Jack'
(1987),whereas his more recent PostcolonialMelancholia (2005) offers an insight
into contemporary racist attitudes in the 11th era. Within liter
post-September
ary studies, debate around in Britain tends to stress differences among
diasporas
first-generation migrant authors and British-born authors more than differences
and within ethnic communities. One can still observe, moreover, cer
among
tain inconsistencies in reference to how Black Britain is to be understood. Some
scholars still to the old notion of blackness as inclusive of certain (but not
cling
all!) nonwhite minorities and place under the same umbrella authors of African
and Asian descent. Two recent of this perspective are Susanne ReichTs
examples
Cultures in theContact Zone (2002) and Mark Stein's Black British Literature (2004).
Without to share their choices, one can see that
having terminological though,
their approach draws its strength from the fact that the authors highlight common
and thematic concerns among the corpus of selected works.
stylistic strategies
A different understanding of Black Britishness is provided by the collection of
essays Write Black,Write British (2005), edited by Kadija Sesay, which focuses on
authors of African or mixed descent (born or raised in Britain) without consid

ering possible differences between the Caribbean-British community and the

more African-British or within the African itself.
properly community, diaspora
Relevant critical overviews in about the African in France are
English presence
Bennetta Jules-Rosette's Black Paris (1998), which offers a analysis of
comprehensive
three of African writers from the times of the n?gritude movement to
generations
recentwriting in themid 90s, and Alec Hargreaves's Voicesfrom theNorth African
ImmigrantCommunity inFrance (1991, re-edited 1997), a groundbreaking study of
Beur fiction. More recent contributions are Mireille Rosello's Postcolonial
significant
Hospitality (2001), centered on the experience of immigrants fromNorth and sub
Saharan Africa the exploration of novels, films, and immigrant interviews,
through
and Dominic Thomas's Black France (2006), focused on the transnational dimen
sion of the literature of sub-Saharan African As for Afrosporic
by authors origin.
literature in other countries in Europe, very few relevant critical works
produced
are available in English. One is Graziella Parati's
significant exception Migration
Italy (2005),which examines immigrant literature as well as Italian cinema about
Texts with a more outlook are seminal work
migration. European-oriented Gilroy's
The Black Atlantic (1993),which offers an alternative reading of the paradigm of
such as ithas been received from and Eurocentric discourses,
Modernity imperial
and Michelle Wright's Becoming Black (2004), focused on African diasporas in
Britain, France, and Germany.
The of whether wecan consider the corpus of texts
question produced by
the African in Europe as a whole, that is, of whether itmakes sense to
diaspora
of Afro-European literature(s), is a fundamental one the and
speak given plurality
within it. Before we can trace the commonalities across the variety
heterogeneity
of countries, authors, genres, etc., we have to make sense of the differences, some
of which are obvious, whereas others
quite provide interesting starting points

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 '
SABRINA BRANCATO 5

for investigating into the diverse cultural that are being in

configurations shaped
different locations.
European
at the level of language should not pose a for comparative
Plurality problem
work, but in fact it does, ifwe consider issues of visibility and distribu
especially
tion as well as the
variety of relations between the authors and the languages they
use. One of the most factors to be taken into consideration is the fact
important
that not all European have the same and the same power, and
languages weight
books produced inmore peripheral languages are less likely to reach awide public
than the ones inmore international such as or French.
produced languages English
Black authors in Italian or for example, from
writing Spanish, are?independently
into other languages. Are to
their talent?very rarely translated they then doomed
be visible on a local level? Not even that. Actually, in those countries, a dis
only
turbingphenomenon is taking place: while black writers fromBritain and France
are being translated by major publishers and are on display in themost popular
bookshops, local black writers often rely on small publishers whose distribution
is very limited. An extreme case is that of Italy, where books writ
by immigrant
ers are often to find in and are instead sold in the street by
impossible bookshops
associations. In Spain, texts pro
immigrant vendors sponsored by humanitarian
duced by the diaspora from the formercolony of Equatorial Guinea still circulate
in an circuit and are denied
to accesscircles. Is this
underground Spanish literary
a
sign that countries of recent
immigration such Italy and Spain have a fascination
with multiculturalism only when it takes somewhere other than on indig
place
enous soil? As a matter of fact, Southern countries seem to have been
European
struck an acute form of colonial amnesia, to a erasure of the
by leading complete
memory of past guilt. Both in Spain and in Italy,public debate about the conse
of imperial involvement in Africa is very rare and concerns
quences usually only
other colonial powers. Even now that immigration is a big issue in debate
political
and one which makes newspaper headlines on a basis, these two countries
daily
seem to perceive themselves as innocent hosts, their doors to
kindly opening
peoples in need. On the other hand, the fact thatmany people from Spain and
as laborers and have themselves been sub
Italy have also worked migrant abroad

ject to racism, together with the general perception of Southern Europeans being
nonracist or less racist than Northern often results in a reluctance to
Europeans,
address issues concerning racial discrimination.
openly
An additional critical issue related to is that itmakes a differ
language quite
ence whether the language used is a mother tongue,
a colonial or a lan
language
of education, or a second becomes
guage (foreign) language. Language extremely
in so far as itmay mark the degree of integration or alienation of the
significant
author in the cultural context that applies and itmay, in some cases, an
signal
ideological stance. Works in Italian by African immigrants who acquired the
as adults, for example, cannot be to the same aesthetic
language judged according
principles bywhich we evaluate works by second generation Black Britishwriters.
Moreover, that a conspicuous number of migrant authors in come
considering Italy
from countries and a smaller number from countries,
francophone anglophone
their choice to write in a is all the more and signals,
foreign language significant
on the one hand, a of the old colonial in spite of the
rejection language privilege
attached to it (being published and distributed would probably be easier in those
and, on the other, a to in the host
languages) willingness fully integrate country

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 6 M RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES \-
VOLUME 39 NUMBER 3

and become active in the arena. The fact that Nassera Chora,
participants public
a born and raised in France, should choose to write
second-generation Algerian
her autobiography, Volevo diventareManca [IWanted to Become White], in Italian
is all themore striking considering the fact that her work is thematically more
concerned with French society thanwith Italy and that it could have benefited
from the popularity of Beur literature. There is then the case of authors writ

ing in a language other than the one of their host countries. Chica Unigwe, for
example, lives in Flanders and gets published inDutch, but shewrites in English
and, paradoxically enough, her work (with the exception of a few short stories) is
not yet available in English. A similar case is provided by the poetic and fictional
work of Sidi Seek, a Senegalese resident in Spain, who originally writes in French
but publishes in Spanish translation (his firstnovel, Amina, has just come out with
the publishing house he has himself started). Finally, there are authors whose
transnational translates into a one: Fouad Laroui, a
experience translinguistic
Moroccan, has started to write in the of his latest
francophone recently language
country of residence, the Netherlands; the superstar of francophonie, Tahar Ben

Jelloun, decided towrite one of his many works based in the South of Italy in Ital
ian, a gesture that may be read as a tribute to one of his several homes, but also
as a of the embeddedness of place and and of the untranslatability
sign language
of experience.
Another aspect which makes placing all
Afro-European
texts under the same
umbrella particularly problematic is the heterogeneity of the authors in terms of
different African locations and individual (mean
heritages, European experience
ingby thisboth the uniqueness of the subjective and markers ofdifference such as
class, and education). It is difficult to take into account all these elements
gender,
at once, and the process of selection we operate when on a
embarking comparative
work takes a different according to the frames we choose to
configuration privilege.
Within the Italian for example, narratives
context, reading migratory by black
sub-Saharan African authors ones from Africa is not only
alongside by authors
feasible but also both of the view from Africa of the
extremely revealing peripheral
position Italy occupies in Europe and of the typically Italian construction of the
of the and the foreigner based more on outward looks than on
figure immigrant
anything else. A number of texts, in fact,highlight, on the one hand, theproximity
of Italy toAfrica both in cultural and ethnic terms and, on the other, thedynamics
of exclusion that may involve as well as Italians and
immigrants underprivileged
that are based on markers of class distinction such as ways of dress
especially
In on the
ing and speaking. Spain, contrary, the stronger discrimination suffered

by North Africans as compared to the benevolence by which Spaniards look at

sub-Saharan Africans would make this association more difficult, that
provided
therewere at all textsby North Africans to read alongside the still small number
of texts by sub-Saharan Africans. In fact, in of the numbers of North
spite large
Africans resident in Spain, there is as yet no literaryproduction by this group, if
one excludes Mohamed El Gheryb's Dormir al Raso [Sleeping in theOpen], a report
on migration with no literarypretence written in collaboration with a
Spanish
author, and Rachid Nini's beautiful Diario de un ilegal [Journal of a Clandestine],
which was published inArabic and only later translated to Spanish. And here the
arises of why there are so many North Africans in and not
question writing Italy
in where their presence is so conspicuous. This takes us to other
Spain, important

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 SABRINA BRANCATO # 7

issues to be taken into consideration, such as the role of publishers, universities,

and institutions of various kinds in determining the existence and shaping the
form of the new literatures in question and the impact of marketing strategies
on
the production and reception of these texts.
In different countries, we can observe that Afrosporic
European easily
texts are inserted in very different frames. In France, for example, black writers
ofAfrican descent are still seen as part of the grandefamille de lafrancophonie and
not much distinction is made between writers of differentInclusion in
heritages.
the national canon, on the other hand, seems on the
to be based of
degree literary
achievement and international recognition. The case of Calixthe Beyala is particu

larly meaningful in this respect: she was described as a French writer when at the
of her success, but went back to an "African" writer when
height suddenly being
she was accused of plagiarism.
In Great Britain, we are a of
witnessing gradual "migration" Afrosporic
literatures from the postcolonial discourse to the notion of Black Britishness.
there is as yet no common agreement
on what this term should refer to,
Although
the debate is recently being articulated in terms of generation and citizenship. In
her introduction toWrite BlackWrite British, forexample, Kadija Sesay argues that
whereas some writers can be referred as Black British, from
postcolonial benefiting
this "new catch-all sexy terminology," Black British writers cannot also be termed
are writers born in Britain, educated in Britain and because of
postcolonial: "They
heritage and parentage, their 'take' on Britain is viewed through differentglasses
from those born elsewhere, and possibly raised and or educated here [sic]" (16).A
few lines below, she admits that she doesn't see herself as a Black British but more
as an African British, although she does not explain why. While this kind of argu
ment appears and dangerously touches upon obsolete notions of
quite confusing
it is nevertheless very telling of present anxieties about
authenticity, terminology
concerning minorities and their way of articulating identity. The debate, of course,
arises from the wish to take into account and as well as heri
ethnicity citizenship
tage and experience. On the one hand, the old all-inclusive British discourse on
blackness that served to enhance among all nonwhite citizens in their
solidarity
racism seems to have been overcome a few scholars
fight against happily (although
still insist on seeing Asian Britishwriters as black) in favorofmore differentiation
one can still feel a certain
among minorities. On the other hand, discontent with
the way migrants (and of different and are
nonmigrants) generations heritages
brought together under the same category. Although inmost British bookshops
we to "black in
find shelves devoted writers," scholarly work national, ethnic, and
cultural shift according to the focus one seeks to and the
categories easily privilege
same writer can be termed as African, African British or Black British,
alternatively
or Caribbean, Afro-Caribbean, Caribbean British, or Black British. This confu

sion, of course, concerns above all first-generation writers such as Buchi

migrant
Emecheta or Grace Nichols and, in so far as it remains a mere issue
of terminology,
it is not that to reach an Nevertheless, be itmay in
important agreement. helpful
some when with second- and writers?
cases?especially dealing third-generation
to recognize dominant cultural on the one hand, and meaningful trans
heritages,
national connections, on the other. black writers of Caribbean descent,
Among
for we find some whose work is deeply rooted in the Caribbean
example, (Amryl
Johnson, for example) and some other whose work has a stronger connection with

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 8 RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES VOLUME 39 NUMBER 3

Africa (Mutabaruka, among others), in the same way as writers of African descent

may be more or less "connected" with the country of origin of their parents (in
the work of second-generation Diran for example, the
Nigerian-British Adebayo,
connection is as strong
as in the work of African-born writers such as
Nigerian
Biyi Bandele or Shimi Bedford).
In Italy,both academic discourse and the institution of a literaryprize for
migrant writers (Eks&Tra) have been crucial in encouraging the development of a
new literature, identified as literature." This label
italophone usually "migration
to a corpus Latin
refers of works produced by authors from Africa, Asia, America,
theMiddle East, and Eastern Europe. The emergence of this literature in 1990 sig
nificantly coincided with the decree on immigration known as the legge Martelli,
which issued residence and the position of numbers of
permits legalized large
clandestine workers. Three works were in 1990, all
autobiographical published
by Africans, which recounted themigratory journey to and through Italy and the
process of adjustment to the host country: Khouma's Io, venditore
Senegalese Pap
di elefanti [I,Vendor of Elephants], Tunisian Salah Methnani's Immigrato [Immi
grant], and Moroccan Mohamed Bouchane's ChiamatemiAU [CallMe Ali]. The first
fictional narratives in the years: Saidou Moussa
appeared following Senegalese
Ba's La promessa diHamadi [Hamadi's Promise], published in 1991, and Tunisian
Mohsen Melliti's Pantanella, published in 1992, are thebest known. The first literary
of immigrant women stress once more a for autobi
accomplishments preference
with a focus on childhood and on the traditions of the country
ography, special
of origin: Eritrean Ribka Sibhatu's Aulo (1993), Somalian Shirin Ramzanali Fazel's
Lontano daMogadiscio [Far fromMogadisciu] (1994), and Capeverdian's Maria de
Lourdes Jesus's Racordai: Vengo da un'Isola di Capoverde [Racordai: I Come from an
Island of Cape Verde] (1996) all evoke the childhood world, recreate communal
life in the native and introduce the reader to local traditions, a
village providing
detailed to the migratory before in a
background journey engaging comparative
assessment of their experience in which
Italy. These pioneering works, address
an Italian arise from the double need to give voice to the
readership, experience
of immigrants and to make Italians familiar with the cultures of origin of their
new therefore, a function of cultural mediation. More recent
neighbors, fulfilling,
works, such as Smari Abdel Malek's Fiamme inparadiso [Flames inHeaven] (2000),
JadelinMabiala Gangbo's Rometta e Giulieo (2001), Igiaba Scego's Rhoda (2004), and
Pap Khouma's Nonno Dioegli spiritidanzanti [Granpa God and theDancing Spirits]
(2005), go beyond the autobiographical and the testimonial, and experiment more
both thematically and stylistically.
Although the largemajority of immigrantwriters in Italy are African, their
work is seldom considered and writers tend to focus on issues
separately migratory
as a result of the fact thatdiscourse around this literature is especially articulated
in terms of migration and An of how the requirements of
integration. example
the market can affect choices is provided of a short
authors' by the genesis story
by JadelinMabiala Gangbo. This particularly talentedwriter, born inCongo and
abandoned by the family in Italy at a young age, was brought up by Italians and
has little connection with his country of origin. A few years ago, as he told me in
a
private conversation, he was contacted by the organizers of the literary prize for
writers Eks&Tra, who encouraged him to submit a work on his
migrant experience
as an in Italy. His first reaction was of surprise and not
"immigrant" puzzlement,

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 SABRINA BRANCATO M 9

devoid of a certain resentful discomfort: "But I am not an

he thought
immigrant,"
to himself. Nevertheless, a is a
he admitted,
literary prize literary prize, something
crucial for a young writer
wanting
to emerge, and therefore he set himself towork
and his own version of immigrant experience
in
Italy. His solution to
produced
this gap between the expectations of the establishment and his own experience
was a short on the vicissitudes of an alien
story landed from another planet. More
than a this episode that at the same time as it
merely funny anecdote, suggests
is promoting the development of a new literature, the discourse on
"migration
literature" is also and does not qualify,
setting boundaries for what does and risk
to create a literary access into the more
ing, therefore, ghetto by denying properly
national canon. However, as a of recent immigration, is
country Italy doing quite
well, after all, in the effort to open the literary scene to new voices from develop
in Rome, Armando
ing countries. Together with other scholars Gnisci, who has
written about migration literature, set up a database of works
widely by immigrant
writers in Italy, a valuable resource for researchers and readers at large.

Spain, on the contrary,which sharesmuch with Italyboth in termsof cultural

racial in-betweenness (both Spaniards and Italian were classified as non
heritage,
white as in North America) and rapid transformation from massively
immigrants
work force abroad to becoming societies, seems not to be equally
sending receiving
accessible to at least at the level of cultural In
immigrants, production. spite of
the presence of migrants from African countries, very few texts have been
large
published (and the ones thathave been published are not easily available on the
market), although there is thehope that theprogressive immigrationpolicies of the
new will bring forward a substantial and fast Until
government change. recently,
writers in have not received much attention and, in any
Afrosporic residing Spain
case, they have been seen as "Africans" rather than Afro-Spanish and their work
has been marketed as exotic. The
past colonial relationship with Equatorial Guinea
has favored the opening of a space forwriters from this country, but with
coming
the exception of Donato who his novel Las
Ndongo, published autobiographical
tinieblasde tumemoria negra [Darkness of Your Black Memory] (1987)with a major
publisher, theirworks have had a very limited distribution.
The in sub-Saharan Africa and with a
only hispanophone country history
marked in colonial and
by brutal oppression both postcolonial times, Equato
rial Guinea one of the most one at all-in and
occupies marginal spaces-if past
current scholarship in the plural research fields where it should belong by right:
Hispanic, African, and Postcolonial Studies. While Latin American countries have
been embraced as part of themuch cherished hispanidad,Equatorial Guinea does
not feature on themap in spite of the fact that themajority of Gui?ean writers
presently reside in Spain. Hispanophone Gui?ean literature can be traced back to
colonial times, when two novels were Leoncio Evita's Cuando los Combes
published:
luchaban [The Struggle of the Combes] (1953) and Daniel JonesMathama's Una
lanza por el Boabi [A Spear for the Boabi] (1962).Due to their colonial perspective,
both works enjoy very littlepopularity among contemporary Gui?ean intellectu
als. the eleven years of Francisco Macias's brutal
During dictatorship following
independence in 1968,which reduced the country to endemic poverty and high
rates of illiteracy,one third of the population fled.Later, though the new regime
led never
by Teodoro Obiang Nguema raised
hopes of change, the country devel
a and to this
oped truly democratic system, censorship
and repression continue

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 10 # RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES # VOLUME 39 NUMBER 3

common As a consequence
day to be practices. of these historical circumstances,
Gui?ean literature is a literature in the
hispanophone mostly produced diaspora.
Among the most relevant works, apart from the already mentioned novel by
Donato are Juan Balboa's El reencuentro [The Re-Encounter] (1985), Maria
Ndongo,
Nsue's Ekomo (1985),Eugenio Nkogo's La encerrona [TheTrap] (1993), and Francisco
Zamora's C?mo ser negro y no morir en Aravaca [How to Be Black and Not Die in

Aravaca] (1994). The main concerns of these writers from the impact of colo
range
nization on themind of theGui?ean subject and the conflictbetween tradition and
to the destructive effects of Macias's the trauma of exile
modernity dictatorship,
and the difficult life conditions of blacks in Spain. Recently, a new generation of
writers?Tom?s ?vila, Maximiliano and Joaqu?n Mbomio among others?
Nkogo,
are new themes and giving new directions to Gui?ean literature. These
exploring
authors, who have not exile, are more focused on the present
experienced political
than their forerunners.
As for writers coming from other linguistic areas, very few names have
attracted the attention of major and reached a wide One
publishers public. excep
tion isAgn?s Agboton, fromBenin, who published her autobiography with Lumen.
InMas alia delmar de arena [Beyond the Sea of Sand] (2005), the exoticization of the
migrant African subject formarketing purposes is evident both in the subtitle of
the autobiography, "AnAfrican woman in Spain," and in thefirst lines of theback
cover: "When Agn?s Agboton lefther home inBenin and arrived inBarcelona, she
was old and she had never used a staircase, neither had she
eighteen years moving
entered a department store,but she brought along all thewisdom of her homeland."
However, this is the first text acknowledged as and the
probably "Afro-Spanish,"
narrator herself, in the account of her life, lays a on the cultural
special emphasis
syncretism her migratory experience has put her through. Another relevant voice
is Cameroonian a writer who has a number
Inongo-vi-Makom?, prolific published
of stories for children as well as essays on and a novel, Rebeld?a [Rebel
migration
lion] (1996),about thedisillusionment of an emigr? returning tohis homeland after
twenty years of hardships in Spain. African writers resident in Spain generally
maintain a connection with their home countries (a second of
strong generation
Spanish-born Afrosporic writers is yet to but are active participants in the
emerge)
cultural scene of the host often committed to and
country, being spread promote
knowledge about African traditions, culture, history, and politics. Similar to their
counterparts in Italy,they take on the role ofmediators and theirwork is especially
valuable as a between the native and communities.
bridge population diasporic
Afro-European literatures develop in different countries at different times
and take quite different shapes according to the contexts in which they are
inserted. For this reason, a turns out to be
comparative approach quite prob
lematic, especially ifwe seek to read the long and canonized tradition
already
of Black writing in former imperial nations such as Britain or France alongside
the much more recent and more isolated voices in countries of recent
Afrosporic
such as or Diachronie and reveal
immigration Italy Spain. synchronie readings
commonalities as well as major differences produced by the specificity of each
context. A of migratory texts in recent years, for
synchronie reading produced
shows common concerns from the
example, among immigrants, independently
context, and suggests that the alienation experienced by immigrants in countries

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 -
SABRINA BRANCATO 11

of recent is not very dissimilar from the one experienced recent

immigration by
in countries a of multiculturalism
immigrants with long tradition (see Brancato).
Nevertheless, even a thematic of this kind is not
purely approach unproblematic.
What a
from of texts centered on the
emerges comparative reading migratory
experience is that, while there are striking commonalities in the representation of

life, the way this theme is varies to the degree

immigrant approached according
of "authority" of Afrosporic in the context. One can observe, for
subjects specific
that Afro-Italian and authors express a less conflictive
example, Afro-Spanish
view of the relationship between the dominant group in thehost country and the
African minority than Afro-British and Afro-French authors, and the tone they
use is much more and reassuring. This may lead readers to believe
conciliatory
that Southern countries are less and more
European discriminatory welcoming,
although one should also take into consideration the fact that cultural conflicts
are more the larger the number of immigrants. Nevertheless,
usually pronounced
there are other extratextual factors that may easily escape our attention and that
are indeed quite important.Apart from the impact ofboth institutional discourses
and marketing mentioned above, one should consider the
strategies importance
of readerships (real or imagined) in determining the communicative choices
made by authors. Whereas books by black writers in Britain?and to a
published
lesser France?can boast a substantial black both and
degree readership locally
internationally,books produced in Southern European language do not enjoy the
same and Afro-Italian authors, it becomes
privilege. By reading Afro-Spanish
obvious that they address a local white, and
immediately readership, exclusively
that the urge of being understood and accepted by the indigenous population is
at the core of their communicative efforts. It is not therefore, that their
surprising,
criticism of the host society should be milder than the one brought forward by
black writers residing
in countries where the black ismore numerous,
community
more established and more confident.

Exploring Afro-European literature(s) comparatively therefore means tracing

diachronic and synchronie connections that reveal new configurations across lin
and national boundaries. The texts themselves are transnational and tran
guistic
scultural and a where Africa and Europe?
foreground comparatist perspective
and Africa in
Europe?are continuously
set
against each other in an effort to
what the two continents mean to each other, how
problematize they interact and
to new cultural formations. The plurality of vision of diasporic
give place syncretic
awareness
groups with their "contrapuntal" of simultaneous dimensions (Said 186)
constitutes a element of the of decolonization from within.
key process European
Therefore, rather than being seen as a of Europeanness?which
subcategory
would involve a of a Eurocentric should be
perpetuation vision?Afro-Europe
into the debate on as a constitutive element of the
incorporated European identity
cultural heritage of the continent and one that contributes to thedisplacement and
reformulation of the concept of Europe such as ithas been conceived in centuries
of and Eurocentric
imperialist Weltanschauung practice.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was a
supported by Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship within the
6th European Community Framework program.

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 12 > RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES -VOLUME 39 NUMBER 3

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