Literature Festival in Palermo features migrant authors discussing Generations.

Last Updated: October 12, 2024

Il Festival delle Letterature Migranti a Palermo, autori e discussant a confronto sul tema Generazioni

Sixteen national and international authors, over 30 discussants, exhibitions, concerts, talks. The Festival of Migrant Literature returns from October 23 to 26 at the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, celebrating its tenth edition this year. The title chosen by artistic director Davide Camarrone is “Generazioni” (Generations), to reflect on the transmission of knowledge and the transformations of social feelings starting from unresolved issues: from migration to citizenship rights for second-generation Italians, from the depopulation of the South to new poverties, from gender issues to politics, from war to the resistance of authors in exile.

There will be presentations in various spaces of the Cantieri Culturali: Cre.Zi. Plus, Skené, Cinema De Seta, Institut Francais, Spazio Tre Navate. The title “Generazioni” – says Camarrone – contains within itself the genre and the generate, but also the term action, what drives us not to stop, to feed on the brightest optimism of will even in the face of the most stubborn pessimism of reason”. An edition featuring leading fiction authors such as Antonio Franchini, winner of the 62nd Campiello Prize – jury selection of literati, with his latest novel “The Fire You Carry Inside” (Marsilio, 2024), Claudia Lanteri, author of “The Island and Time” (Einaudi, 2024), among the great literary successes of 2024, journalist Carmelo Sardo with the novel “Nights without Memory” (Open, 2024), and non-fiction personalities such as journalist Marcello Sorgi, author of “Saint Berlinguer” (Chiarelettere, 2024) about the most beloved politician of the Italian left. And also, with the original voices of second-generation Italian authors: Anna Maria Gehnyei, a writer and versatile artist born in Italy to Liberian parents, author of “The Black Body” (Fandango, 2023), an autobiographical story of what it means to grow up as a second-generation Italian; or the journalist of Moroccan origins Karima Maoual, author of “The Cold in Africa and other stories of an Italy born elsewhere” (Luiss University Press, 2024) and Emanuela Anechoum who in the coming-of-age novel “Tangerine” (Edizioni, E/O, 2024) tells her life and the choice to emigrate to London from a small town in Calabria, showing a phenomenon still little explored of the depopulation of Southern Italy that also affects the children of those who sought to build their future in Italy.

These lived experiences become a snapshot of a divided and stagnant Italy on crucial issues such as citizenship rights and migrant reception in a Europe with overshadowed humanity as highlighted in the reportage “Passeur” (Keller, 2020) by French journalist Raphaël Krafft, also a guest of the festival, in which storytelling and testimony merge with the memory of the 20th century and the contradictions of our present. Boomers, Millennials, Generation Z. Different generations with a constantly evolving sense on issues like the fight for women’s full autonomy at the center of the essay “Making Feminism” (Nottetempo, 2024) by Il Post journalist Giulia Siviero; or precariousness and wage exploitation that condemn millions of men and women to live perpetually in the present as denounced in the “Anthology of the Defeated” (Einaudi, 2024) by La Stampa correspondent Niccolò Zancan.

FLM 2024 will dedicate a special focus on the theme of the youth depopulation of inland areas in collaboration with Repubblica-Palermo, which has launched an investigative report on this topic by writer Gaetano Savatteri. The program includes a multi-voice talk with, among others, Savatteri, chief editor Emanuele Lauria, and festival artistic director Davide Camarrone. Repubblica will follow the festival with its reporters and will be present at Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa with a corner to meet authors and readers.

“Generazioni”, as those that have succeeded in Palestine in anticipation of the fulfillment of the promise of “two peoples and two States”. Alberto Stabile, for years a correspondent from Jerusalem for Repubblica, will share his experience starting from the pages of the new book “The Garden and the Ashes” (Sellerio, 2024). In the same vein but in the form of a graphic novel, “Tale of Palestine and 30 Seconds from Gaza” (Mesogea) by Mohammmad Sabaaneh narrated by Anita Magno who curated its publication for Mesogea.

The literary section of the Festival will also include talks on “Unsustainable Generations” organized by the University of Palermo around yesterday and today’s literature, curated by Professor Domenica Perrone with student participation. Among all, highlights include meetings with Chiara Mazzucchelli, author of “Ink Ships. The Great Emigration in Sicilian Literature (1876-1924)” published by Kalós (2024); and with Valeria Deplano and Alessandro Pes, authors of “History of Italian Colonialism: Politics, Culture, and Memory from the Liberal Age to the Present Day” (Carocci, 2024). Lastly, in collaboration with Arcigay, there will be the absentee presentation of “How to Write About Africa” (66thand2nd, 2024) by Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan writer and journalist, winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, a reference point for the LGBTQI+ community who passed away in 2019, for his courageous coming out in 2014 after a series of anti-gay laws passed in Africa.

In the centenary of Franco Basaglia’s birth, the Festival will present and screen Francesco Jannuzzi’s “Primula Rossa”, where the director will be present to extend the debate with viewers and representatives of the Third sector (Thursday, October 25th at 5:30 pm at Cinema De Seta). One of FLM’s projects is to establish in Palermo, a major city in the Mediterranean, a House of Literatures, a place to host authors in exile from around the world and to create a training school for translators in the languages of the many countries bordering the Mediterranean, whose literary production remains underexplored and unknown. The Festival will include presentations of Altrove’s projects, a program for residencies of artists living in exile in Germany and France, promoted by Kultur Ensemble Palermo in collaboration with Institut Francais and Goethe Institut.

This year’s Altrove protagonists will be: Atefe Asadi, an Iranian writer, poet, editor, and translator from Tehran whose story collections have been rejected by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and deemed unpublishable, who will dedicate her time in Palermo to writing her first novel “Cinderella’s Wounds” (dedicated to the stories of Iranian women wounded during the ongoing protests), and writer and visual artist Nastya Rodionova, born in 1986, who fled with her family to France in 2022 following the start of the war in Ukraine, where she obtained political refugee status and began developing the concept of performative literature, a literature without language. During her stay in Palermo, Rodionova will work on the “Untranslatability” project, addressing the problem of translation and the impossibility of translating words and meanings from one language to another.

From a literary festival to a cultural subject that operates throughout the year, producing original works in various narrative forms such as audiovisual, theater, music, art, and promoting activities in schools, libraries, and educational centers.