Reversing the Gaze
What If the Other Were You?
Geneviève Makaping author Giovanna Bellesia Contuzzi translator Victoria Offredi Poletto translator Simone Brioni editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Rutgers University Press
Published:13th Jan '23
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£56.00(9781978834699)
Tired of being scrutinized, criticized, and fetishized for her black skin, Cameroon-born scholar Geneviève Makaping turns the tables on Italy’s white majority, regarding them through the same unsparing gaze to which minorities have traditionally been subjected. As she candidly recounts her experiences—first across Africa and then as a migrant Black woman in Italy—Makaping describes acts of racist aggression that are wearying and degrading to encounter on a daily basis. She also offers her perspective on how various forms of inequality based on race, color, gender, and class feed off each other. Reversing the Gaze invites readers to confront the question of racism through the retelling of everyday occurrences that we might have experienced as victims, perpetrators, or witnesses.
"A bold statement about language, identity, and belonging. Makaping’s unparalleled dissection of white Italy is fearless, unnerving, and unfailingly accurate. Without doubt the foundational text of Black Italian studies."— Derek Duncan, co-editor of Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook
“Combining memoir with the social sciences, Makaping tells us about the challenges of being a black woman in Italy, how double consciousness takes on new meanings, and why the color line remains an unresolved question in twenty-first-century Europe. A pioneering text, a fundamental read.”— Alessandra Di Maio, author of Wor(l)ds in Progress: A Study of Contemporary Migrant Writings
ISBN: 9781978834682
Dimensions: 203mm x 127mm x 15mm
Weight: 200g
216 pages