“When I write I feel safe” is the mantra of Sabrina Efionayi, an author of Nigerian origin born in Castel Volturno. She reveals this in our conversation about the meaning of writing and being emersed in two cultures in Italy today. A new generation of male and (above all) female authors with a migrant background is emerging, who through their writing, investigate their identity. Here, it is a recent phenomenon compared to other countries and difficult to define outside the clichés of diaspora and postcolonial literature, which is often inadequate.
A topic discussed in Turin on June 17 during the diversity leadership in literature workshop, organized by Nuove Radici World as part of the cycle of meetings dedicated to the leadership of multiculturalism, of which Efionayi was one of the protagonists. In Turin she took us along the path of her career, already intense despite her young age. When she was contacted by the Rizzoli publishing house in 2015, nothing was known about her apart from the pseudonym Sabrynex.
A strange debut for an author who now, with the publication for Einaudi of her fourth book Addio, a domani, is considered one of the representative voices of generation Z of foreign origin in Italy. In these pages Efionayi has retraced the story of her two mothers, the biological one who arrived in Italy from Nigeria and the Italian one of the Neapolitan family who took her into foster care at birth, in Castel Volturno. And through those stories she reclaimed her identity, after having long denied it.
When Sabrina Efionayi was Sabrynex
“At the age of 14 I started writing stories on the Wattpad platform,” the author tells NRW with a marked accent that seems like a dip in the Tyrrhenian Sea. «I signed myself Sabrynex and wrote stories that had nothing to do with my life in Castel Volturno. They were set in England or the United States with blond blue-eyed characters.”
Thanks to those stories of escape from reality, however, in the summer of 2015 she was noticed and contacted by the Rizzoli publishing house. At first she thought it was a joke, but after two weeks she found herself in Milan. This is how the two novels of 2016 Over and Over 2 and that of 2017 #TBT Indietro non si torna were born. “After the third book I took a break of a couple of years from writing and realized that with the pseudonym Sabrynex I was hiding,” explains the author. “At that time I felt the need to get away from my biological mother, Gladys, and I began to reflect on many things in my life. Only then did I start writing Addio, a domani.”
Goodbye, see you tomorrow
While writing her books, Sabrina Efionay finished high school and began her bachelor’s degree in Digital Communication, but she confesses that she has just completed her enrollment for a degree in Political Science next September. The last two years have been decisive in making some choices, such as the exit from anonymity that coincided with the re-appropriation of her roots. “At that time, life confronted me with a lot of questions that needed answers,” she tells NRW. “I have always lived on the edge of precariousness, a heavy situation for me and my Italian family because not having been legally adopted, when Gladys took me for the summer holidays or at Christmas, sometimes I thought she would not bring me back.”
Then, at the beginning of 2020 Efionayi made a clean cut to the relationship with her mother and did not want to see or hear from her for a couple of years. “The writing of Addio, a domani helped me to make peace with this situation. When I finished the book, I had so much adrenaline that I bought a ticket without telling her anything and I went to her, near Prato where she now lives».
From the book to the podcast by Sabrina Efionayi
A podcast has also arrived in these days that gives voice to the protagonists of Addio, a domani. It’s called History of My Name, to stay on the subject of letting go of anonymity, and is produced by Spotify and Chora Media. “Efionayi is the surname of the man who accompanied my mother to the hospital when she gave birth and who pretended to be my father to allow me to have the documents, since my father did not show up,” says Efionayi anticipating some details of a story certainly out of the ordinary. “Sabrina, on the other hand, is the name of the daughter of the woman who put my mother Gladys on the street, a little girl who was then about ten years old. I think my mother wanted to sweeten this woman, her madame, a bit, since she was strongly opposed to my birth.”
Is there second generation literature?
In Italy Efionayi says she follows writers such as Igiaba Scego and Oiza QueensDay Obasuyi “who write colonial history from the point of view of a black person” or Abdou Diouf, who she defines as “an immense person”. And, on the contents of the literature created by writers of foreign origin, she notes the progress in various directions, which is also its strength. «Writing for me travels on a double track, personal and intimate, that on one hand concerns my path of growth and on the other hand is writing as a dissemination» explains the author.
You have to tell stories that can make people feel uncomfortable, because when you’re uncomfortable you decide to get up and do something. It is important to recognize the right of us second-generation children not only to speak but to do so in the way we think is right. We must not allow others to speak for us, we must do it in the first person
When we touch on the topic of definitions, which have been at the center of so many hotly-contested debates of the Black Lives Matter movements, according to Sabrina Efionayi terms like postcolonial make sense up to a point. “We must not forget what has happened historically, but we must also free black bodies from a certain type of colonial language. By now this generation has started all over again compared to the past and we are already living in a phase projected into the future». And it is precisely from here that future writers should start, to whom Efionayi suggests to “choose a story, guard it and fight for it without allowing anyone to criticize the reasons for which it was chosen”.
Translated by Adam Clark
