Many migrant women use literature as a way to tell their stories. These books are an important record of women’s experience with immigration.
Currently, there is an extensive list of women writing about different realities in different countries. We have selected some of them for you to read.
by Juliana da Penha
Future – il domani narrato dalle voci di oggi – a cura di Igiaba Scego
In this anthology, 11 Afro-Italian writers from different generations and origins tell their stories. What is it like to live in Italy, coming from a different country and ethnicity? What is it like to be born and grow up in Italy and not to be recognized as a full citizen? How does Italy treat immigrants and Afro-Italians? These women have used their personal experiences to answer these and other questions, revealing the current situation in Italy through writings, a country that still ignores the existence of a generation that was born and raised there but are not recognized as citizens. In this book the writers claim their rights to be part of the present and future of Italy.
This hostel life – Melatu Uche Okorie
Melatu Uche Okorie is a Nigerian author and scholar who came to Ireland in 2006 seeking asylum. She spent eight and a half years living in direct provision, system criticized for denying dignified conditions for asylum seekers. She starts to write while living under these circumstances. In her first book, she introduced three short stories exposing her experiences as a migrant women in Ireland: in “This hostel life” she describes the daily life of migrant women queuing for basic supplies in a Irish direct provision hostel; “Under the Awning” she exposes the systematic racism experienced by a migrant women in Ireland and “The Egg Broke” is based on ancient Nigerian superstition practice of killing new-born twins, abolished in the 1900s.
Death to the brushes – Diary of a journalist who becomes a domestic worker in Portugal – Claudia Canto
Claudia Canto is a Brazilian writer, journalist and motivational speaker with 6 books published. Her first book is about her personal experience as a migrant domestic worker in Portugal. When she left Brazil, in 2002 with the aim to work as a journalist in Portugal, she never imagined she would end confined, in almost imprisonment conditions in a rich family’s house in Lisbon. She took advantage of her writing skills and started to write a diary. In this book she is revealing the daily life of many women who left their countries plenty of dreams and, instead, were exploited and deprived of their rights, working as domestic workers in private houses.
Le ragazze di Benin City – La tratta delle nuove schiave dalla Nigeria ai marciapedi d’Italia – Laura Maragnani e Isoke Aikpitanyi
Isoke Aikpitanyi was trafficked from Nigeria to Italy in 2000 with 20 years old, with a promise of work as saleswomen. In this book, with the help of the journalist Laura Maragnani she unveils the horrors she faced and that thousand of other migrant women still facing in the Italian streets, as prostitutes. Trapped in the hands of the Nigerian mafia and with the negligence of Italian authorities, she described the pain, humiliation, risks and all the suffering that migrant women are facing, trapped in the prostitution. She managed to escape and now works to support other women who are victims of human trafficking.
She Shettles in the Shields – Untold stories of migrant women in Pollokshields
This book is a collection of stories of women from different parts of the world who travelled to Scotland by different reasons and settled their lives there. Through photographies and memories, since their home countries until arriving in Pollokshields, a neighbourhood in the outskirts of Glasgow, these women reveal their experiences of integration, the barriers they faced and their achievements. This book was published by Glasgow Women’s Library, the only accredited UK museum dedicated to women’s lives, histories and achievements.