Open air discourse: romances of resistance in the Somali women’s struggle for independence

Mingling together historical record, myth and fiction, my aim is to write a play taking place in Mogadishu during the struggle for independence from Italy soon after the Second World War. Particularly, the novel will be concerned with the active
participation of women in the liberation movement. The inspiration for this project is Samawada, an unknown Somali tragedy authored by Axmed Cartan Xange, whose unpublished manuscript I found in the Somali Archive of Roma Tre University. The pièce will later be developed into a historical novel. Working on the period of decolonization, from the end of World War II, through the struggle for independence from Italy, to the achievement of flag independence (1960), when the Somali popular theatre became a vehicle for nationalist, anti-colonial sentiment and argument, could not only shed light on the tensions, ambivalences and contradictions that were to prove so destructive later on, leading to a civil war lasting decades, but also contribute in the global debate on migration, human rights, peace and reconciliation.