I had wanted to do a thread on @MaazaMengiste ‘s amazing novel The Shadow King since reading it but will do so today because it is Sunday. First of all, the book is amazing and I am so grateful she’s written it. It is set in Ethiopia in 1935, as Mussolini’s troops were invading

The writing is incredibly beautiful - the language, the imagination, the way in which chapters follow one another interrupted by The Chorus or a description of a photograph. Other than being a novel about that war- of which so little is acknowledged in Italy - it is about women

The main character is Hirut, a young woman fighter, because the war was fought by women as much as by men. @MaazaMengiste ‘s battle descriptions are among the best I ever read. So vivid. So intense. So full of pathos and tension. Why was the role of women so obfuscated before?

Ok we know the answer. The role of women is often erased. I found this podcast really interesting, where @MaazaMengiste explains how she discovered some of the things she used to build her novel: https://www.ft.com/content/567a68e7-aa08-43c4-b9e5-6346a16fc6ca

Warning: while it’s a very beautifully written novel, it’s about war, and also about what happens to women in war and patriarchy, so there are parts very painful to read, yet not written in exploitative or voyeuristic way in which violence against women is titillating. Important

In her interviews, @MaazaMengiste says how Italians are often unaware of this history, unless they purposefully try to look for it. Absolutely true. The narrative now is that most Italians didn’t support fascism - which isn’t even a fact - but the colonies are completely erased

Not only the colonies, but the horrors Italians did there (spraying gas, among the many war crimes). Not really faced, or studied. However some of it is slowly changing, but it’s a very long way to go. Partially we have to humbly thank Italians of African descent for waking us up

Last year I was in a school in Parma, presenting my book, invited by the Centre for the Study of the Resistance, and they had organised this photographic exhibition from photos of former soldiers. I took some pictures of the pictures:

This picture is so striking. That’s so deeply part of how Italians went into Africa! Wild beautiful and to be tamed... women or land, all the same. The conversation I had with the curator of the exhibition, Domenico Vitale, was really enlightening. Showing pictures of Parma ...

.... full of people cheering fascism. It is important as in some places in Italy it is all about how Italians resisted, and where antifascists. If only. Many became antifascists only after fascism. And many still don’t think that there was a resistance for a reason ...

The reason being: Italians were supportive of fascism! And of the colonies. “Everyone” had colonies but not Italy and how unfair was that. But in postwar times most have decided to simply ignore it and forget. What Italy did was so shameful, let’s just pretend it didn’t happen

So much racism and exoticism and trying to feel good about bringing civilisation to “beautiful Abissinians” - maybe no surprise that Italians would rather not face this, as it is horrendous

So much more to say on this, but one more reason this truly resonate with me, here today, is the incredible suffering that the erasing of history justifies and ignores. Or how sexualising colonies allows for so much violence. And I am thinking of current colonies where women ...

... are being seen as a way into an assimilation project. Marry “their” women and you bring “them” into the fold. Beautiful happy dancing women with exotic costumes. So, here ends my thread. Read this book, and read about Xinjiang too

Ps to my own thread: unfortunately the Centro Studi sulla Resistenza, or the Center for Studies on the Resistance - which is actually a network of research centres in Italy - is not on Twitter, they seem quite social media averse

Seems I’m not done with my thread. Want to add: fascism’s consequences are still happening, BUT fascism, too, is still happening. Colonialism’s consequences are still happening, BUT colonialism, too, is still happening. We can’t ignore this, neither in the past nor in the present