The Black Body

In her memoir, Anna Maria Gehnyei, better known as singer, rapper, and producer Karima 2G, reveals the challenges she faced as the child of Liberian immigrants, born and raised in Rome but perpetually viewed by her fellow Italians as a foreigner.

The daughter of the first Kpelle man to ever leave his native village and emigrate to Europe, Anna is proud of her heritage but only knows Liberia as a mystical, faraway land that appears in her parents’ stories. Though Italy is the only homeland she knows, she is merely classed as a resident, not a permanent citizen. At school and in the streets of Rome, she is treated to a mixture of patronizing condescension and xenophobic hostility. But Anna refuses to be bullied into mute submission, finding her voice as a performer and activist who demands recognition for Italy’s growing immigrant population.

ANNA MARIA GEHNYEI, also known as Karima 2G, is a singer, rapper, dancer, beatsmith, and producer born in Rome to Liberian parents. She is the founder of the Black Lives Matter movement in Rome, Italy. The Black Body, her first book, delves into her experience growing up as a second-generation Black Italian.

EILIS KIERANS is assistant professor of teaching in the Italian Department at the Pennsylvania State University. She is coeditor of the translation series Other Voices of Italy at Rutgers University Press.

SANDRA WATERS is the managing editor of Italian Quarterly and coedits the Other Voices of Italy series at Rutgers University Press. She is editor of The Spaces and Places of Horror and cotranslator of Porpora Marcasciano’s AntoloGaia: Queering the Seventies, A Radical Trans Memoir (Rutgers University Press, 2023).

YVETTE SAMNICK is a feminist activist born in Cameroon and currently residing in Italy. She is the author of Perché ti amo (Because I love you).