Orality and Written Culture in Italian Migrant Literature: The Work of Yousif Jaralla

Abstract

This article provides a novel account of the nature and significance of ‘orality’ in the writings of Italian ‘migrant writers’. Providing in-depth analysis of ‘I fiumi di altrove’, a text and performance by the critically neglected Iraqi-born storyteller Yousif Jaralla, it investigates the role of orality as an integral part of migrant authors’ work within, and as part of, the Italian cultural landscape. In order to challenge the perception of orality as an inferior and unsophisticated form of storytelling, the critical exploration takes as its theoretical starting point the idea of an oral-literary continuum. That framework supports both the analytical discussion of Jaralla’s ‘I fiumi di altrove’ and its endorsement of the literary sophistication of the formal patterns exhibited. Ultimately, the article proposes a new formal and aesthetic approach to works by migrant writers based around the explicit foregrounding of orality.

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