Nadeesha Uyangoda

Last updated

Nadeesha Uyangoda
Nadeesha Uyangoda MUDEC Museo delle Culture.jpg
Uyangoda in 2021
Born1993 (age 31–32)
Colombo, Sri Lanka
OccupationWriter, podcaster, author
LanguageItalian, English
NationalityItalian
CitizenshipSri Lanka
Years active2021–present
Notable works
  • Book: L'unica persona nera nella stanza (The Only Black Person in the Room)
  • Podcast: Sulla razza (About Race)

Nadeesha Uyangoda (born 1993) is a Sri Lankan-Italian writer, author and podcaster, whose work focuses on migration and identity. She is the author of L'unica persona nera nella stanza (The Only Black Person in the Room) and Corpi che contano (Bodies that Matter), as well as the host of the podcast Sulla razza (About Race). She has won multiple awards, including the Anima Prize for Literature.

Contents

Biography

Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1993, [1] Uyangoda fled the country with her family due to its civil war and arrived in Italy at the age of six. [2] [3] Due to her own and her family's experience of Italy's immigration policies, Uyangoda has been outspoken on migrant rights. [2] She has called for second-generation Italian immigrants to be better represented at all levels of politics. [2] She is also seen as part of a movement of second-generation migrants that uses social media to add their experiences to public discourse. [4] Her writing focuses on migration and identity. [5] [6]

Her stories have appeared in Al Jazeera English, Open Democracy, The Telegraph.

She is a columnist of the Italian magazine Internazionale.

Career

L’unica persona nera nella stanza

Uyangoda is the author of L'unica persona nera nella stanza (The Only Black Person in the Room), [1] which was published in Rome in 2021 by the publisher 66thand2nd. [4] This memoir examined Uyangoda's experiences of racism in Italy, and its style was described by Annarita Taronna as "an intimate process of translingualism" as the text uses Italian, English and Sinhala to convey cross-cultural meaning. [7] Taronna also compared it to works by Zadie Smith, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie and Taiye Selasi. [7] Critical theorist and author Genevieve Makaping described Uyangoda as one voice in a new generation of Italian writers reflecting contemporary racism. [8]

L'unica persona nera nella stanza was translated in Spanish and co-published by Esto no es Berlin and Los libros de La Mujer Rota.

Sulla Razza (About Race)

In April 2020 she created the podcast Sulla razza (About Race), sponsored by Juventus F.C. and produced by One Podcast. It focuses on racism, in particular translating and explaining the vocabulary used in Anglo-American contexts to discuss race. [3] [9] This language gap is something that Uyangoda felt was holding back racial discourse in Italy. [3] One example she described is: "I'm a brown South Asian, but there's no term for brown people in Italian. So far these language gaps, which often don't convey just how multifaceted racism is, haven't been filled by mainstream media." [3] Uyangoda co-hosts the podcast with Nathasha Fernando and Maria Catena Mancuso. [1] It has been described as part of a cohort of podcasts discussing race that emerged in Italy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic reducing opportunities for social interaction. [10]

In 2023 she curated a section of BookPride, a leading independent book fair in Milan.

Uyangoda is a member of the scientific board of MUDEC, the Museum of Cultures of the Milan City Council.

Works

Fiction

Non-fiction

Short stories and longforms

Awards

L'unica persona nera nella stanza

References

  1. 1 2 3 Romeo, Caterina; Fabbri, Giulia (16 August 2024). Intersectional Italy. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-1-040-11208-3.
  2. 1 2 3 D’Ignoti, Stefania (18 February 2025). "Can Culture, Not Blood, Make You Italian?". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Media, Common (21 October 2021). "In Europe, Podcasters of Color Make Their Own Space for Conversations on Race". Nieman Reports. Archived from the original on 21 February 2025. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
  4. 1 2 Centers and Peripheries in Romance Language Literatures in the Americas and Africa. BRILL. 15 January 2024. p. 409. ISBN   978-90-04-69113-1.
  5. ↑ "Nadeesha Uyangoda Festival Ferrara". Internazionale (in Italian). Archived from the original on 21 February 2025. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
  6. ↑ Profeta, Daniele (2021). "Grand Tours and The Construction Of Italian Identities". Log (53): 103–108. ISSN   1547-4690. JSTOR   27157127.
  7. 1 2 Taronna, Annarita (3 September 2022). "Shaping translingual writing and translation as intersectional practices: Nadeesha Uyangoda's L'unica persona nera nella stanza and Sulla razza as case studies" . Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 58 (5): 684–697. doi:10.1080/17449855.2022.2158357. hdl: 11586/416442 . ISSN   1744-9855.
  8. ↑ Makaping, Geneviève (13 January 2023). Reversing the Gaze: What If the Other Were You?. Rutgers University Press. ISBN   978-1-9788-3470-5.
  9. ↑ Hernández, Felipe (6 December 2022). Ardeth #09: RACE. Exploring the Modern-Colonial Legacy in Contemporary Architecture. Rosenberg & Sellier. p. 6. ISBN   979-12-5993-107-8.
  10. ↑ Sievers, Wiebke (11 December 2023). Cultural Change in Post-Migrant Societies: Re-Imagining Communities Through Arts and Cultural Activities. Springer Nature. pp. 107–108. ISBN   978-3-031-39900-8.
  11. ↑ Uyangoda, Nadeesha (2021). L'unica persona nera nella stanza. Bazar. Roma: 66thand2nd. ISBN   978-88-3297-161-3.
  12. ↑ Uyangoda, Nadeesha (2024). Corpi che contano (in Italian). Rome: 66thand2nd. ISBN   9788832973891.
  13. ↑ Terranova, Nadia (2022). K Volume 4 - Felicità. Linkiesta. ISBN   9788894572339.
  14. ↑ Buffa, Pietro, ed. (2022). Milano. Milano: Iperborea. ISBN   978-88-7091-927-1.
  15. ↑ Sereni, Diletta (2023). L'integrale Volume 5 - Straniero. Iperborea. ISBN   9788870918342.
  16. ↑ "PREMIO ANIMA 2021". Anima per il Sociale. 10 October 2022. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
  17. ↑ "Portale Trasparenza Città di Rapallo – Premio Speciale Giuria Anna Maria Ortese −37° Edizione del Premio Letterario Nazionale per la Donna Scrittrice Rapallo 2021". trasparenza.comune.rapallo.ge.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on 21 February 2025. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
  18. ↑ Riera, Enrica (31 May 2022). "Conclusa la decima edizione, Lagioia, Castellina e Uyangoda premiati a Palazzo Arnone". Premio Sila '49 (in Italian). Archived from the original on 21 February 2025. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
  19. ↑ "PREMIO LETTERARIO". www.soroptimist.it. Archived from the original on 21 February 2025. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
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