This course will explore texts of different genres produced by Italian authors of African descent including novels, essays, poetry, slam poetry, short stories, autobiographical writing. Topics will include issues of race, gender, identity, racism and anti-racism, colonialism, coming to age experiences, agency, and resistance. This course will follow the principles of a reading group in which students will have the opportunity to take part in collective readings, using the Italian original texts or the English translation, with further socio-cultural context provided in class. Students will be asked to lead class conversations, presentations and text analysis. On occasion, some of the authors will join the class and engage in Q&A and conversations. During the course, students will also be invited to explore forms of autobiographical/creative/fiction writing as forms of assignment.