| Abstract | Abstract Abstract: This article discusses the emergence of a postcolonial Italian discourse through the analysis and comparison of two cultural productions belonging to two distinct historical periods. Lunga vita all’albero (Long Live the Tree, 1990) by the Ravenna-based interethnic company Teatro delle Albe is a play produced in the early stages of Senegalese immigration to Italy that imagines a shared history of resistance—anticolonial and antifascist—led by women. The more recent Regina di fiori e di perle (Queen of Flowers and Pearls, 2007) by Italian-Ethiopian writer Gabriella Ghermandi engages similar issues, but places the history of Ethiopian resistance to Italian colonialism, still a disavowed question in Italian history, at its center. Both works establish transnational connections and identifications across cultures and defamiliarize taken-for-granted identities, stereotypes, and beliefs, particularly about African women, which continue to plague Italian public discourse.
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