The Color Line

from 2015 (reviews are available on this site). And indeed we find the same theme: the Black woman lives in a world of violence and abuse, because she is a woman and because she is Black. Taking up the narrative framework of

the author pursues two parallel stories: that of Lafanu Brown, an African American painter who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century in papal Rome, a city soft, welcoming, and roguish, and that of Leila, an Italian of Somali origin who lives in today's Rome, alluring, decadent, and cruel. They are distant eras, yet with a common starting point: the Fountain of the Four Moors in Marino, featured in Rino Bianchi's photographic gallery in the book's appendix—a deeply evocative gallery, fundamental to interpreting the entire story. Thus writes Lafanu,

. Leila is with a friend in Marino before the Fountain. The friend, an intelligent young woman, open to the world and a student of Arabic, says to her, laughing:

. The two stories, Lafanu's and Leila's, unfold with different rhythms and a distinct narrative style: at the root, there is always violence. Lafanu was raped as a young girl in the abolitionist American town of Coberlin, in 1859. A model student, she attended a college that took pride in having students of color. One evening, Lafanu insisted on going to the theater, wearing an elegant dress rich in color.

. Where to survive? In a place where color and surface meet. Lafanu becomes a painter; the pursuit of beauty as a lifeline brings her to Italy, to Rome. She painstakingly earns her place as an artist, enchanted by Italian Baroque and Classicism. Nightmares haunt her. She is fascinated by a painting by Lorenzo Lotto,

, where in a corner of the painting a young Black servant girl holds back an unruly child. Lafanu devotes sketch after sketch to this painting.

. As though beauty could free us from violence—it is an illusion! Leila, too, is Black and at the same time uprooted from Somalia:

. If you are Black, it is hard to escape violence. Binti, Leila's cousin, in an attempt to reach Italy finds herself in the traffickers' infernal circle, who rape her, just as their white counterparts did to Black people during the terrible sea voyages to America. And now, Binti

Lafanu is a fictional character, a composite of two Black women who actually lived in Rome: the first a midwife and activist, the second a sculptor. The blending of reality and fiction gives the narrative a calm and evocative rhythm, like an escapist historical novel. While this diminishes the story's dramatic weight, it stimulates the reader's curiosity without generating anxiety: clearly there will be a happy ending, even if somewhat melancholy and bittersweet. Leila is the author, and the events unfold in the present day. There is of course imagination, but the raw reality of migration and human smuggling looms over the entire narrative: it slips into chronicle and indictment. The wounds inflicted upon our conscience—hypocritical and lazy though it is—are too deep for us to dally.