Binidittu

« Four years ago, during a research on maroon communities in Latin America, I crossed paths with the figure of Benedict the Moor. At the time, I was immediately intrigued by a certain san Benito de Palermo, as he is called from Mexico to Colombia, from Venezuela to Brazil. What could be the connection between Latin America and the city of Palermo in Sicily? Haunted by this question, I started a long journey back to Italy on the trail of his holiness, but above all looking for the historical figure, the Afropean man, whose body is still preserved and venerated in the city of Palermo and whose intricate story, historical and symbolic, of the Mediterranean as much as the Atlantic, as local as it is global, never stops providing me with more questions. – Included in the book there are beautiful essays by @igiaba_afroitalian , Doudou Diène and Alagie Jincang, addressing the multiple significance of Benedict today in the context of Mediterranean migration and contemporary forms of invisibilisation and exploitation of African diaspora. Passages from writer Ralph Ellison’s book The Invisible Man, a seminal work of African-American literature, feature throughout Binidittu along with interviews and archives. »