Clarissa Clò wins prestigious Flaiano International Award for Italian Studies

This inspiring collective project, published by SDSU Press, was five years in the making.

It began when Clarissa Clò, professor of Italian and chair of European Studies was asked to help find an American publisher for Amir Issaa’s memoir, “Vivo per questo” (“This Is What I Live For”) in 2019. Issaa is a hip-hop artist, educator, and author who grew up in Rome, Italy and uses rap and the power of words and rhymes to tell the powerful story of overcoming his difficult youth to a worldwide audience. 

Building on the translation by students in an advanced Italian course at Georgetown University, and with an eye to enriching the donated Italian hip-hop archive in the University Library’s Special Collections, Clò deliberately envisioned a collaborative project with students and scholars from different public and private institutions, from coast to coast, working together toward the common goal of editing and publishing this compelling coming-of-age story of resistance and resilience.

Issaa’s personal background as the son of an Italian mother and an Egyptian father struggling to find his place in a society unwilling to accept diversity of race and ethnicity among its citizens, has resonated with students across generations and borders. In addition to the memoir, the book includes three critical essays discussing linguistic and cross-cultural translation as well as Italian and transnational hip-hop. In addition, a set of multimedia instructional activities based on the book are in development by the Italian program.

Professor Clò edited the entire volume and supervised multiple stages of the translation into English. Together with Issaa she selected a wide range of pictures from his personal archive to accompany each of the 20 chapters, and meticulously prepared the bilingual facing pages in English and Italian for publication by SDSU Press in October, 2023. She calls the entire enterprise a “labor of love and persistence that will serve as a pedagogical tool in Italian classrooms across the U.S. and in study abroad programs in Italy.”

Inspired by the experimental format of the book, Issaa went back to the recording studio and produced a new album also entitled “This Is What I Live For” (2024) containing 20 tracks each dedicated to and named after the chapters in the book. “Along with the audiobook currently in production, this is truly making ‘This Is What I Live For: An Afro-Italian Hip-Hop Memoir’ into a veritable transmedia storytelling endeavor that keeps on giving and evolving to reach ever more diverse communities of learners and larger publics,” Clò said.

Now, Clò and Issaa have been rewarded for their vision in crafting their passion project. They accepted the prestigious golden pegasus statue at the official 51st Flaiano International Awards for Fiction and Italian Studies ceremony on June 30 in Pescara, Italy. 

The jury’s award motivation stated that: “The volume highlights the Italian hip-hop scene and is very relevant from a postcolonial perspective. It is a pioneering contribution for the global dissemination of this cultural and musical movement that is increasingly important in Italian contemporary culture. The book focuses on the complex ethnic and multicultural hybridity of Rome and on the sociopolitical and ideological questions related to it. The critical framework accompanying the memoir is great and varied, including the co-authored introduction that reconstructs in detail the historical, cultural and musical context of Italian hip-hop.”

“The award belongs to the collective,” Clò said. Nearly 30 people worked on the book including: Roy Whitaker, associate professor of the study of religion, who co-wrote the rich concluding essay highlighting hip-hop studies at SDSU; Bill Nericcio, director of MALAS and SDSU Press; Victoria Cataloni, graduate student in the Department of European Studies; Justin Abdel, Mariana Barrios, and Jorge Hernandez, three alumni from the SDSU Italian Studies program; and many others from institutions like UCSD, CSU Long Beach, Duke and Georgetown. 

To complete the book, several grants were received from the College of Arts and Letters Dean’s Office, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles.

History of the award

Ennio Flaiano was a famous author, journalist and screenwriter known for his work with film director Federico Fellini on “La Strada” (1954), “La Dolce Vita” (1960), and “8 ½” (1963). In 1947 Flaiano received the first Premio Strega award for literature for the novel “Tempo di uccidere” (“Time to Kill”), a denunciation of Italian colonialism in Ethiopia. 

The Premi Internazionali Flaiano are among the most prestigious awards for literature, cinema, television, theater, and journalism in Italy. Since 2021 the Italian Studies category award is named after the late Ambassador Luca Attanasio, who dedicated his life to humanitarian action and international cooperation, and Clò and Issaa received the award directly from his family at the ceremony. 

The award was granted in collaboration between the Associazione Ennio Flaiano and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation through the Italian Institute of Culture in Los Angeles.