Lost and regained in translation: cross-border and intersectional practices between the Black US and Black Italy

This study starts by looking at recent episodes which involved potential translators of the poem “The Hill We Climb” that African-American writer Amanda Gorman read at Joe Biden’s US Presidential Inauguration. Specifically, we refer to the case of Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, who resigned from the job of translating Gorman’s work following criticism that a black writer was not chosen. Drawing on the public debate derived from this episode, the research attempt here is to problematize translation as a site of ideological struggle in which gender, sexual and racial politics stand out as inextricable elements.