Photo: Mo Liban | Pexels
Meet Ali Farah, one among a handful of acclaimed Somalian female writers. Though Somalia is recognized as the "nation of poets," this acknowledgment is often only reserved for men. Finding freedom in Italian and English literature, she and other Somalian writers followed their literary ambitions outside the country where they have been less confined by cultural norms. As thousands of Somalis flee the country as it plunges into civil warfare, their literature become places where voices, particularly those of women, can be remembered. Farah, 18 at the time when the civil war broke out, turned to writing after being inspired by the stories of the women she met. "My main questions were: 'What happens when everything you are born into has been destroyed?," said Farah. "What do you do to root yourself again? What do you do to survive?'" Her first novel, Little Mother, published in 2007, focuses on two female cousins who are separated but find each other in Europe.
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