In Person Book Club Meeting: The Color Line by Igiaba Scego

Greetings Mocha Girls,
I hope this message finds everyone well and enjoying the somewhat cooler weather.
Our October 2026 monthly book selection is "The Color Line" by Igiaba Scego.

Remember, if you don't finish the book, you are still welcome to join the meet up, so come anyway!

Warmly,
Mocha Girl Tye

R.S.V.P. Etiquette:
Please make sure to RSVP to an event or book club meeting ONLY if you are going. Do not RSVP if you are thinking about going or would like to go. Thanks in advance and I can't wait to see you all!

REMEMBER:
Support a Black-owned Bookstore called RESIST BOOKSELLERS and get 15% off when you use the code MGR22.

About the Book:

It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn’t let that stop her. The daughter of a Native American woman and an African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the rare opportunity to study, travel, and follow her dreams, thanks to her indomitable spirit, but not without facing intolerance and violence. Now, in 1887, living in Rome as one of the city’s most established painters, she is ready to tell her fiancé about her difficult life, which began in a poor family forty years earlier.

In 2019, an Italian art curator of Somali origin is desperately trying to bring to Europe her younger cousin, who is only sixteen and has already tried to reach Italy on a long, treacherous journey. While organizing an art exhibition that will combine the paintings of Lafanu Brown with the artworks of young migrants, the curator becomes more and more obsessed with the life and secrets of the nineteenth-century painter.

Weaving together these two vibrant voices, Igiaba Scego has crafted a powerful exploration of what it means to be “other,” to be a woman, and particularly a Black woman, in a foreign country, yesterday and today.

About the Author:

Igiaba Scego is an Italian writer and journalist who was born in Rome in 1974 to Somali parents. She holds a PhD in education focused on postcolonial subjects and has conducted extensive academic work in Italy and internationally.

Her writing explores Italian and Somali histories and identities, colonial memory, migration, racism, and belonging. Through her fiction, nonfiction, and journalism, Scego has examined the connections between Italy and Africa as well as the experiences of the African diaspora in Italy.

Her works include Beyond Babylon, Adua, and La mia casa è dove sono. The latter received Italy’s Mondello Prize, while La linea del colore, published in English as The Color Line, received the Premio Napoli.