Takoua Ben Mohamed: fumetto intercultura tra Tunisia e Roma

Graphic journalist Takoua Ben Mohamed, born in Tunisia in 1991 and raised in Rome from age eight, uses comics to discuss integration, citizenship, discrimination, and intercultural dialogue. She coined the term 'fumetto intercultura' at age 14. Her father, a political exile from Ben Ali's dictatorship, fled Tunisia in 1991; she met him for the first time at age eight, a traumatic encounter due to their different skin colors. She recalls the dictatorship's harassment of her family, including her uncle's torture and death in prison in 2000. After the fall of Ben Ali in 2011, she returned to Douz to find her childhood home looted but her drawings still on the walls. In Rome, she built her 'intercultural identity,' feeling neither fully Tunisian nor Italian. She chose to wear the hijab at age 11 after the 9/11 attacks, facing prejudice. Her latest graphic novel 'Sotto il velo' (Beccogiallo, 2016, €15) debuted at Lucca Comics, humorously depicting a veiled woman's daily life in Rome, tackling stereotypes and discrimination. She emphasizes irony as a tool for dialogue and socialisation, not conversion.