Somali Biography and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century

In addition to humanizing the history of the continent, African biographies and autobiographies can help shed light on the extent to which local actors are perceived, or perceive themselves, as active agents in the shaping of larger historical events. The emergence of distinct genres of personal narrative in different societies at different moments in time offers insights into prevailing local notions of individual vs. collective agency and into ideas about the roles and responsibilities of individuals under particular historical circumstances. Section one of this essay offers a preliminary survey of the scattered biographical and autobiographical sources available to scholars of twentieth-century Somalia and explores why these forms of narrative appear to be so rare in the historical record. Section two describes how Somalia’s state collapse and civil wars after 1990 generated new genres of personal memoir writing, political biography, and semi-autobiographical fiction. In examining these developments, the essay speculates on the possible links between autobiography and the emergence of new subjectivities within Somalia’s body politic both within the country and in the wider Somali diaspora.