The cultures and histories of Italy and Somalia are inextricably linked. Italy colonised Somalia from the end of the 19th century to 1941, and held the territory by UN mandate from 1950 to 1960. Italy is also one of the destination countries of the Somali diaspora, which began in 1994 after a civil war. Nonetheless, this colonial and postcolonial cultural encounter has often been neglected. Critically evaluating Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's analysis of ‘minor literature', as well as drawing on recent works in postcolonial literary studies, The Somali Within analyses the processes of linguistic and cultural translation and self-translation, the political engagement against race and gender discrimination, and the strategies of belonging and unbelonging at work in the literary works in Italian by authors of Somali origins. Brioni shows that the ‘minor' Somali Italian connection might offer a major understanding of the transnational dimension of contemporary ‘Italian' and ‘Somali' literature.Simone Brioni is Assistant Professor at the Department of European Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Stony Brook University.