Saturne, 19 – A Black Italian Finding Her Identity

“The reasons why I was born there I guess is because my dad was an actor in Italy. He was one of the first black actors in the city of Rome.”

In 1997, a Cameroonian couple became parents to Saturne Tchabong, a proud Cameroonian Italian Activist with big goals, just as big as the planet she was named after.

“A couple years later, 2000, we moved to Maryland.”

“I remember being foreign in a sense where a lot of the things I didn’t understand, American things, American shows. I would watch a lot of TV because in America you start school like at 5 years old and in Italy, you start school at three, so I was just always home watching TV. I didn’t understand the language.”

“I remember like later on realizing I have mispronounced so many words. There was this movie called Surf’s Up and my siblings and I only referring to it as “SupsUp,” cause to us, that was what we were hearing. Then we just had no idea cause we were so foreign. We didn’t understand anything but I guess we made it through. I always joke around and say that I learned English through watching “That’s so Raven” and SpongeBob and stuff.

“I remember pretty much being foreign and different.”

Do you still feel foreign and different?

“Absolutely, more so because I’m in California. I feel more foreign. When we moved from Montgomery county to Prince George County, that pretty much where I grew up and spend the majority of my time in school wise in Prince George County. It was predominantly African American or Latino and we had a variety of Latino people. We had Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, El Salvadorians, so it was just like a wide variety of Latino people.”

“And when it came to the African American people like it was always weird to me because I was like ‘You’re both black, but I’m a different kind of black.’ I didn’t know anything about Cameroon, to be honest… it was Italy, that’s all I knew. So coming out, and starting school and stuff and people would hear my first and last name, not only is my first name weird but my last name is also very different. So people heard that and they were like, ‘Where are you from?’ and I’m like, ‘I’m from Italy.’ cause that’s all I knew.”

“It was normal (to me) being Italian Cameroonian and people were just like ‘Yeah, right.. A black Italian?’ It was funny because I didn’t get why anyone would lie where they were born and specifically why they would want to be born in Europe. Later on, when I started understanding Colonialism and different thing like that, it’s when I understood that people usually think that whiteness is better and that’s why being born in Italy is just a unique and very an amazing thing to these people.”  

“I will never forget one day I was, I think it was eight grade, and I was in one of my teacher’s classes, his name was Mr. Panzarella, and he was of Italian descent, both of his parents were Italian. He didn’t speak Italian, I don’t think he had ever been to Italy, I didn’t really know too much about Italy other than the Americanized version that he is parents kind of brought up… I remember telling him I’m Italian and this one kid yells out ‘Girl, you’re not! You’re African.’ To me, it was like an insult because I didn't identify as African but I’d identified as Cameroonian Italian. So for him to look me up as all of Africa and to denounce my whole birth, to completely push it aside, I don’t know, I alway carry that.”

“It bothered me a lot.”

“We always create Africa as one big country, when it is not.”

“I remember not wanting to be foreign a lot. I didn’t want to speak other languages. I didn’t want to be another, I didn’t want to give myself another reason to be an outsider. So I didn’t tell people where I was born.”

“I guess later on in high school that changed because I joined the step team in high school… when I joined it was honestly my lifelong dreams to be in that particular step team since elementary school. So when I made the team it was incredible because, the best stepper on that team and the one who I aspire to be like the most, was African. She was Nigerian. On the team, some of my closest friends were also from Sierra Leone, Nigerian, Jamaican, so it was a mixing pot of blackness, which I wasn’t used to.”

“I was so used to blackness being glued up into one so if you were African American you were black, if you were African you were black. Any other identity was erased. So joining the step team it opened me to realize that we don’t have to just be black anymore, we can have our own separate identities and we can embrace that.”  

I asked what made Saturne happy and in my surprise, she said “Politics”.

“The more I understand how the world functions, the more I start to get an idea of how to change certain things.”