Sicilian Lives [Paperback]

When Danilo Docli, peace worker, organizer, educator, first arrived in 1952 in Trappeto, a village of peasants and fishermen in western Sicily, there were no streets, just mud and dust, not a single drugstore, not even a sewer. (In fact, the local dialect didn’t even have a word for sewer.) Like other Sicilians, the villagers, seen by many Italians as “bandits,” “dirt-eaters,” and “savages,” had, in effect, been mute for centuries.

Dolci’s years of work broke this silence. The result is Sicilian Lives, a book which reveals the intimate experiences and perceptions of a wide range of Sicilians, rural and urban, through voices that are sometimes frightening, but always fascinating and unexpected.

Danilo Dolci has collected a rich panorama of voices—the eloquent testimony of Sicilians who, at last, are speaking out to penetrate the most profound dilemmas of an impoverished land. 


With a foreword by John BergerForeword, by John Berger • vii
Prologue • xv
 
THE INDIGENOUS CULTURE • 1
1. Rosario • 3
2. Leonardo • 13
3. Bastiano • 16
4. Santo • 25
 
THE PARASITE CULTURES • 33
5. The Honorable Calò • 35
6. Sonia Alliata of the House of Salaparuta • 38
7. Peppe Volpe, Knight of the Orders of . . . • 42
8. Salvatore Vilardo • 55
9. A Parish Priest • 61
10. The Cardinal • 63
11. Don Genco • 67
 
VICIOUS CIRCLES • 69
12. Rosaria • 71
13. The Healer &blã'