The Sicilian Project

Book excerpt: SOCIAL SCIENCE Hidden in the hollows of the Madonie Mountain in North Central Sicily are villages where roads and electricity arrive years after appearing in cities and towns. This is a place where the inhabitants are descended from a long line of serfs who were in bondage to a feudal lord and for whom aspects of feudal culture continue to be transmitted by elders to their children. From one such village, Lucia and Dominico D’Anna emigrated to Manhattan’s Lower East Side where author Jo Danna was born. Years later, anthropologist Margaret Mead sent Danna to that village to do her doctoral research. This was a time when winds of change from the modern world were beginning to upset the harmony of a community still rooted in the Middle Ages, where sons and daughters were pitted against elders trying vainly to preserve their ancient traditions, where arranged marriages persist. An example is her Sicilian aunt’s attempts to protect her virtue and the family honor by insisting that she be chaperoned everywhere. The Sicilian Project provides an enchanting, personal look at how rapid culture change splits apart generations and social classes. Efforts of today’s Sicilians to remove an unwanted outcome of medieval times, the Mafia, are also described.