Sicilian Lives - Paperback

by Danilo Dolci (Author)

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 Berger

Author Biography

DANILO DOLCI (1924-1997) was an Italian author, educator, political activist, and poet. Dolci rallied the Sicilian people to fight for change by teaching, campaigning for public works, and organizing sit-ins, fasts, and ''strikes-in-reverse.'' He was one of the only figures to shed light on the Sicilian mafia's abuse after World War II and was known as the Studs Terkel of Sicily. Dolci was the author of several works, including Sicilian Lives, a collection of locals' stories told in their own voices.