When we think\u00a0Mafia literature many of us probably think of “The Godfather” by Mario Puzo, and the three popular\u00a0movies based on the book.<\/p>\n
But Robin Pickering-Iazzi, 51ÁÔÆæ professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, has a different perspective. In researching her new book, \u201cThe Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies,\u201d she found a range of ideas about the Mafia in Italian literature and on the Internet.<\/p>\n
Here are four things Pickering-Iazzi discovered. None of them is\u00a0flattering to certain characters portrayed onscreen by Marlon Brando and Al Pacino.<\/p>\n
Like popular Mafia myths, Italian Mafia literature focuses on the notion of the family. Instead of romanticizing godfathers and daughters\u2019 weddings, however, the books focus on how insistence on \u201cfamily first\u201d robs children born into Mafiosi families of their autonomy and subjects them to psychological harm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of material tells us so much about trauma. If you live with the Mafia, you live with death,\u201d Pickering-Iazzi said. \u201cMany children of the Mafiosi started going to psychoanalysts and went into therapy because they couldn\u2019t reconcile the fact of having fathers who committed horrendous murders.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Italian literature Pickering-Iazzi examined also detailed the brutal ways of Mafia control \u2013 from local neighborhoods up to the national government.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do the Mafioso territorialize a neighborhood? How do they keep people silent, people who in their own lives are honest and ethical? \u2026 You see that it\u2019s always by this threat of violence, either toward the person who speaks out or their family,\u201d Pickering-Iazzi said.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Characters) in four of the novels were actually inspired by historical people. You get a lot of factual information about the Mafia system of control in these novels.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Italian literature, there is a canon of important works dealing with the Mafia \u2013 all written by men.<\/p>\n
Pickering-Iazzi didn\u2019t set out to write a feminist perspective on Mafia literature, but in some ways, that\u2019s what she did. She focused on works by women for her own book and noted narratives that challenged or dealt with issues far different than those that concerned male writers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about it from the Mafia perspective of omert\u00e0<\/em> \u2013 silence, enforced silence \u2013 I thought, since the critical world has not been talking about these women, it makes it appear as if they\u2019re somehow complicit; they\u2019re not speaking out about this very topical issue in Italy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n While the Italian press does what it can, news outlets in Italy are controlled in many ways and tend to produce superficial stories about the Mafia. Citizen journalists have stepped up to provide well-researched, in-depth exposes posted online.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have thousands of readers and they\u2019re performing this wonderful work for informing the public, for democracy, for justice,\u201d Pickering-Iazzi said. \u201cSometimes, based upon these articles, criminal cases are reopened.\u201d<\/p>\n However, online journalists publish at their own risk \u2013 some 60 journalists in Italy require constant personal protection because of their work in exposing Mafia crimes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s said that in Palermo, Italy, it\u2019s nearly impossible to buy a plot at the cemetery to bury a relative without going through the Mafia. Corruption and ties to organized crime can be found at every level of Italian government. Italian lawyers and judges have been murdered for prosecuting mob criminals.<\/p>\nCitizen journalism is the new genre<\/h3>\n
Anti-Mafia social media: a dangerous game<\/h3>\n