Each of the authors’ sites we’ve visited over the trip have memorialized their legacy in a different way. While Lampedusa’s home has become a guided tour and residential space and Sciascia’s hometown a host of his museum and statue, Pirandello’s home had been turned into a museum and a space for his tomb. Pirandello, the master of the school of thought that life just puts us into all these different forms, we can never truly be ourselves unless we go “crazy,” asked for a no-frills funeral—turns out he got three funerals and an abstract tomb/memorial in the backyard of his former house, which now displays all his documents, manuscripts, and family’s paintings.
Maria Grammatico
At cooking lessons with Maria Grammatico we learned to make Brutti ma buoni, Tette delle monache, marzipan, and cannoli, before eating a feast of Sicilian foods (as pictured above). Maria was a skilled, rather sassy Sicilian chef, with an unusual professional training: she learned to make pastries in a convent, where she grew up after her mother couldn’t afford to feed all her children in the wake of WWII. Now, Maria not only has her own bakery, but also a cookbook published in multiple languages and her own cooking school, where her staff flocked around her like doting grandchildren. The fog that covered Erice that night only added to the otherworldliness of the experience.
Temples of Selinunte
The temples of Selinunte were my favorite of the trip because of how much access we had to the space. Unlike some of the other ancient sites we saw, Temple E, F, and G were open to the public; we could walk inside the still preserved shape of Temple E and climb over the remains of Temple G. The idea of restoration and access continually popped up throughout our exploration of these ancient sites—does preservation mean adding things to a site to make it like what it once was or leaving it be, thereby vulnerable to the effects of time? These conflicts tie in too with the idea of ownership—who should be making these decisions? As I climbed up the rocky remains of Temple G and saw two temples in the distance, farmland, the water, it was easily to imagine feeling that this space was my own, an illusion of possession that so many people have felt about Sicily over the years.
Lampedusa’s Library
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s library was beautiful—as was the rest of the mansion, which was quite aware of its own grandiosity. Three college girls from the UK on an internship program in Sicily gave us a tour of the house, giving a little background on certain elements of the house or portraits that featured descendants of Lampedusa, including the duchess, who still lives in the house and offers cooking lessons for nearly 200 euro. WWII bombing destroyed some of the house, but most of it was preserved (aside from the duchess’s private quarters). This whole idea of preservation takes on an ironic tone when considering Il Gattopardo—Lampedusa wrote about the dying aristocracy at the end of the 19th century, yet his ancestors are trying to hold on to the already-gone aristocracy years later.
Teatro Massimo
A founding member of the grassroots group Addiopizzo spoke with us about the organization’s efforts to combat the mafia. Through convincing customers to shop only at establishments that don’t pay pizzo—“protection” money the mafia demands of shop owners that really only protects shops against the mafia—Addiopizzo has created a network of establishments that have taken a stance against paying pizzo. As the group’s motto states, “Un intero popolo che paga il pizzo è un popolo senza dignità.” By hindering the mafia economically, the group hopes to decrease not only the mafia’s political and social influences, but also Sicily’s association with the mafia. And so while I did send the photo above to my mom with the caption, “This is where Sofia died in the Godfather!!” I made sure to note after that we were on an “anti-mafia” tour and that, as our tour guide emphasized, this is the largest theater in Italy and the third largest in the world.
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