Sicilian Lives

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 didnt 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. . Dolcis 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 voicesthe 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