Don’t Let the Sicilians Know

A passionate journey into the very heart of Sicilian identity.Written by Giuseppe Sciortino Giuliano, nephew of the legendary Salvatore Giuliano, Don’t Let the Sicilians Know is a bold and deeply personal account of the long and turbulent history of Sicily, told by a man whose own family stood at the center of the island’s most dramatic chapter.Spanning more than two thousand years, the book traces Sicily from its ancient origins as a crossroads of Mediterranean civilizations, through Greek, Roman, Arab, and Norman rule, to the fateful unification of Italy in 1860. With unflinching honesty, the author examines how the island, once a proud and independent kingdom, was absorbed into the newly formed Italian state, and how the promises made to the Sicilian people were, in his telling, systematically betrayed.From the peasant revolts of the nineteenth century to the brutal repression that followed, from the birth of the Mafia to the Allied landings of World War II, Giuseppe Sciortino Giuliano connects the threads of history that most accounts leave untold. He gives particular attention to the postwar movement for Sicilian autonomy and independence, the drafting of the Sicilian Statute, and the great illusion of self government that, in his view, was never truly honored.Drawing on the firsthand testimony of his mother, Marianna Giuliano, sister of Salvatore Giuliano, and on documents preserved within the family, the author offers a perspective found in no official history. It is the account of the people who lived these events, suffered their consequences, and refused to forget them. This is not history written from a distance, but from the inside, with the passion and the pain of someone who feels the weight of every page.Part rigorous historical account and part impassioned appeal to memory and dignity, Don’t Let the Sicilians Know challenges the reader to reconsider everything they thought they knew about Sicily. Its culture, its wounds, its stolen wealth, and its unextinguished longing to determine its own destiny all come into sharp focus.It is a book for anyone who, before feeling Italian or European, feels above all Sicilian. It is for the sons and daughters of the island scattered across the world, for the curious traveler who senses that Sicily’s story runs deeper than the guidebooks admit, and for every reader drawn to the struggle of a people who have never stopped asking to be recognized on their own terms.More than a history, it is an act of remembrance, and a call from a nation that still refuses to disappear.'If Sicilian blood runs in your veins; if you feel neither European nor North African; in reading this book you will find the identity you have sought in vain.' G.S.G.