With the establishment of Florentine as the literary language of choice, all the other regional languages came to be regarded as dialects, creating a unique situation that Italians have struggled with to this day.
At some point, Italian Americans stopped being a monolith, particularly as a voting bloc. Then at another point, they started swinging ever more determinedly towards the right. And then, along came Donald Trump.
The rise of populism has brought with it a shift in traditional power structures, even those which were previously unseen.
As a Sicilian, I never regard people from Greece as outsiders. Indeed, they were an integral part of the history of Sicily almost from the beginning.
The memory of the presence of Muslims on the island remains and can be readily seen practically everywhere.
We absolutely need to think of amnesty for those economic costs that many millions of us will not recoup, but it needs to become more than a fiscal policy for the reconstruction of Italy. It must become our worldview.
What’s left of the Jewish permanence in Sicily? Not much remains to the untrained eye, but the integration of the Jews with the rest of the population left marks on Sicilian customs and traditions.
In many ways Conte's approach mirrors that of Barack Obama, but it is the differences that may just mean his survival once the gates of lockdown Italy are lifted.
As the boomerang flies, so it flies back. The stories that lived within me, passed down from my grandparents. Theirs was an Italy of nostalgic approximation. Mine is an Italy that is bowed but unbroken, a phoenix that will rise again.
