Bronagh Slevin

There is an idea that all stories can be reduced to three big emotions: anger, fear or love. I’ve discovered that fear is the driving force behind the two books I’ve been working on. My first, set in Ireland, comes from a place of grief, the second, set here in Sicily, is based on fear of abandonment, a place where violence can thrive.

Once, before I had children, in my early years in Sicily, I was having a coffee in a local cafè where they still make the best cappuccino in town. I was reading a book – which immediately sets you as a foreigner, because Italians don’t tend to read in cafes, they talk. A man in his mid-60s was watching me, whom waiters and customers cheerily greeted as professore. “What are you reading?” he asked me. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “It doesn’t matter what you’re reading. All you need to know is that everything in Sicily can be reduced to three things: politics, money and sex.”

I have lived in Italy before, but everything was different when I came to Sicily as a woman married to a Sicilian. The most notable difference was that people didn’t speak to me anymore, they spoke to him. There was another shift when I had children. Suddenly everyone spoke to me, as if becoming a mother somehow authenticated my presence on the island and everyone could breathe more easily. I came to discover that my need to write – because it is a need – was not so well received. It may be inconvenient, even when you write only when the kids are fed and sleeping, that you devote so much time to this art. You should be making sword fish rolls and cleaning the windows and contributing more to the family economy. There is a FB group here called Mamme di Merda – for those of us who try to have a life and retain our identities while mothering, because often, when you marry into a Sicilian family, you are essentially joining a micro political system, where each person has clearly defined roles, starting from the Mamma.

These days I have a better understanding of the power structures in Sicily, though it still surprises me. But I know it well enough to have lost cities and stunning bays all to myself, so I can time travel in my imagination to the year in which my book is set. I came away for a few days to revise the Sicilian book and fact check, as a scene is set in the beautiful bay in the photo.

The language of my Sicilian book is love, love for a place that has become a second home but where I can also feel like an exile. Sicily is the way it is because for centuries it has been invaded and exploited, by Italy and by foreigners alike. The rebel spirit in me appreciates that.

The subject of my Sicilian book? Freedom. Of course.

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