Secrets of Life and Death: Women and the Mafia

by Renate Siebert, Liz Heron (Translator)

Overview

Secrets of Life and Death is the first book to focus on women whose lives are entangled in the workings of the mafia. Drawing on courtroom testimonies, interviews, contemporary journalism and recent research, Siebert cuts through the mafia’s myth of honouring women to expose the harsh realities for women living with, and fighting against, the mafia. With careful attention to the socio-economic realities of southern Italy, she looks at what it actually means to live in the mafia’s shadow. She explores the gains and costs of being a mafia wife in New York or Palermo, probing the emotions underlying women’s mafia loyalties and the sexual lure of the mafioso.

In vivid and often harrowing detail, Siebert examines women’s growing resistance to a culture of death and dangerously intensified masculinity. Alongside the public stories of the wives of murdered judges, policemen and politicians, she places the extraordinary accounts of women who have taken a stand against their own mafia upbringing or have spoken out as witnesses, at enormous personal cost. It is women’s courageous initiatives, Siebert shows, which have led to the development of local anti-mafia organizations and recent mass protests in the face of violent intimidation. Poignant and incisive, Secrets of Life and Death breaks the code of silence to tell a story that is both haunting and inspiring.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859840238
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	11/17/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

Books about the mafia are either intelligent or exciting. This one is both. But the author never lets sensationalism get the upper hand. It is such a considered, thoughtful work, yet the subject it deals with, principally the enslavement and victimization of women, and, not least, their corruption, is so shocking as to stun. The result is a considerable achievement.”—Ruth Rendell

“The women of the mafiosi always know everything. If they talk, it's all over for Cosa Nostra.”—Piera

From the Publisher

This recounting of the involvement of women in the Mafia as both victims and participants (often the line between the two is blurred) is moving because its subject is so affecting. But while Siebert (a German-born professor who has lived in Italy since 1970) does a fine job of quoting various autobiographical writings, she fails to provide much structure to clarify the role of women in general. She basically admits as much on the final page, sighing, "I have no concluding words. I am exhausted and emotionally fraught at the end of this involving journey through the good and evil in our present." The numerous quotations are divided into three parts dealing with the Mafia and gender, women on the side of the Mafia and women working against it. There is a wide gap between the author's academic analysis and the brutal facts reported. For example, Siebert invokes Hannah Arendt's theories on the banality of evil in trying to explain the pull of this cult of death, but the simple words of the women speak more powerfully: "I saw the dead man's feet; he had been placed face down and covered with only his feet sticking out but I saw the white socks, the socks I'd washed yesterday for my son." One of the most interesting sections deals with housewives who acted as drug couriers between Palermo and New York because security forces rarely suspected them. One such woman laments that the judge failed to send her to jail when she was caught, as her husband was in prison at the time and she would have preferred to join him rather than take care of their eight children by herself. While this work is far from perfect, details such as that one make it valuable, particularly to English-language readers who may not have access to many of the original texts. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In spite of the tabloid title, this volume is an almost scholarly treatise on women and the Mafia. Translated from the original Italian, the text is dense and slow-going but well organized and well documented. Chapters address all phases of Mafia life, from kidnappings and murders to initiation rites and daily life. Describing the Mafia as a totalitarian dictatorship with the right over life and death, Siebert (sociology, Univ. of Calabria) presents their activities in contrast to moral and societal codes, but because the book was originally published in Italy, most of the references are to Italian events and trials and may not have the immediacy of, for example, an episode of "Investigative Reports" or a Mario Puzo novel. Still, this is a thorough look at Mafia life through the eyes of the very people it technically excludes. For academic collections.Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie Cty. P.L., N.Y.

Library Journal