IAP 03: The People and Places of Sicily with Seeking Sicily author John Keahey

You can listen to this episode by clicking the player above or subscribing on iTunes. Are your ancestors Sicilian? Have you ever been to or wanted to go to Sicily? Well, this is the episode for you. In this episode, John Keahey, author of several Italian travel narrative books, including Seeking Sicily, shares with us his thoughts, feelings, and experiences about the beautiful island of Sicily. At the end of the show, we also hear a touching story from Mama Alfieri, who talks about how it felt growing up as a poor child in Italy around the holidays. Episode Guest: Here's an introduction to this episode's guest, Seeking Sicily author John Keahey: John Keahey has spent more than thirty years as a newspaper/wire service reporter and editor who has turned his love for Italy into a career of writing and speaking on the subject.  His third book– Seeking Sicily : A Cultural Journey through Myth and Reality— takes a unique approach beyond the typical travel narrative. It explores Sicilian culture through a variety of elements: its cuisine, which draws from the influences from the various nations that once controlled the island; its authors, who, like their fellow islanders, consider themselves Sicilian rather than Italian; and through their deeply ingrained isolationist attitudes of Sicily's three thousand-year history of being ruled by one invader after another (northern Italians being that latest conqueror during Italian Unification in 1861). Keahey also examines the influence of the Mafia and the impact of Sicilian-Greek myths that still permeate the Mediterranean's largest, most mysterious, and most historically significant island.