On Persephone's Island: A Sicilian Journal

by Mary Taylor Simeti

An American woman residing in Sicily for the past twenty years portrays the Sicilian landscape and customs - both rural and urban - from the perspectives of both a "foreigner" and a resident.

Genres: Travel, Italy, Memoir, Nonfiction, History, Italian Literature, Biography Memoir

329 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My family spent a month in Sicily this past April. It was a much-needed vacation to one of my childhood homes, and it was a vacation full of good times, great food, and wonderful wine. While we there, my husband and I read several books concerning Sicily, and On Persephone's Island was my favorite. Simeti captures all that fascinates me about Sicily -- the people, the food, the wine, the geography, the religion, the mythology, the history, the sights, the smells, and yes, even the Mafia -- perfectly, from an outsider-turned-insider's perspective.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young college graduate from America, in this memoir, travels from the USA to Italy and then to Palermo, Sicily in order to work in a social justice community center in Palermo. She never returns to America. She marries, has children, makes wine and channels all things Italian. This describes her life on the Island of Sicily over a several year period and she makes connections with Greek mythology as the Greeks occupied Sicily for many years.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! I really appreciated her openness about her experiences moving to Sicily as a young woman and then establishing a life there. I found her very self-reflexive, intelligent, and witty. Her love of the place as well as her concerns about it definitely come through and helped shape my appreciation of Sicily while there. Her anecdotes helped my partner & I plan our travels through the island. And I loved the mix of personal stories with mythology, anthropology, folklore & her farm/winery experiences. She obviously loves food, myth, folklore-- a woman of my own heart! This book really hit home for me.

And I met Mary Taylor Simeti while in Sicily! This is the first time I met the author of a (non-academic) book while I was in the middle of reading it! I was at an anti-Mafia event of an organization that works to provide support for businesses who are approached by the mafia to pay protection money (called pizzo; approximately 80% of businesses in Palermo pay the pizzo) and her winery and olive orchard was there as one of the businesses in this alliance. She was very friendly and sweet. She explained that her daughter is now going to take over the winery/farm and start an agro-tourism business there (combo bed & breakfast while staying on a farm) to maintain the farm--you make little on farming. Anyone who is interested, their winery's website is: www.boscofalconeria.it

I hope to make it out there on my next trip to Sicily! I wish I had known about this before my visit.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was exceptional. It evokes image and flavour and nostalgia and sense of place so powerfully and with such linguistic elegance that I felt myself sinking greedily, lost, into the Sicilian landscape of yesteryear that Mary Taylor Simeti so effortlessly paints. I was recommended this book at 15 when I moved to Italy, but barely cracked it open - either I was too lazy, too eager for my new adventure to dive into books from past generations, or I was simply not yet at a point where I could appreciate its beauty. At any rate, this time I found it perfect for three fundamental reasons:

(1) Its Greek (and other) mythology speaks to my first and greatest love/obsession. I was deeply immersed in Greek and Roman mythology as a kid, and a large part of my move to Italy in my teenage years was to take part in a program that threw me deep into Greek and Latin language, history, and mythology. Mary Taylor Simeti's choice to explore Sicily's culture through its mythology provides not only an elegant framework for the book, it also gives a fascinating history of the island's various influences without at all coming across as a history book. There is also a reverence for the female, in the persons of Demeter and Persephone, which I of course relished.

(2) The reverence for (and beautiful descriptions of) the ecology of Sicily speaks to a newer-found love of mine, which is the identity of place through vegetation. Thinking back on how the plants of my southern Californian chaparral upbringing so deeply shape my memories of place, I find myself now constantly aware of the ecologies that mould new places in my mind. Mary Taylor Simeti's description of Sicily through its seasonal vegetation and harvests creates a powerful sense of place that is simply beautiful.

(3) Mary's identity as a geographical and linguistic transplant speaks to me powerfully right now. Mary Taylor moved to Sicily in her early 20s, married into the Simeti family, became proficient and indeed fully fluent in both Italian and Sicilian, and sank into the life of an American emigrant with all the challenges and privileges and confused identity that that entails. I moved abroad in my late teens and kept moving till I arrived in Germany, fell in love first with the place, then with the language, then with a person. Figuring out my role here has perhaps carried fewer demands that I adapt myself than Mary's did, as she sank into a very Sicilian family life with all of the cultural expectations that entails, while I sank into a world of studying and then working in largely international environments. But as I read her book, I found myself so hungry for her descriptions of being an American abroad - the limitations it provides when she would prefer to become more involved in Sicilian life ("you're not Sicilian, you wouldn't understand"), the privilege (being able to see herself as an outsider to aspects of Sicilian culture she doesn't like, e.g. issues with the Mafia), the desire to hold onto both identities and the conscious choices about what to take and value from each culture. Her descriptions are eloquent and despite differences in our situations I felt myself relating to them powerfully. I know I will be returning to this as a bible of sorts during the next years and decades of my life as an immigrant.

Also, as an aside, I am simply boggled that, as someone who picked up (and then fully switched into) a second language in her 20s, Mary can still write so beautifully in her native English. I found myself rereading whole pages simply to relish the elegance of her writing. It's... exceptional. I often feel like my English has been reduced to the bare bones it needs for fundamental communication, and when I read something like this, it's a reminder to me to seek to communicate not just functionally, but also beautifully. Mary addresses this at points, speaking about how strange new slang is for her when she interacts with native English speakers - but the elegance of her writing belies any struggle in her relationship to her native tongue.

[Zora O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautiful! A wonderfully crafted book that covers about a year in Sicily, in the early 1980s--Simeti weaves together the natural world (largely what happens on her farm), the Sicilian folk festivals and the news of the day, much of it having to do with the Mafia. Part of the beauty of it is that she lives in Sicily, but looks at the place like a traveler--a lot of the book involves her exploring ruins and little out-of-the-way towns. It's the kind of travel writing that we don't see much of anymore--it's simply a great document, not a stunt of a story structured around, say, a huge life-changing event or a similar reality-TV-like conceit.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read about a place that I really felt I should know more about. I liked that the author did not shy away from presenting the harsh realities of life in Sicily along with the descriptions of its beauty. The most interesting parts for me were the ones focused on the history and mythology that have shaped Sicilian culture. My only major critique is that I wish there had been more focus on that and less discussion of the local flora.

Thanks for lending this to me, Christine : )

[Eredità · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up hoping it would help me connect with the homeland I haven't yet been able to see. What I got was an outsider's perspective - at times even condescending. It reads as if someone was writing from the window of a train, observing anthropologically without ever truly seeing.

Firstly, Sicilian is a recognized language, not a dialect.

Secondly, there are clear examples of when she is writing as if to explain Sicily to an American audience. At one point, she explains (poorly) why she chose to use the English word "peasant" instead of the "contadino." She even admits that "peasant" does not explain the full complexity of the experience, and yet continues to use it.

The way she speaks of the workers on her family's land is so patronizing in many points, which left a bad taste in my mouth - especially because my family were workers like that. We even share a name with one of the families she mentions.

Do yourself a favor and read a book by an actual Sicilian, not an outsider.

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary is a New Englander who found her way to Sicily in the 60's. While there she meets and marries a man and starts a family. It is through her eyes that we hear of a typical year. She sets the book up to follow the seasons. The description of the places is well done, the connection to its Greek ancestry is well done, tie backs to other authors who have visited and written about this place are well done, but what is missing is a better characterization of the people she meets. The story is written after she has lived there for 20 years, but I don't feel as if I know the people from there any better after reading this book than I did before.

[Klem · Rating 4 out of 5]

A descriptive novel that will teach you a lot about life in Sicily, at least at the time of the writing. I believe it must be very interesting to have this book with you while visiting the island.
Sometimes a bit slow or too descriptive to my taste. It took me a long time to finish the book but ir was worth it.

[Sarah Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little dated, but I loved the descriptions of the land and plants, food, and festivals.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The scent of oranges and almonds. The luxurious sheen of fresh-pressed olive oil. The intoxicating sweetness of a cake called 'The Triumph of Greed.' Criminals who gun down entire convoys of police. Religious festivals at which celebrants tidy up their family tombs and make archangels dance in the village piazza. Tales like these, along with all the myriad sights, flavors, and fragrances of Sicily, burst from the pages of this gem of contemporary travel writing.

"When Mary Taylor Simenti first came to Sicily, she intended to make just a short visit. Instead, she stayed for over twenty years. With both a native's intimacy and the fresh eye of an outsider, she chronicles a year in the place she calls Persephone's Island, after the goddess who once made Sicily her home. Simenti navigates through Sicily's history of Greek, Arab, Norman, and Spanish conquests. She savors the fruits of its harvests. She introduces us to a neighbor who 'borrows' a tree for Christmas and returns it along with a homemade cheese. At once poetic and precise, learned and deeply personal, On Persephone's Island is an absorbing account of a woman's love affair with a place that beckons us with sounds, tastes, colors, and myth."
~~back cover

It started out nicely. But by the time we'd waded through Winter and Spring, at 224 pages (out of 330 pages), it all sounded the same. Descriptions of wild flowers, descriptions of religious festivals -- most of which seemed to consist of people carrying statutes of the saints and Mary about, descriptions of the food (which wasn't all that different from place to place), I had totally lost interest.

[Elisabeth Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why is this gem of a book not among the most celebrated expat/farming/travel memoirs of the 20th century? The uniqueness of Mary Taylor Simeti's story is such a wonderful change of pace from other expat stories: she came to Sicily in 1962 to learn about community organizing and about worker-led movements for land and food justice. She fell in love with a Sicilian man, married him and planned to spend the rest of the world traveling the world with him to support grass-roots organizing and agricultural justice. Then her brother in law suddenly died, and she and her husband gave up their dreams of third world advocacy to stay in Sicily and care for her aging in-laws and the family farm. This is a memoir of one liturgical and agricultural year out of the decades that followed, a year of intense mafia violence in the early 1980s.

What I love most is the ambiguity that threads through this narrative: Simeti's love of the Sicilian countryside and sorrow at the grip of the Mafia on her community; her deep ties to her own farm and resentment that she never got to do advocacy work on a global scale; her prodigious understanding of the ties between agricultural workers' rights and wider systems of poverty; her sense of being an outsider in what is now her home, even as she continues to participate in community organizing, vigils and marches to combat the violence constantly ripping through her community.

It's absolutely everything I hoped for in a Sicilian farming memoir, but lucky me, was also so much more.

[Bart Everson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take a year to read this book.

That's what I did, anyhow. The book is divided into seasonal sections, and (less obvious at first glance) each of the eleven chapters corresponds to one month of the year, starting with November. The epilogue covers the twelfth month.

In total, it's a journal of one year in Sicily, one year in one woman's life. She happens to be an American expatriate, but one who has married a native and raised children on the island. Thus she offers a unique perspective, both insider and outsider. She loves Sicily but does not flinch at portraying the dark side.

I relished this book because of the author's interest in seasonal celebrations, folk culture, mythology and antiquity — all topic which interest me. She also puts a lot of personal detail into the text, so that by the end a nuanced portrait emerges of a complex person, an interesting person, someone I think I'd love to know in real life.

The similarities between Sicilian culture and life in New Orleans are striking.

Once I realized the structure of the book, I took my time with it. I read one chapter each month, savoring the author's prose, which is rich, dense in a good way, and luscious.

[Jerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

On the island of dreck! It irks me that Mary Taylor Simeti is in possession of any of my money! That any publisher found ON PERSEPHONE'S ISLAND worthy of print astounds me! Be warned, you get exactly what is promised, a journal! Simeti's is a dry account, devoid of humor, insight and passion and is written with a lofty phraseology: a deadly combination that had better not be contagious! To be honest, I found the book so dull I was unable to read it straight through, so after eighty pages, I began skiping around in search of entertainment, since there is no story. I found none!
If you're searching for an escape to another place, a glimpse into another life or culture, or just plain fun, look elsewhere! You will find none of the above here! Half a star-because the cover is very nice, if misleading!

[Coppelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary is in love with Sicily. She is a gutsy women who manages to adapt and make the best of things for herself and her family. The amount of research and care taken to describe the many festivals and traditions in Sicilian life is notable. Mary gives us a front row seat into a not so ordinary life. Well written.

[Peg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow, lyrical read. Would have been more interesting if a trip to sicily had been in the works. The author is an expatriate raising her family in a traditional culture. She describes their lives, arranged by the seasons. Lots of agricultural and mythological information, less characterization of her neighbors and friends. Her mother-in-law is the one she brings to life most vividly.

[Margaret D'Anieri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great sense of the place and particularly the history. She is particularly interested in the remnants of Greek mythology that infuse the place, and she should have been a botanist - too much listing of plants. But the variety of people and the differences in place and feel on different parts of the island were captured well for someone who has never been there.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting info on Sicilian life, but too much other description to be a fun read

[Prose before Bros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picturesque and interesting.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spent a few weeks in Sicily over a decade ago and was fascinated by the island and its people. After I had visited, I read several books about the culture of Sicily and remember the saying that the three branches of government are “the Catholic Church, the Mafia, and the Italian government. Mary Simeti lived as an ex-pat American married to an Italian man, who is raising two children in Sicily. She gives a wonderful perspective to the traditional life of the peasant class and the landholder class and the traditional feast days and church holidays throughout the year. The book was written over the course of two decades in the mid-twentieth century and does not reflect the current culture, which began dying out after World War II and was exacerbated by the advent of computers and the Internet.

In Sicily she postulates there are really three seasons: the Fallow period of rain and mud, the Spring of rebirth and growth, and the Fall or Harvest season, which begins with ripening of the first tender greens and vegetables and continues through to the squashes and the end of the tomatoes. Each season contains its own special events, such sowing seeds, tying up the grape vines, watering and weeding and gathering the grain and grapes. The Catholic Church has its feast days and Saint’s Days, many of which include street parades with costumed citizens and giant effigies pulled through the streets by men or tractors.

Always, she is aware that she is of the landowner class and is conscious of always being watched by the workers who come into her home or fields to work. Thievery is expected and constant: cleaners steal, field workers steal, neighbors dig up a tree from the garden in the yard of the Simeti farm and plant it in their own front yard. At harvest time, she sits near the area where the grapes are delivered and makes sure that none are diverted into the carts and baskets of the workers. When a sharecropper delivers the share to the landowner, he often delivers unripe or poor quality produce.

Against the greater tragedies of murders in the streets of the cities, perpetrated by the all-powerful Mafia against its enemies, with judges and innocent bystanders killed by car bombs or targeted by assassins, life in the countryside seems relatively uncomplicated. Everyone knows which families are honest and which are not.

All in all there are many memorable scenes and experiences described in this memoir of Sicilian life.

[Ettore Grillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Taylor Simeti is an American woman that has lived in Sicily since her marriage.
Her book, On Persephone’s Island, is at the same time her diary and also an essay on life in Sicily as she sees it with her own eyes and ideas. Actually, everyone who describes a place, a situation and even a historical event adds something personal to the narration.
Of note, the parallel she makes between Sicily of today and Greek Sicily. Actually, Sicily was Greece, as the south of Italy and the western coast of today’s Turkey. Great Greece was made of city-states. All of them gave life to Greek civilization.
Very interesting is the reference she makes to the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Thesmophoria, both in honor of Demeter, whose most important temple was in Enna, Sicily. The Eleusinian Mysteries and the Thesmophoria were esoteric rites. Only the initiates were allowed to take part in them.
Overall, this book contains useful information about Sicily, its culture and traditions.
Ettore Grillo

[Etta Madden · Rating 4 out of 5]

On Persephone's Island: A Sicilian Journal Mary Taylor SimetiMary Taylor Simeti’s memoir of Sicily as an American expat will not be for everyone. But if you like poetic prose, peppered with references to classical Greece –think, Persephone, of the book’s title, or Pindar’s odes, from which the epigraph is drawn—this book’s for you.

If you like rich descriptions of rustic, rural life, even with the realism of how they are overcome by creeping urban conventions--

If you dream of harvesting, preserving and eating local produce—not merely olives and tomatoes, but lesser-known perazzoli and quinces--

If your curiosity draws you to details of centuries-old village feast days—from the panelli of St. Lucy’s Day in Palermo to the ornate bread sculptures of St. Joseph’s Day in Salemi--

If you fantasize about ancient farmhouses awaiting renovation for habitation and family gatherings--

If the mafia intrigues you--

If you want to witness the annual vendemmia but can’t afford to be abroad for the grape harvest and wine production--

If you want to know about the cycle of the seasons on this paradisal island, ruled over at times by Greeks, Normans, Arabics and others—this book’s definitely for you.
Continue reading this review on my website https://ettamadden.com/blog/a-sicilia...

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a travelogue and a kind of memoir of life on the island of Sicily. It connects the author, an American expatriate, to Persephone. These are two women who live in two different worlds. Both are involved with life on the land. To that end, Mary Taylor Simeti paints a gorgeous picture of life on Sicily. The land is the main event with descriptions of wildflowers, the sea, an erupting volcano, and crops that are growing. it seems the Sicily has a huge fiesta for many of its saints, and the parades, food, frivolity sound just fabulous. She does not shy away from the influence of the Mafia in Sicily. The beauty of the land contrasts with the terror of the Mafia. However, the book has still spoken to me and I would love to visit Sicily!

[Gerri Bauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back when the Internet was new and Amazon was a bookstore, I discovered this book when searching for anything I could find on the daily and personal lives of Sicilians. Beyond the stereotypes, I mean. As a second-generation American of Sicilian and Slovenian descent, I've long been on a quest to learn more about my ancestral ethnicities. I loved this book and plan to re-read it as a physical copy is still on my bookshelf. Although probably considered historical now, the book was fairly current when I first read it. I greatly enjoyed and appreciated Simenti's story. (She was an American who married a Sicilian and moved permanently to the island.)

[Tom Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very well written and wonderful mix of mythology, travel, culture, and food. Highly recommended for insights into Sicilian culture and history, archeology and food. Simeti travels through the seasons in Sicily as well as around the island where she lives. There is a special focus on festivals and regional foods and dishes as she raises a family in urban Palermo and helps run a farm in rural Bosco while successfully avoiding interactions with the mafia.

[Diane Webber-thrush · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book that I read after Francine Prose's Sicilian Odyssey -- another book that I loved and read after our visit to Sicily in the summer of 2018. This is a book that combines memoir, history, mythology, ecology and geology. Not quite like anything I've read before and written in a restrained, eloquent voice. It took me forever to read it, because I savored it a few pages at a time.

[Sacha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Het duurde even voor ik door had dat er geen echte verhaallijn in dit boek zit. Ze babbelt gewoon over een jaar in haar leven als tuinliefhebber, moeder en cultuursnuiver in Sicilië. Er zitten interessante stukken tussen, over culturele tradities, het boeren leven met druiven en olijven oogst, de mafia, en de geschiedenis van Sicilië. Maar het is allemaal vrij langdradig, met veel aandacht voor planten.

[Joana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this before my trip to Sicily and finished when I was in Sicily. I didn't realize until later that she was the author who was on Anthony Bourdain's show when he traveled to Sicily. This book is a year in the author's life in Sicily with a focus on the cultural, such as different festivals. It was fun to read about the places I was traveling in Sicily.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more.
I tried reading it a while back, then shelved it for a bit.
Since we were headed to Sicily on our travels, I decided to pick it up again.
I loved and learned a lot in the beginning of this book, but then it began to drag so much that I couldn't maintain my attention.
I gave up.

[Steven Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed parts of this, especially the beginning with its winter and December scenes, perfect timing for my next visit. I appreciated her American perspective, especially on food and traditions, and the suggestions to dig deeper into mythology and history. There was also some good stuff about the mafia. A bit long, but enjoyable.