Sicilians are raised to hate our island – but those of us who flee are seen as the enemy | Viola Di Grado

Wwhen i moved from italy to london 15 Years ago, one of the things I found most baffling was how people in such a gloriously multicultural city still formed social groups based on where they came from. At first I thought it was something to do with my personality, but one day the reason became clearer when I walked into a coffee shop. As I ordered, I recognized the barista’s Sicilian accent, but I switched to Italian and explained that I was also from Sicily: at that point the barista’s smile died and his tone became very rude.

In the months that followed, similar incidents occurred in bars and restaurants. Every time I tried to strike up a conversation with a Sicilian colleague, they gave me the cold shoulder. When I thought about it, I realized that people in Sicily bonded over their sense of not belonging. This perceived alienation from our hometown and from our fellow inhabitants is a curse that every Sicilian carries with them, but is not always aware of.

During my childhood and teenage years, the recurring pastime at family dinners and gatherings of friends seemed to be to complain profusely about Sicily and the Sicilians. Whether it was about institutions or the moral behavior of individuals, every anecdote was meant to prove how Sicilian society was doomed to failure.

The shadow of the mafia and corruption hung over our beautiful island, so when my parents asked me why I wanted to move to Northern Italy to study and not even look at what the local universities had to offer, it felt like a surreal question, akin to an unsolvable Zen riddle: I was so used to despising the place where I grew up that I had never considered staying after graduating from high school. Only later did I discover that such stubborn anger was not the only possible relationship one could have with one’s birthplace.

The mass migration of Sicilians to northern Italy or abroad (very often both, in two steps) has always been a major problem. Since I left, more than 25,000 Sicilian university students have moved to universities in central and northern Italy or abroad and have not returned, leaving the island with a shortage of key professionals such as doctors. So much so that in March it had to hire hospital staff from abroad to fill 1,494 vacancies. In Messina, our third-largest city just across the water from mainland Italy, the population has declined by 9% in the 20 years since 2001, leaving a preponderance of people over 65.

This phenomenon is certainly not unique to Sicily, but although an exodus of young, highly educated people is usually called a “brain drain” in English, it is always a “flight of brains” – brains’ escape – in Italian. This distinction is important because, while the concept of a drain is purely descriptive and non-judgmental, an escape is a desperate and voluntary action: you escape from a prison, and you do it because you feel you have no choice (a popular saying in Sicily is “with the following supplies“, “to leave is to succeed”).

But why is it so inevitable to flee, and so tragic to stay? If you were to ask most students, they would say their choice was motivated by educational and economic reasons, and Sicily does indeed have a much higher unemployment rate of 15.9%, compared to the national average of 7.9% and the Northern Italian average of 4.6%. It is also among the poorest Italian regions in terms of average income. We have a history of large investment gaps between north and south, and this is likely to get worse under the government of Giorgia Meloni after a bill was approved in June allowing wealthier northern regions to keep more of their tax revenues – a move long advocated by northern Italian states – leaving southern Italy with even fewer financial resources.

But I think the Sicilians’ urge to flee and our self-hatred go back a long way: they are deeply rooted in our historical identity as witnesses to constant invasions. From the Byzantines to the Muslim Arabs and Berbers, to the Normans and then the Spanish, we have been the cultural playground of a series of civilizations that have left us with the sheer impossibility of forging our own identity and with a visceral desire to escape.

More recently, despite the island’s attempts to distance itself from its mafia image, the sad truth is that while its beauty and delicious food now draw tourists from all over the world (partly due to TV shows like The White Lotus ), the dark motif of its history still influences most stories. This isn’t helped when the son of a former mafia boss posts a message on social media wishing his followers “happy holidays” on Ferragosto – Italy’s national holiday, which falls on August 15. He used the family’s old address in the town of Corleone (made infamous in The Godfather ), even though the address had been renamed six years ago in tribute to anti-mafia judge Cesare Terranova, who was shot dead by the mafia in 1979. (The post was later edited after it angered and upset the town’s residents.)

And just last month, a British friend sent me an Instagram reel from comedian Jimmy Carr joking about an Italian couple living in the quiet suburban town of Hemel Hempstead, saying they’d probably been sent there on a mafia witness relocation program. The Italian media, too, continues to portray us as criminals and good-for-nothings, with mainstream TV shows feeding off the widespread idea of ​​a backward, folkloric island.

I’ve tried to keep in touch with my friends in Sicily, but to no avail: the last time I saw one, when I was home for Christmas, she said, “I feel a mixture of admiration and envy for you,” and then stopped responding to my texts. Sicilians seem to have two choices: either forge your identity as an alienated expat who fled your homeland, or become a resentful local who stayed.

I believe that the first step towards a healthier relationship with ourselves should be a shift in the narrative. That shift should be politically motivated by drastically reducing the government’s financial plans, so that southern Italy can have access to more resources.

At the same time, I believe that in today’s troubled political landscape – often fueled by extremist nationalist sentiments that sow division in the name of unity – the peculiar case of Sicily also offers us Europeans the opportunity to rethink our ideas about belonging. We need to support each other, wherever we come from and wherever we decide to stay.

• Viola Di Grado is an Italian novelist and literary translator. Her latest novel is Blue Hunger

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