About Tina, Mafia Soldier

Tina, Mafia Soldier: A conversation with Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, translator Robin Pickering-Iazzi, and scholar Serena Todesco

Hosted by Edvige Giunta and Khadija Diop

A classic of Italian feminist mafia literature about a gender-bending mafiosa and the writer who becomes obsessed with telling her story Sicily, 1980s: When she was just eight years old, Tina watched as her father, a member of Cosa Nostra, was murdered in cold blood. Now a teenager, she terrorizes her hometown of Gela, having made it her mission to join the mafia, an organization traditionally forbidden to women as made members. Nicknamed ’a masculidda, or “the tomboy,” Tina has taken charge of her own gang, and is notorious for her cruelty and reckless disregard for societal expectations. When a news article is published about Tina’s latest crimes, a teacher living in Rome feels compelled to write a novel about her—even though it means returning to her native Sicily to gather material. She and Tina circle around each other in a dangerous dance of obsession and violence until their first, and last, explosive meeting. This groundbreaking exploration of gender identity and clear-eyed presentation of an unseen side of the mafia is a landmark literary achievement by one of Italy’s feminist icons.

 

Maria Rosa Cutrufelli was born in Messina, Sicily, and raised shuttling back and forth between Sicily and Bologna; she now resides in Rome. A major figure in Italian feminist movements, she boasts a long, prolific career as a journalist, cultural critic, and novelist. After earning her degree in Literature from the University of Bologna, she founded and edited the journal Tuttestorie. She also authored several works of travel literature, largely devoted to Africa, where she lived for three years. Her works have been translated into some twenty languages.

 

Robin Pickering-Iazzi is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Among her published works in translation are the novel Suspicion by Laura Grimaldi, Unspeakable Women: Selected Short Stories Written by Italian Women during Fascism, and the acclaimed Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature.

 

Serena Todesco is a literary translator and a scholar of contemporary Italian literature. She has dedicated a number of academic articles to the themes of South, historical memory, identity, and motherhood in the novels of Italian contemporary women writers (Elena Ferrante, Anna Maria Ortese, Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Nadia Terranova, Maria Attanasio, Giuliana Saladino, Maria Occhipinti, Viola Di Grado, Slavenka Drakulić). Sicilian women’s historical fiction is at the center of Tracce a margine. Scritture a firma femminile nella narrativa storica siciliana contemporanea (Pungitopo 2017), while in 2021 came out Campo a due. Dialogo con Maria Rosa Cutrufelli (Giulio Perrone Editore), an exchange on feminism and writings in the Italian South. She lives between Sicily and Zagreb (Croatia).

Center for the Arts @ NJCU