Breaking the Code of Silence Woman to Woman

Abstract

We sat across the kitchen table from each other, two women related by blood, alone for the first time: an eighty-three-year-old Sicilian aunt and me, her fifty-one-year-old Sicilian American niece. On her morning errands, my cousin Cettina had driven me in her small Fiat to our aunt’s house. Aunt Rosina had just bought a half-bushel of artichokes from a street vendor. Her doctor had warned her against the effort of preserving food due to a heart condition, but she just smiled, told me how little she paid for the artichokes, and assured me that it would not be much work at all. She made me a cup of tea—since, avoiding caffeine, I had asked for a decaffeinated tea instead of the ubiquitous, strong Italian espresso cof- fee. I set up the tape recorder, prefacing our session with: “You remember the dis- sertation we talked about over the telephone?” My fluency in the Italian language was more limited then, but everyone understood me, or so I thought “Yes, yes,” she responded. I began to ask about her life, including her early family life, school- ing, life as a single woman, work, engagement, marriage, children, and health. She spilled forth the story of her life from her heart. Little did I realize the problems this conversation would create.