Romanticising the mafia is despicable

This is a topic we need to handle with kid gloves. I am probably going to offend most of the BookTok & InstaBook community but I truly believe this needs to be said.

You need to stop romanticising the mafia and I will tell you why. After reading this, you are free to keep reading your mafia romance books but I would just like you to be aware of what the mafia truly is and how it destroyed (and still destroys daily!) the lives of so many people.

I come from Sicily. The mafia is one of the many Sicilian stereotypes. I need to endure mafia jokes daily, which are not funny when you truly know what is going on and what the media does not talk about. What I have noticed so far, is that Europeans outside of Italy are not aware of the seriousness of the situation. Therefore, I do not blame them for the jokes but I would like to help them inform themselves.

Giuseppe di Matteo. You probably have no idea who he is, and you will never meet him, as he was melted in acid at the age of fourteen after his father had started collaborating with anti-mafia leaders. He was kidnapped when he was twelve, held hostage for 779 days, and then melted in acid.

You will never meet Giovanni Falcone or Paolo Borsellino, two magistrates killed alongside their families for speaking up against the mafia. Giovanni was driving to Palermo with his wife when his car exploded on the highway, while Paolo’s car exploded near his mother’s house when he was on his way to visit her.

The “mafia bosses” you all are reading about in your novels are not real. The real bosses are ugly, mean, and murderous, and I can ensure you they would not “kill everyone except for their baby girl, who they shower with nice dresses and fun adventures”. Mafia bosses go to small business owners and threaten to burn their shops down unless they pay a huge amount of money. Mafia’s money mostly comes from poor people who need to pay them to survive because mafia bosses — the real ones you should fear instead of romanticising — do not hesitate to kill. 

You will luckily never experience the fear I felt as a child whenever I heard helicopters flying over my neighbourhood, looking for a mafia criminal who could have used my own terrace to jump and escape. You will never feel frightened to look into the darkness at night and pray they are not there to kidnap you because somebody in your family has debts to pay. You will never feel the mixture of adrenaline and fright when you finally are older and can speak up against it, releasing a generational trauma. I talked about it in depth in an interview with Babette Englebert (link), who happens to be my sister-in-law, the day that Messina Denaro, the biggest of mafia bosses, was arrested. Happy reading.