Li Vespri Siciliani

Sicilians are a clannish people. This is especially true in the Diaspora, where they more often than not stick together out of necessity due to being a minority.

As a result, family bonds are formed through more than just biology. If you've known someone since childhood, and their parents and your parents are friends, then they become your cousin or in some extreme cases, your sibling.

The Trinacria is the ancient symbol of Sicily, stemming from the Greek period. It is a Medusa head with three legs. It is also the alternate name of Sicily. When the Kingdom of Sicily was split in half in the 13th century, the part centered around Naples insisted on being called Sicily, believing that the island of Sicily should be called Trinacria instead. In the history of Sicily, this story is far from out of the ordinary, as things have all but always been more complex than was probably necessary.

This story revolves around myself and two cousins. One is a biological cousin, and the other a close friend that I've known since I was a teenager. We are all Sicilians, we are all from the Brooklyn section of New York City, but we all belong to three different segments within the Sicilian diaspora.

My biological cousin is, like myself, 75% Sicilian. She was raised in a very liberal household, and was an only child. As a result, she was spoiled. She shuns many of our customs and traditions, deplores our religion, and has been dating an outsider - a Greek - since she was in high school. She is now twenty-two and a professional seeking the American dream. She represents the faction within the Sicilian diaspora that identifies with their host country. She is an American. She has an American passport, but she does not speak Italian, and has never been to Italy.

My best friend, like many of my friends since childhood, is also Sicilian. His father came here from Southern Sicily as a child and refused to become an American citizen. As a result, he simply keeps having his visa renewed. His mother died when he was very young, and his father became good friends with my parents, and as a result of us growing up together, he and his brothers are usually considered my cousins, although he occasionally refers to me as his brother. He has the trinacria symbol tattooed on his back, but it is the Italian tricolore that is on his bedroom wall. All of his girlfriends since high school have been Italian-American, but none were Sicilian-American. His current girlfriend is Baresi, and knows little of her culture. He has never left the country, and while he can have an Italian and/or an American passport, he has neither. He often uses the terms "Sicilian" and "Italian" interchangeably to identify himself. He represents the faction within the Sicilian diaspora that chooses to associate with the wider Italian diaspora, in other words, he is an Italian-American. They occupy the middle ground between abandoning your culture entirely, and embracing it fully.

I, in contrast to them, have both my Italian and my American passport. I have lived in the United States, Sicily, and mainland Italy. I have the Sicilian flag on my bedroom wall, and while I have dated girls from several different ethnic groups, it is my fellow Sicilian-Americans that I am drawn to the most. If I were more financially stable, I would gladly purchase a house in Sicily and live there either full-time, or for several months out of the year. I belong to the most conservative of the three camps, the Sicilian-American faction who don't like to identify as Italian-American, nor as simply American.

Just as the woman's head on the trinacria has three legs, the three divisions within the Sicilian diaspora still belong to the same body, even though they are facing different directions.