Tina, Mafia Soldier

Locations
Call Number: Mystery / Cutrufelli, Maria, Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / General / Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Mystery / Cutrufelli, Maria	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / General / Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / General / Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024

First published in Italian in 1994 under the title "Canto al Deserto: Storia di Tina, soldato di mafia".
"In the 1980s, a teenage girl terrorizes the Sicilian town of Gela. Tina's father was in Cosa Nostra and was brutally shot dead in front of her when she was just eight; after that, she made it her mission in life to join the mafia, although women are traditionally not allowed in. Nicknamed 'a masculidda, or "the tomboy," Tina is notorious through Gela for her recklessness, cruelty, and complete disregard for societal expectations. When a news article is published about Tina's latest crimes, an unnamed teacher living in Rome feels compelled to write a novel about her-even though it means returning to her home island of Sicily to gather material. She and Tina circle around each other in a hypnotic, dangerous dance of obsession and violence until their first, and last, explosive meeting. In this ruminative, literary exploration of what it means to live in the mafia's dark shadow, the narrator's observations and interactions are counterposed against recollections of Tina's life as she grows up from a child into a soldier of the mafia, shedding gender constraints along the way. Based closely on Maria Rosa Cutrufelli's experiences as a Sicilian and on the true case of a teenage girl who became a mafia soldier, Song to the Desert is a powerful work of autofiction whose original Italian publication was a watershed moment for Italian crime fiction, as it shed a light on a corner of mafia literature that had previously gone unexplored: the role of women in the mafia, and the impact that the mafia has on women and girls"-- Provided by publisher.

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