Introducing: The Sicilian Inheritance

Call Your Grandmother

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Comedy, Relationships

5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every family has an origin story – for author Jo Piazza (Under the Influence, Wilder) her family's is a murder mystery. For as long as she can remember the Piazzas have told the story of their Sicilian roots going back over a hundred years ago: one by one the sons and then their father sailed off to America to carve out a better life. Their mother, Lorenza Marsala was supposed to join them – but she never made it. She was murdered by the Sicilian mafia, they said. The truth of what happened has morphed like a game of telephone through the generations. Various versions of the story claim she was killed by the Black Hand, others insisted she was a witch, killed over a bad spell. Now, Jo is determined to untangle the twisted narrative which just might bridge the gap from cinematic mob fantasies to an unexpected reality. Join her in Sicily on a family vacation/fact finding mission in which she goes to the scene of the crime, confronts mafia experts, consults mediums, and tracks down Italian officials, determined to set the record straight on her great, great grandmother’s mysterious disappearance.

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0:00.0	Well, nobody knows for sure. There's two stories. All I know is just obviously here to say.
0:07.0	Okay, so here's what I was told.
0:11.0	Every family has an origin story. My grandpa sent to the
0:15.4	together immigrated to the US. The boys came over from Italy two by two. So they
0:21.0	came through Ellis Island, settled in in New York. They left the mother behind. His wife stays behind to tend to a family farm. Mine happens to be a murder mystery.
0:33.0	Apparently, still in Sicily, there's still tons of mafia.
0:38.0	What I heard was that the mom was interested in her land.
0:42.0	She refused to sell. Now this part I don't know if it's true.
0:46.7	Did Mopje allegedly throw it from her and killed her?
0:50.8	For as long as I can remember my my children.
0:53.6	For as long as I can remember, my families believe that my great-great-grandmother,
0:57.4	Lorenza Marsala, was murdered in Sicily.
1:01.5	It's a story that's been passed down in a hundred year game of telephone.
1:05.0	The facts are constantly changing.
1:09.0	Can you hear how they killed her?
1:10.0	No, I never heard any details. I was asking somebody about her and they just looked at me and they kept saying
1:19.6	Morte, no, and they're like they shut it down they wouldn't talk really.
1:24.0	But now I'm going back to Sicily to find out the truth.
1:32.0	They knew about the murders.
1:35.0	They knew about it, right?
1:37.0	Yeah, they did.
1:38.0	They wouldn't tell it, because they were frightened.
	...

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