The emblem for Pirandellian humor is the god Janus who has two faces, one that laughs and one that cries, or as Pirandello said, the face that laughs is laughing at the crying face. And it is the most characteristic form of Sicilian humor embodying the sweet and the sour,...

The most pernicious shortcoming of these texts is the characterization of Sicilians as gangsters, devoted to robbing banks, smuggling drugs, and engaging in countless other criminal activities. I see these teaching materials as one more example of the unfair campaign of negative characterization of Sicilians from their arrival to the...