Women of Honour

Book excerpt: The role of women in the Italian mafias has long been overlooked. So who are they? Pure and virtuous Madonnas or dangerous Godmothers? Reduced to victim status and relegated to domestic life, women serve as the mafia's respectable facade: virtuous and docile. But, as Milka Kahn and Anne Veron reveal in this absorbing book, women have always been at the heart of Italy's criminal organisations. While the men are behind bars or on the run, it is left to their wives and mothers to uphold and pass on the 'family values'. Once widowed, some push their sons to vendetta; others become mafia chiefs in their own right. Yet many also decide to risk their lives, collaborating with the authorities and renouncing mafia society in search of normality.Through first-hand accounts of submission, complicity and revolt, Women of Honour paints a complex and fascinating portrait of the women in Italy's mafias who have overcome a culture of silence to share their extraordinary stories.--