When Ronald Regan nominated Antonin Scalia to the United States Supreme Court in 1986, my Sicilian father was ecstatic. Finally, he thought, some positive publicity about Sicilians! Scalia's family had emigrated from a small town near Caltanisetta, and to have one of our own appointed to the highest court in the land was cause for jubilation. As I grew up, my father took pains to remind me about the great cultural contributions made by the people of that magical island.

The Sicilians wrote the first literature in an Italian tongue, he insisted, and it was on Sicilian soil that Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor and Re di Sicilia, organized the first modern state, not to mention, he would add, that Sicily had produced not one, but two, noble laureates in literature: Pirandello and Quasimodo.

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Source: http://www.timesofsicily.com