I'm glad you enjoyed it, & thought the story worked for the theme.
I did hesitate over your choice to emphasize Blaise's ethnic background as solely Italian/Sicilian, rather than react to and work with his canon description as black. I find this interpretation interesting, because I was envisaging Isolde as both Black and Sicilian, and Blaise as Black with two Black, Sicilian parents (I suspect he wouldn't identify as Sicilian after living in so many different places). To be honest I know nothing about racial / ethnic identification in Sicily, let alone amongst mafiosi, so I don't know whether the way I imagined Isolde and Luca is realistic or not. Maybe I wasn't successful in what I was trying to achieve, but my intention (especially in Part 1) was to denaturalize normative Anglo-American whiteness and problematise whiteness as a beauty ideal.
Thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking comment!
I did hesitate over your choice to emphasize Blaise's ethnic background as solely Italian/Sicilian, rather than react to and work with his canon description as black. I find this interpretation interesting, because I was envisaging Isolde as both Black and Sicilian, and Blaise as Black with two Black, Sicilian parents (I suspect he wouldn't identify as Sicilian after living in so many different places). To be honest I know nothing about racial / ethnic identification in Sicily, let alone amongst mafiosi, so I don't know whether the way I imagined Isolde and Luca is realistic or not. Maybe I wasn't successful in what I was trying to achieve, but my intention (especially in Part 1) was to denaturalize normative Anglo-American whiteness and problematise whiteness as a beauty ideal.
Thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking comment!