Rosa Balistreri ‘ I am not a singer, I am an activist with guitar’
Rosa Balistreri (1927–1990) was the indomitable voice of Sicily—hoarse, urgent, and incandescent with the stories of the island’s working poor. Born in Licata to a carpenter father and a housewife mother, she grew up without schooling, sent to menial work as a child. At sixteen she entered an arranged marriage with Gioacchino Torregrossa; when he gambled away their daughter Angela’s dowry, Rosa attempted to kill him. He did not die; […]
