The pedagogical and reparative potential of individual and collective non-violent anti-mafia activity is the focus of Paula M. Salvio's monograph The Story-Takers. Drawing on Roberto Saviano, Carolyn Steedman and Adriana Cavarero, Salvio defines ‘story-taking’ in anti-mafia contexts as the listening to, shaping, and telling of a concealed narrative, encouraging solidarity among audiences who might then be compelled to adopt ‘ethical, non-violent’ mafia resistance (p. 4). Salvio contends that to reach justice in societies ‘in transition’ away from historical conflict, misgovernance and inequality, and towards solidarity and collective agency, narratives must be told in radical ways by journalists, educators, and activists. Their work is assessed by Salvio in terms of its ‘public pedagogical’ potential: whether and how it instigates the civic trust and social cohesion which, she argues, are key to disrupting mafia control.

Salvio's focus is on mafia activity in Sicily, in particular the years of the Great Mafia War (1978–1992), and the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (1992). Drawing on a theoretical framework underpinned by cultural, gender, and psychoanalytic theories, Story-Takers provides a thorough deconstruction of examples of civic action across six case studies. In each case study Salvio highlights the contradictory role memory plays in working towards social change.

In Chapter 1 analysis of the Falcone Tree, a shrine dedicated to Giovanni Falcone, draws on Judith Butler's notion of ‘tarrying with grief’ and Freud's concept of ‘endless mourning’ to conclude that this is a site in which public mourning is both institutionalised and fetishised. Ritualised mourning denies the possibility of social interaction and change through unregulated, creative mourning practices. The limitations of martyrdom as a means of remembering is further explored in Chapter 2, in which the significance of a Facebook page dedicated to the often forgotten anti-mafia prosecutor Francesca Morvillo, killed alongside her husband Falcone, is explored. Salvio argues that this page fails to achieve a narrative of resistance: instead, Morvillo's memory is confined within a centripetal framework of victimhood.

The varied and innovative work of anti-mafia organisations Addiopizzo and Addiopizzo Travel and their objective to educate citizens about being part of an ethical economy is the subject of Chapter 3. Societal renewal through engagement with narratives of trauma and mourning, alongside active support of victims of extortion, is considered as an example of Hannah Arendt's idea of ‘nativity’, since these actions represent ‘imaginative, spontaneous, non-violent’ anti-mafia protest (p. 74). In a similar way, Salvio explores the role of citizen journalism in Chapter 4, with particular reference to the organisation Corleone Dialagos, a digital grassroots news association that aims to educate citizens about historic and current anti-mafia resistance. Salvio argues that such journalism resists contemporary media privatisation but its potential for civic engagement is limited because of its selective use of narratives and its attempts to define clear mafia and anti-mafia boundaries.

Chapters 5 and 6 both assess the pedagogical value of the work of the photojournalists Letizia Battaglia and Franco Zecchin. Salvio considers the ways in which their photography disrupts omertà, for example by reclaiming public spaces as sites in which to exhibit mafia violence, thereby confronting the public with traumatic evidence in an effort to provoke social change through the generation of new civic awareness.

Through exploration of these case studies and the wealth of unconventional primary materials analysed, Salvio has coordinated a compelling study of diverse anti-mafia movements and their potential to make ‘meaning through storytelling’ (p. 141). Her exploration into where each case succeeds and fails to fulfil ‘pedagogical impulse[s]’ provides the field of mafia studies with a groundbreaking and comprehensive understanding of the potential of different forms of civic action to bring about social justice (p. 137). This is therefore a significant text for any study of collective trauma in the face of mafia violence. It is also an important work for contemporary meridionalists; Salvio's plurivocal and microhistorical approach convincingly challenges the persistent understanding of crime in Italy's South as resulting from a Southern-wide lack of civic sense.

However, one significant limitation to Story-Takers is the ambiguity between how the case of the mafia in Sicily relates to the work's larger framework of transitional justice on an Italian national level. While the study is framed as ‘Italy's non-violent protest against the Mafia’, the decision to focus entirely on Sicilian anti-mafia movements is not explained. In both the Introduction and Chapter 3, the damage of Italian mafias to Italy's economy and society is mentioned, as is the threat of global mafia activity, and yet it is the specificities of historical trauma regarding the Sicilian Mafia and Sicilian society that are highlighted in each case study. Is the reader meant to assume that the collective effects of the Sicilian Mafia on Sicilian society can be translated into a national public context and, if so, are we supposed to understand these specific socio-cultural examples of Sicilian mafia resistance as a reflection of Italy's non-violent protest against the mafia? This remains unclear. In the same vein, Sicilian collective trauma and non-violent protests are only superficially contextualised with those relating to the Camorra, while Italy's most powerful crime syndicate, the ’Ndrangheta, is not mentioned. Given the transplantation of Italian mafias outside their regions of origin both into Italy's North and globally, this lack of clarity concerning the boundaries of the study limits its potential to illuminate if, and how, these examples of civic action can be understood on a national societal level.

That said, reading Story-Takers as a study of specifically Sicilian non-violent resistance to the mafia lends itself nonetheless to a greater understanding of the possibility for societal renewal in the midst of collective trauma. Furthermore, the act of taking these stories of resistance and compiling them in an accessible, interdisciplinary and therefore widely relevant monograph itself works towards the fulfilment of Salvio's pedagogical manifesto. Story-Takers is ultimately a rigorous compilation of and commentary on the efficacy of contemporary information and memory sharing platforms employed in the ongoing work of artists, activists, educators, and journalists in their fight to counter the collective societal trauma of the Mafia in Sicily.