Collection of anecdotes documents lives of grassroots Valletta community

Beltin: Stejjer Minn Nies Minsija, by Ramona Depares, takes a grassroots look at the lives of the original Valletta communities and asks whether this cultural identity is in danger of dying.

Valletta, we’re always told, was a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen. We all grew up on stories about the Knights, and the nobles and their glorious architecture. But what about the rest of the people, you know, those people who throughout the centuries lived away from the palaces. What about… the real inhabitants of the city?

Beltin: Stejjer minn Nies Minsija is a book written from the grassroots, about the grassroots. Award-winning culture journalist Ramona Depares, born and raised in Valletta, zones in her pen on the woman who helps her husband in the grocery store, the footballer hero who lives down the road, the nanna who babysits her grandchild, the man who runs the whole carnival show.

“Growing up in the city is a very particular life experience,” said Depares, who lived a great part of her life in Valletta. And that is exactly what she wanted to capture in the book: the people which give the city its soul. The Knights gave it the shell, and a very beautiful one at that, but no...