“La resistenza delle donne”, Premio Campiello 2023

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Already the author of books on her father’s murder by far-left terrorists, in 1980 (Come mi batte forte il tuo cuore: Storia di mio padre, 2009) and on two massacres by neofascist terrorists in Brescia, 1974 (Una stella incoronata di buio: Storia di una strage impunita, 2013) and in Milano, 1969 (Piazza Fontana: Il processo impossibile, 2019), Benedetta Tobagi (Milano, 1977) moved from the “Anni di piombo” to the Italian Resistance to write La resistenza delle donne, who earned her the latest edition of the prestigious Premio Campiello (won in the past, among others, by Michela Murgia).

Benedetta Tobagi: source

Significantly, also the book winning the second prize at the Campiello 2023, Silvia Ballestra’s La Sibilla: Vita di Joyce Lussu, relates to women’s role during the Italian Resistance, as it explores the life of partisan, translator and writer Joyce Lussu (born Gioconda Beatrice Salvadori Paleotti, 1912-1998).

Tobagi and Ballestra’s success comes with the growing (scholarly) attention to the role played by women (also) during the Italian Resistance against nazi-fascism. This, combined with my personal interest in the topics – i.e. women in history, and the Italian Resistance – lead me to explore the UvA Library relevant holdings, starting with a visit to the P.C. Hoofthuis shelves where, among others, Tobagi’s book stands next to that milestone of Italian wartime diaries represented by Ada Gobetti‘s Diario partigiano, first published in 1956 (see the 2017 post Resistance as friendship: Ada Gobetti’s Diario partigiano).

The Library of Congress Classification Code (D802.I8*) assigned to all the books on the shelves corresponds to the Library of Congress Subject Heading World War, 1939-1945–Underground movements–Italy, and as such helps to group several relevant printed titles on the same spot in the physical library.

Yet: realizing that another book I’ve recently read – and warmly recommend – Giovanna Zangrandi’s I giorni veri: Diario della resistenza, was not on the D802.I8* shelves, and being familiar with some LCC/LCSH’s idiosyncrasies, I decided for a wider exploration of the topic via de UvA CataloguePlus, which could also help discover relevant online sources.

If I run an ‘Advanced search’ in CataloguePlus by ‘subject’ or ‘title’ with (donn* OR women OR woman) (partigian* OR resistenza OR resistan* OR partisan) (italy OR italia*), twenty-two books are retrieved, ten of which are e-publications or have received another classification code than D802.I8*, i.e. they are elsewhere at the P.C. Hoofthuis Library. Nineteen titles (see list below) actually deal with the topic of women of the Italian Resistance.

By adjusting the different components of the search query – dropping (italy OR italia*)? Searching ‘Any field’? Including also journal articles? – it will be possible to vary the results. It will also be worth the effort to run searches for the names of (well-)known women partisans, such as the already mentioned Ada Gobetti (1902-1968), Giovanna Zangrandi (1910-1988), and Joyce Lussu, or Bianca Guidetti Serra (1919-2014), Elsa Oliva (1921-1994), Frida Malan (1917-2002), Silvia Pons (1919-1958), among others.

• Jomarie Alano, A life of resistance : Ada Prospero Marchesini Gobetti (1902-1968), University of Rochester Press, 2016.
• Valeria Paola Babini, Parole armate: Le grandi scrittrici del Novecento italiano tra Resistenza ed emancipazione, La tartaruga, 2018.
• Bruna Bertolo – Ornella Testori, L’ufficiale in bicicletta: Storia partigiana di Lucia Boetto Testori, Neos edizioni, 2023.
• Vera Bessone – Massimo Roccaforte (editors), Partigiane della libertà, NFC Edizioni, 2015.
• Ilenia Carrone, Le donne della Resistenza: La trasmissione della memoria nel racconto dei figli e delle figlie delle partigiane, Infinito edizioni, 2014.
• Giovanni De Luna, La Resistenza perfetta, Feltrinelli, 2015.
• Davide Di Poce – Giulia Vassallo – Elisiana Fratocchi, Il pane e le rose : scritture femminili della Resistenza, Bulzoni editore, 2018.
• Greta Fedele – Sara Troglio, Vera: Resistenza, deportazione e impegno di Vera Michelin-Salomon, Mimesis, 2021.
• Ada Gobetti, Diario partigiano, Einaudi, 2014.
• Ada Gobetti, Partisan diary: A woman’s life in the Italian resistance, Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Iole Mancini – Concetto Vecchio, Un amore partigiano, Feltrinelli, 2022.
• Luisa Manfredi King, Ero proprio “uno” di loro: Una comandante partigiana in Bassa Valtellina, Edizioni SEB 27, 2017.
• Caroline Moorehead, A house in the mountains: The women who liberated Italy from fascism, Vintage, 2020.
• Rossella Pace, I liberali non hanno canzoni: Maria Giulia Cardini, storia di una partigiana, Rubbettino, 2022.
• Rossella Pace – Virginia Minoletti Quarello, Partigiane liberali: Organizzazione, cultura, guerra e azione civile, Rubbettino, 2020.
• Michela Ponzani, Guerra alle donne: Partigiane, vittime di stupro, “amanti del nemico” 1940-45, Einaudi, 2021.
• Elena Porciani, Le donne nella narrativa della Resistenza: Rappresentazioni del femminile e stereotipi di genere, Villaggio Maori edizioni, 2016.
• Ilenia Rossini (editor), Un fiore che non muore: La voce delle donne nella Resistenza italiana, Red Star Press, 2014.
• Benedetta Tobagi, La Resistenza delle donne, Einaudi, 2022.