Joyce Lussu, the Resistance and War: a politically oriented autobiography

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze Joyce Lussu’s writing in reference to the Resistance and the theme of war, to highlight how the author's cosmopolitan identity, her geographical, gendered and literary marginality give her writing a hybrid, boundary between genres and politically oriented character. Specifically, the early prose work Fronti e frontiere, the 1970s work L’uomo che voleva nascere donna, the autobiography Portrait, and the author’s approach to poetry will be analyzed, with references also to her relationship with revolutionary poets and her tendency to reuse autobiographical pieces in an attempt at identity construction.