Rossana Rossanda

Rossana Rossanda, active at a young age in the Resistance in Milan and soon thereafter a leader of the Italian Communist Party in Milan where she directed its prestigious Casa della Cultura, she was asked by Palmiro Togliatti to head the party’s National Cultural Commission. Her famous 1968 essay, in which she declared her support for the student movement, led to her and Lucio Magri’s expulsion from the party in 1969. Together they directed the monthly Il Manifesto, later a daily from 1971. Among her many books, her autobiography La ragazza del secolo scorso has been published in English (The Comrade from Milan) (2005), Greek, and Spanish.