Working-class women’s writing of activism and imprisonment: political violence and emotions in Cold War Italy

This article analyses women’s experiences of agency and imprisonment, focusing on memoirs and correspondence written by left-wing working-class women witnesses and victims of the harsh political violence ravaging Cold War Bologna in the early 1950s. Working-class women’s gendered memoirs and correspondence, long stored in family archives and recently rediscovered, powerfully question the male-oriented collective narratives of those events. These materials reveal how writing acts as a medium for sharing intimate feelings with spouses and family members during imprisonment, and for recalling historical events from a gendered standpoint. The analysis of these women’s writing tackles the interweaving of private (ie family and female solidarity networks) and public (ie political engagement) in the narratives of labour struggles, political violence and imprisonment, thereby overcoming traditional, deep-rooted boundaries.