This book focuses on the autobiographical poetry of early 20thcentury author Antonia Pozzi and her lifelong friend and fellow poet Vittorio Sereni most particularly on the autobiographical format of their writing and its role as a mode of passive resistance to Fascist control a mode of resistance familiar to womens writing even before the onset of Fascist totalitarianism. While Sereni is by far the betterknown author his response to the war experience and particularly to imprisonment recalls Pozzis work on a number of levels. In the diaries of both authors autobiography functions as a means of constantly reasserting the self as a unique and separate individual against the totalizing forces of Fascist propaganda.