Goliarda Sapienza

Goliarda Sapienza (Italian pronunciation: [ɡoˈljarda saˈpjɛntsa]; 10 May 1924 – 30 August 1996) was an Italian actress and writer. She is best known for her 1998 novel The Art of Joy.

Life

Early life

Sapienza was born on 10 May 1924 in Catania, Sicily, to Maria Giudice (1880–1953) and Giuseppe "Peppino" Sapienza (1880–1949). Giudice, a prominent journalist originally from Lombardy, was a feminist activist as well as a prominent member of the Italian Socialist Party who had been repeatedly imprisoned for her beliefs. Giudice collaborated with national and international left-wing intellectuals, including Angelica Balabanoff, Antonio Gramsci, Lenin, and Umberto Terracini. Giudice had a "free union" relationship with Carlo Civardi, who had died while fighting as a soldier in World War I, leaving her with seven children to raise. In 1919 Giudice moved to Sicily to help organize the local socialist organizations and trade unions. It was in Catania that she met Peppino Sapienza, who had raised himself from the working class to become a lawyer. He was later to help draft the Constitution of Italy.

Giudice and Sapienza started a family together (though they never married). Goliarda Sapienza was their second child, and was named for her brother, Goliardo, who died before she was born. She had many step-siblings from her parents’ previous families who lived together in the same house in Via Pistone, Catania. Giudice was at one time the manager of the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci at the newspaper Grido del Popolo; Gramsci had acted as a babysitter to Sapienza's older siblings.