Luce d'Eramo

Luce d’Eramo (June 17, 1925 in Reims – March 6, 2001 in Rome) was an Italian writer and literary critic. She is best known for her autobiographical novel Deviazione, which recounts her experiences in Germany during World War II. D’Eramo's writings are characterized by interest toward controversial subjects and a search of solutions that would liberate people from physical and mental constraints. Luce d’Eramo (née Lucette Mangione) was born in 1925 in Reims, France. The daughter of Italian parents, she lived in France until the age of fourteen. Her father, an illustrator and painter, lived in Paris from 1912 until 1915 and went back to Italy to fight in the Italian army during the First World War, as a military airplane pilot. After the war he got married and the couple moved back to France where he started a building company. Luce was the youngest of three daughters, of whom the oldest one died in infancy. Her mother served as a voluntary secretary of the Italian Fascio in Paris assisting Italian immigrant workers. In 1938 Luce and her family returned to Italy and stayed at her maternal grandmother's house in Alatri, near Rome. There Luce attended a classical liceo (high school). The change of scene proved a social and cultural shock as Luce tried to adjust to her new life in Italy. The Parisian reality with its modern values and diverse political movements (in 1936, members of the workers' Front Populaire held demonstrations directly below their house) was in sharp contrast to the backward reality of the rural areas Lazio, where processions of barefoot pilgrims walked to the Sanctuary of the Certosa di Trisulti, singing at the top of their voices. Priests and monks were everywhere because their convent stood right behind her grandmother's garden. In Io sono un’aliena, Luce recalled how children in France branded her as the “petite macaroni” (the little macaroni girl) which her Italian classmates from Liceo “Conti Gentili” replaced with a condescending “la francesina” (the little French girl).