Examining the ways in which Italian women articulate their identities through autobiography, this volume considers the work of five women writers from the 17th-century to the present day. It draws connections between self-writing and the debate over women's roles, both traditional and transgressive. This text includes discussion of the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman - Camilla Faa Gonzaga's 1622 memoir as well as the autobiographies of Enif Robert, Fausta Cialente, Rita Levi Montalcini and Luisa Passerini. The author demonstrates the complex negotiations over identity contained within them, negotiations that challenge dichotomies between male and female, maternal and paternal, and private and public.