Salem Press

Back More

Article Citation
Save this article
Print this Article/Save as PDF
Email this article
Copy Permalink to this Article to Clipboard✓

Great Lives from History: American Women

Ninotchka Rosca

by Evyn Lê Espiritu

Philippine-born activist, feminist, and writer

A leftist activist forced into political exile during the reign of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Rosca is the author of numerous works that critique U.S. imperialism, satirize Philippine dictatorship, and advocate for social reform. Working with women's solidarity organizations such as GABRIELA, she has sought to end human-rights violations in the Philippines and elsewhere.

Born: 1946

Birthplace: Philippines

Full name: Ninotchka Rosca (nih-NOCH-kuh ROS-kuh)

Area of Achievement: Literature, activism, women's rights

Early Life

Ninotchka Rosca was born in the Philippines in 1946, the year the United States granted the nation independence after forty-eight years of rule. A bright student and outspoken activist, she attended the University of the Philippines during the 1960s, where she studied comparative literature. After earning her degree, Rosca began to work as a freelance journalist, publishing articles critical of the regime of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, an ardent opponent of communism whose rule was supported by the U.S. government as part of its efforts to prevent the spread of communist influence in Asia.

In September of 1972, Marcos declared martial law, taking control of the media, curtailing civil liberties, and cracking down on political opponents such as the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Rosca was arrested in 1973 and sent to the Camp Crame Detention Center for six months. In 1977, threatened with a second arrest for her continued activism, Rosca fled the Philippines for the United States, where she obtained a position at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She later moved to New York to write and organize for social justice.

Life's Work

A poetic writer and ardent activist, Rosca interweaves personal experience and Philippine history in her fiction. Her first book, the short-fiction collection Bitter Country and Other Stories (1970), was published while she was still living in the Philippines. Rosca went on to publish The Monsoon Collection (1983) and the novels State of War (1988), which chronicles the lives of ordinary Filipinos under dictatorial rule, and Twice Blessed (1992), which recasts and satirizes Marcos's rise to power. Twice Blessed won the American Book Award in 1993. In 2006, Rosca published Sugar and Salt, which originally appeared as a short story in Ms. magazine.

Rosca has also gained recognition for her nonfiction works, which include Endgame: The Fall of Marcos (1987) and Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World; Portrait of a Revolutionary (2004). The latter work includes a profile of and extensive interview with Jose Maria Sison, the controversial founder of the CPP and a professor whom Rosca met while attending the University of the Philippines. Rosca writes frequently for such periodicals as Ms., Village Voice, the Nation, Filipinas, and Q. In 2006, she began to publish essays and informal writings on her blog, Lily Pad.

As a feminist activist, Rosca focuses particularly on issues related to women's rights and human trafficking. In the 1990s, she cofounded the U.S. branch of the General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Education, Leadership, and Action (GABRIELA), a women's solidarity organization founded in the Philippines in the previous decade. This organization later evolved into the Association of Filipinas, Feminists Fighting Imperialism, Re-feudalization, and Marginalization (AF3IRM). Rosca has also worked with Amnesty International and the PEN American Center.

In 1993, in a cowritten statement distributed at the United Nations' World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, Rosca introduced the phrase “modern-day slavery” in reference to human trafficking. She later helped plan the fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, in 1995, which highlighted such issues as sex tourism, violence against women, and the mail-order bride industry. Rosca worked as a media liaison for the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery in 2000, which convicted Japan's wartime government for its role in the “comfort women” system during World War II. Influenced by her own experiences under Philippine martial law, Rosca has also served as a member of the Survivors Committee, a group of activists and former political prisoners.

Significance

Rosca blends poetry with activism, nationalism with transnationalism, and women's rights with human rights, highlighting the intersections of race, class, and gender in order to build connections and alliances. Although deeply rooted in her own experience as a political exile living in the United States, Rosca connects her struggle with that of women fighting for an end to imperialism, oppression, and injustice around the world. In 1998, Rosca was recognized by the Bread and Roses Cultural Project as one of twelve Asian American Women of Hope for her outstanding dedication to human rights.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Lê Espiritu, Evyn. "Ninotchka Rosca." Great Lives from History: American Women, edited by Mary K. Trigg, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLHW_0421.

APA 7th

Lê Espiritu, E. (2016). Ninotchka Rosca. In M. K. Trigg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: American Women. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Lê Espiritu, Evyn. "Ninotchka Rosca." Edited by Mary K. Trigg. Great Lives from History: American Women. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed September 17, 2025. online.salempress.com.

Table of Contents