She became known as "an emblem Sicilian women’s protest" in the mid-forties,[1] as in 1945 she was involved in an anti-draft revolt in Ragusa, Sicily.

[3] When her husband went off to war, Occhipinti, described as restless and curious by nature,[2] regained an interest in education and began to teach herself.

She began reading, and noted that Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables "opened her eyes to the lot of the disinherited.

"[3] Controversy arose when she joined her local Camera del Lavoro (in English, the Chamber of Labour) and the Italian Communist Party, but she refused to back down merely because she was a woman.

[2] Among other things, the Chamber of Labour organized women against high living costs and unpaid debts to families of men that were sent to war.

[5] In December 1944, though, draft cards began to arrive, asking men take part in "the reconstruction of the Italian army," as ordered by the Bonomi government.

[3] Franco Leggio, an organizer directly involved in the three-day revolt, said Occhipinti diving in front of the truck was the original catalyst.

[5] Once the military had suppressed the rebels, leaders of the rebellion, including revolutionary communist Erasmo Santangelo and Maria Occhipinti, were arrested and incarcerated.

[7][8] Overall, Una donna di Ragusa had three editions published in Italy, one in France, two in Sweden, and additional serialisations in different countries.

[6] One publication appeared in a July 1960 edition of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Temps Modernes.

[9] At a 2011 anarchist May Day rally in Ragusa, a two-hour speech mentioned by name Maria Occhipinti and Franco Leggio as crucial representatives of anarchism in the Iblea region.

[10] In 2013, Italian filmmaker Luca Scivoletto released a documentary on Maria Occhipinti, which first premiered on March 25th.

The film lasts an hour and covers Occhipinti's early life and political activism, revisiting the places where the 1945 rebellion and her subsequent imprisonment occurred.