Ninotchka Rosca

Born 1946, in the Philippines is a Filipina feminist,

author, journalist and human rights activist who is
active in AF3IRM, the Mariposa Center for
Change, Sisterhood is Global and the initiating
committee of the MARIPOSA ALLIANCE (Ma-Al), a
multi-racial, multi-ethnic women's activist center
for understanding the intersectionality of class, race
and gender oppressions, toward a more
comprehensive practice of women's liberation. As a novelist, Rosca was a recipient of
the American Book Award in 1993 for her novel Twice Blessed.

Rosca has two novels, two short story collections and four non-fiction books. Her novel
"State of War" is considered a classic account of ordinary people's dictatorship.

She is also the author of the best-selling English language novels State of War and Twice
Blessed. The latter won her the 1993 American Book Award for excellence in literature.
Her most recent book is JMS: At Home In The World, co-written with the
controversial Jose Maria Sison, who has been included in the U.S. list of "terrorists".

Rosca was a political prisoner under the dictatorial government of Ferdinand Marcos in the
Philippines. She was forced into exile to Hawaii, United States when threatened with a
second arrest for her human rights activism by the Marcos regime. Rosca has worked
with Amnesty International and the PEN American Center. Rosca was also a founder and
the first national chair of the GABNet, the largest and only US-Philippines women's
solidarity mass organization, which has evolved into AF3IRM. She attended the University
of the Philippines and lives in Queens borough of New York City. Her lecture schedules are
managed by Speak Out Now. A huge fan of science fiction, Rosca reads four books a week
(three "light," one "heavy").

Rosca was press secretary of the The Hague International Women's Tribunal on Japan's
WWII Military Sex Slavery which convicted Japan's wartime era leadership for creating and
using the Comfort Women. Rosca is particularly concerned with the origins of women's
oppression and the interface between class, race and gender exploitation, so that women
can move toward greater theory building and practice of a comprehensive genuine women's
liberation. She often speaks on such issues as sex tourism, trafficking, the mail-order bride
industry, and violence against women, and the labor export component of globalization
under imperialism.
Rosca's Canadian fans call her "The First Lady of Philippine Literature."[citation needed] She
is currently a correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the most widely read
broadsheet in the Philippines.