Editing Italo Calvino (section)

===Parents===
Italo Calvino was born in [[Santiago de las Vegas]], a suburb of [[Havana]], Cuba, in 1923. His father, {{ill|Mario Calvino|lt=Mario|it}}, was a tropical [[agronomist]] and [[botanist]] who also taught agriculture and [[floriculture]].<ref>Calvino, 'Objective Biographical Notice', ''Hermit in Paris'', 160.</ref> Born 47 years earlier in [[Sanremo]], Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to [[Mexico]] in 1909 where he took up an important position with the [[Ministry of Agriculture]]. In an autobiographical essay, Italo Calvino explained that his father "had been in his youth an [[anarchist]], a follower of [[Kropotkin]] and then a Socialist Reformist".<ref name="ReferenceA">Calvino, 'Political Autobiography of a Young Man', ''Hermit in Paris'', 132.</ref> In 1917, Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the [[Mexican Revolution]].

Calvino's mother, Giuliana Luigia Evelina "Eva" Mameli, was a botanist and university professor.<ref>Paola Govoni, [https://www.academia.edu/7940709/The_Making_of_Italo_Calvino_Women_and_Men_in_the_Two_Cultures_Home_Laboratory "The Making of Italo Calvino: Women and Men in the ‘Two Cultures’ Home Laboratory"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191015114642/https://www.academia.edu/7940709/The_Making_of_Italo_Calvino_Women_and_Men_in_the_Two_Cultures_Home_Laboratory |date=15 October 2019 }} in ''Writing about Lives in Science: (Auto)Biography, Gender, and Genre'', eds. P. Govoni and Z.A. Franceschi, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht/V&R Unipress, 2014, pp. 187–221. Retrieved 4 February 2015</ref> A native of [[Sassari]] in Sardinia and 11 years younger than her husband, she married while still a junior lecturer at [[Pavia University]].  Born into a secular family, Eva was a [[pacifist]] educated in the "religion of civic duty and science".<ref>Calvino, "Political Autobiography of a Young Man", ''Hermit in Paris'', 132.</ref> Eva gave Italo his unusual first name to remind him of his Italian heritage, although he would eventually grow up in Italy. Calvino thought his name sounded "belligerently nationalist".<ref>Calvino, ''Hermit in Paris'', pp. 14.</ref> Calvino described his parents as being "very different in personality from one another",<ref name="ReferenceA"/> suggesting perhaps deeper tensions behind a comfortable, albeit strict, [[middle-class]] upbringing devoid of conflict. As an adolescent, he found it hard to relate to [[poverty]] and the [[working-class]], and was "ill at ease" with his parents' openness to the labourers who filed into his father's study on Saturdays to receive their weekly paycheck.<ref>Calvino, 'Political Autobiography of a Young Man', ''Hermit in Paris'', 135.</ref>