Women Writers Of The Beat Era

The Beat Generation was a group of writers who rejected cultural standards, experimented with drugs, and celebrated sexual liberation. Starting in the 1950s with works such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, the Beat Generation defined an experimental zeitgeist that endures to today. Yet left out of this picture are the Beat women, who produced a large body of writing from the 1950s through the 1970s and beyond. In Women Writers of the Beat Era, Mary Paniccia Carden gives voice to these female writers and demonstrates how their work redefines our understanding of "Beat." The first single-authored study on female writers of this generation, the book offers vital analysis of autobiographical works by Diane di Prima, ruth weiss, Hettie Jones, Joanne Kyger, and others, introducing the reader to new voices that interact with and reconfigure the better-known narratives of the male Beat writers. In doing so, Carden demonstrates the significant role women played in this influential and dynamic literary movement.

"Girls Who Wore Black recovers neglected women writers who deserve more attention for their writing and for their historical role in the mid-century arts scene. This collection of essays reopens and revises the Beat canon, Beat history, and Beat poetics; it is an important contribution to literary criticism and history."-Jennie Skerl, author of A Tawdry Place of Salvation: The Art of Jane Bowles "Ronna Johnson and Nancy Grace have done an invaluable service for students of American literature: their collection begins with an essential essay about the three generations of Beat women and then provides fine contributions by critics Anthony Libby, Linda Russo, Maria Damon, Tim Hunt, and others. The value of this book is so clear one must wonder why it wasn't available much earlier."-Linda Wagner-Martin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill What do we know about the women who played an important role in creating the literature of the Beat Generation? Until recently, very little. Studies of the movement have effaced or excluded women writers, such as Elise Cowen, Joyce Johnson, Joanne Kyger, Hettie Jones, and Diane Di Prima, each one a significant figure of the postwar Beat communities. Equally free-thinking and innovative as the founding generation of men, women writers, fluent in Beat, hippie, and women's movement idioms, partook of and bridged two important countercultures of the American mid-century. Persistently foregrounding female experiences in the cold war 1950s and in the counterculture 1960s and in every decade up to the millennium, women writing Beat have brought nonconformity, skepticism, and gender dissent to postmodern culture and literary production in the United States and beyond. Ronna C. Johnson is a lecturer in the departments of English and American Studies at Tufts University. Nancy M. Grace is an associate professor in the department of English and director of the Program in Writing at The College of Wooster in Ohio. She is the author of The Feminized Male Character in Twentieth-Century Literature.

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An anthology of works by 27 women writers of the beat generation.

This memoir by the woman at the center of the Beat movement is “a great book as well as a wonderful autobiography” (The Washington Post Book World). Written by the woman who loved them all—as wife of Cassady, lover of Kerouac, and friend of Ginsberg—this riveting and intimate memoir spans one of the most vital eras in twentieth-century literature and culture, including the explosive successes of Kerouac’s On the Road and Ginsberg’s Howl, the flowering of the Beat movement, and the social revolution of the 1960s. Artist, writer, and designer Carolyn Cassady reveals a side of Neal Cassady rarely seen—that of husband and father, a man who craved respectability, yet could not resist the thrills of a wilder, and ultimately more destructive, lifestyle. “To the familiar history of the Beat generation, Carolyn Cassady adds a proprietary chapter marked with newness, self-exposure, love and poignancy.” —Publishers Weekly “Rich with gossip, historically significant photographs, intimate memories, [and] unpublished letters.” —The New York Times “A poignant recollection—truthful, coarse, and inviting—teeming with the spirit of the men who inspired and symbolized the dreams of a generation.” —San Francisco Chronicle

In New York in 1944, Campbell finds the leading members of what was to become the Beat Generation in the shadows of madness and criminality. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs had each seen the insides of a mental hospital and a prison by the age of 30. This book charts the transformation of these experiences into literature, and a literary movement that spread across the globe. 35 photos.

Memoirs of a Beatnik is an account of a young artist coming of age sensually and intellectually. The book grew out of the author's own experience as a bold and independent woman who dropped out of college at the age of 18 in order to write.

BIOGRAPHY LITERARY CRITICISM The Beat movement nurtured many female dissidents and artists who contributed to Beat culture and connected the Beats with the second wave of the women's movement. Although they have often been eclipsed by the men of the Beat Generation, the women's contributions to Beat literature are considerable. Covering writers from the beginning of the movement in the 1950s and extending to the present, this book features interviews with nine of the best-known women Beat writers, including Diane di Prima, ruth weiss, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Joanne Kyger, Brenda Frazer (Bonnie Bremser), Janine Pommy Vega, Anne Waldman, and the critic Ann Charters. Each is presented by a biographical essay that details her literary or scholarly accomplishments. In these recent interviews the nine writers recall their lives in Beat bohemia and discuss their artistic practices. Nancy M. Grace outlines the goals and revelations of the interviews, and introduces the community of female Beat writers created in their conversations with the authors. Although they have not received attention equal to the men, women Beat writers rebelled against mainstream roles for young women and were exuberant participants in creating the Beat scene. Mapping their unique identities in the Beat movement, Ronna C. Johnson shows how their poetry, fiction, and memoirs broke the male rule that defined Beat women as silent bohemian chicks rather than artistic peers. Breaking the Rule of Cool combines the interviews with literary criticism and biography to illustrate the vivacity and intensity of women Beat writers, and argues that American literature was revitalized as much by the women's work as by that of their male counterparts. Nancy M. Grace, a professor of English at the College of Wooster, is the author of The Feminized Male Character in Twentieth-Century Literature. Her work has appeared in Contemporary Literature, the Beat Scene, and the Artful Dodge. Ronna C. Johnson, a lecturer in English and American Studies at Tufts University, has been published in College Literature, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, and the Poetry Project Newsletter. Johnson and Grace are the editors of and contributors to Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation."