Download or read book How I Became Hettie Jones written by Hettie Jones and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A thoughtful, intimate memoir of life in the burgeoning movement of new jazz, poetry, and politics . . . in Lower Manhattan in the late 1950s and early 1960s” (Alix Kate Shulman, The Nation). Greenwich Village in the 1950s was a haven to which young poets, painters, and musicians flocked. Among them was Hettie Cohen, who’d been born into a middle-class Jewish family in Queens and who’d chosen to cross racial barriers to marry African American poet LeRoi Jones. This is her reminiscence of life in the awakening East Village in the era of the Beats, Black Power, and bohemia. “As the wife of controversial black playwright-poet LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), Hettie Cohen, a white Jew from Queens, NY, plunged into the Greenwich Village bohemia of jazz, poetry, leftish politics and underground publishing in the late 1950s. Their life together ended in 1965, partly, she implies, because of separatist pressures on blacks to end their interracial marriages. In this restrained autobiographical mix of introspection and gossip, the author writes of coping with racial prejudice and violence, raising two daughters, and of living in the shadow of her husband. When the couple divorced, she became a children’s book author and poet. The memoir is dotted with glimpses of Allen Ginsberg, Thelonious Monk, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, Franz Kline, among others.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book How I Became Hettie Jones written by Hettie Jones and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hettie Jones presents an intimate memoir of her life--from her middle-class Jewish family in Queens to her marriage to the controversial black poet LeRoi Jones and her search for her own artistic voice. Infused with the passion of the late 1950s and early 1960s, this memoir is a deeply moving look at the spirit of the artist and the birth of an era.

Download or read book How I Became Hettie Jones written by Hettie Jones and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1991 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hettie Jones presents an intimate memoir of her life--from her middle-class Jewish family in Queens to her marriage to the controversial black poet LeRoi Jones and her search for her own artistic voice. Infused with the passion of the late 1950s and early 1960s, this memoir is a deeply moving look at the spirit of the artist and the birth of an era.

Download or read book No Woman No Cry written by Rita Marley and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir by the woman who knew Bob Marley best--his wife, Rita. Rita Marley grew up in the slums of Trench Town, Jamaica. Abandoned by her mother at a very young age, she was raised by her aunt. Music ran in Rita's family, and even as a child her talent for singing was pronounced. By the age of 18, Rita was an unwed mother, and it was then that she met Bob Marley at a recording studio in Trench Town. Bob and Rita became close friends, fell in love, and soon, she and her girlfriends were singing backup for the Wailers. At the ages of 21 and 19, Bob and Rita were married. The rest is history: Bob Marley and the Wailers set Jamaica and the world on fire. But while Rita displayed blazing courage, joy, and an indisputable devotion to her husband, life with Bob was not easy. There were his liaisons with other women--some of which produced children and were conducted under Rita's roof. The press repeatedly reported that Bob was unmarried to preserve his "image." But Rita kept her self-respect, and when Bob succumbed to cancer in 1981, she was at his side. In the years that followed, she became a force in her own right -- as the Bob Marley Foundation's spokesperson and a performer in her reggae group, the I-Three. Written with author Hettie Jones, No Woman No Cry is a no-holds-barred account of life with one of the most famous musicians of all time. In No Woman No Cry, readers will learn about the never-before-told details of Bob Marley's life, including: How Rita practiced subsistence farming when first married to Bob to have food for her family. How Rita rode her bicycle into town with copies of Bob's latest songs to sell. How Rita worked as a housekeeper in Delaware to help support her family when her children were young. Why Rita chose to befriend some of the women with whom Bob had affairs and to give them advice on rearing the children they had with Bob. The story of the attack on Bob which almost killed the two of them. Bob's last wishes, dreams, and hopes, as well as the details of his death, such as who came to the funeral (and who didn't).

Download or read book Love H written by Hettie Jones and published by . This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Love, H "is an intimate selection of letters from a forty-year correspondence between writer Hettie Jones and painter and sculptor Helene Dorn, who both survived their time as wives in the Beat bohemia of the 1960s and went on to successful artistic careers of their own.

Download or read book Merely Being There Is Not Enough written by Heike Mlakar and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the advent of second wave feminism in the late 1960s, it took more than twenty years before feminist literary criticism started to pay attention to the complex role of women Beat writers. Merely Being There Is Not Enough theorizes the memoirs of Diane di Prima, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, and Brenda Frazer, and analyzes their contributions to the Beat movement. Among the writings of female Beat authors, the memoir has become the most commonly used literary genre. At the height of the Beat movement, Frazer published Troia: Mexican Memoirs in 1969, the same year that saw the publication of di Prima's Memoirs of a Beatnik . Most female Beat voices, however, remained astonishingly silent until 1983, when Johnson published Minor Characters: A Young Woman's Coming of Age in the Beat Generation . Johnson's long-time friend Jones followed with How I Became Hettie Jones in 1990. The memoirs of Beat women chronicle the Beat-1950s and the intimate relationships with icons of the time: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, and Ray Bremser. Being there at a crucial moment in history validates female Beats' stories as indispensable social documents of the 1950s. To make women Beat writers visible and to categorize their memoirs, this work immerses in the almost paradoxical project of defining a category of female Beat writing when it is the nature of Beat literature and its rebellious aesthetics to dismiss any kind of labeling. Women Beats unsettle the categories of Beat writing and culture: Therefore, a revision and re-examination of Beat history is inevitable to understand the movement's literary expression.

Download or read book From Midnight to Dawn written by Jacqueline L. Tobin and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Midnight to Dawn presents compelling portraits of the men and women who established the Underground Railroad and traveled it to find new lives in Canada. Evoking the turmoil and controversies of the time, Tobin illuminates the historic events that forever connected American and Canadian history by giving us the true stories behind well-known figures such as Harriet Tubman and John Brown. She also profiles lesser-known but equally heroic figures such as Mary Ann Shadd, who became the first black female newspaper editor in North America, and Osborne Perry Anderson, the only black survivor of the fighting at Harpers Ferry. An extraordinary examination of a part of American history, From Midnight to Dawn will captivate readers with its tales of hope, courage, and a people’s determination to live equally under the law.

Download or read book Girls who Wore Black written by Ronna Johnson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.

Download or read book The Beats written by Nancy Grace and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '[This] survey of the many little magazines carrying the Beat message is impressive in its coverage, drawing attention to the importance of their paratextual content in providing valuable socio-political context. [...] The collection contains a range of insightful close readings, astute contextualizing, and inventive lateral pedagogical thinking, charting the transformation of the Beat scene from its free-wheeling, self-help, heady revolutionary 1960’s days to its contemporary position as an increasingly respectable component of the curriculum. [...] The Beats: A Teaching Companion is successful on a number of levels; it is a noteworthy contribution to the ever expanding field of Beat studies and, more broadly, cultural studies; and it is a collection that at its best gives hope that in referring to its ideas the inspired teacher may still be able to enlarge the lives of their students.' John Shapcott, Keele University

Download or read book The Beats written by Harvey Pekar and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Details the history of the Beat movement, which began in the 1940s, and describes the lives of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs; along with other writers, artists, and events in a graphic novel format.

Download or read book Eight Is Enough written by Tom Braden and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story behind the classic TV show: A father’s delightful account of raising eight free-spirited children in 1970s America. Tom Braden had a colorful career: He parachuted into Nazi-occupied France, directed the CIA’s covert operations program during the early years of the Cold War, ran for public office, owned a newspaper, served as executive secretary for the Museum of Modern Art, and cohosted the CNN show Crossfire. He counted among his friends David Brinkley, Robert Frost, Kirk Douglas, and Nelson Rockefeller. But Braden considered fatherhood both his most important job and his biggest adventure. No wonder; he and his wife, Joan, a State Department official and Washington society hostess, raised eight children during one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. In this diverting family memoir, Braden shares a treasure trove of amusing anecdotes—from the time his youngest daughter’s pet sheep interrupted a dinner party with a Supreme Court justice to the telegram US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent after the birth of the Bradens’ eighth child: “Congratulations. I surrender.” (The Kennedys had seven children at the time). With wit and wisdom, Braden also addresses some of the most serious issues, including drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex, faced by parents in an era of deep distrust between generations. When ABC proposed adapting Eight Is Enough for television, Braden found the idea so preposterous he sold the rights for one dollar. The award-winning series starring Dick Van Patten and Betty Buckley ran for five seasons and launched the Hollywood careers of many young actors, including Willie Aames and Ralph Macchio. A celebration of the joys and tribulations of fatherhood, Eight Is Enough speaks with warmth, humor, and compassion to parents and children everywhere.

Download or read book Now Dig This written by Kellie Jones and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive, lavishly illustrated catalogue offers an in-depth survey of the incredibly vital but often overlooked legacy of Los Angeles's African American artists, featuring many never-before-seen works.

Download or read book Minor Characters written by Joyce Johnson and published by Methuen Publishing. This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johnson's book is a personal memoir and a summation of the times, a story of adolescent rebellion and a desire to choose a different life. She shows how the Beat women, in deciding to break the rules and leave home as unmarried young women in the 1950s, discovered the risks and the heady excitement of trying to live as freely as the rebels they loved.

Download or read book Recollections of My Life as a Woman written by Diane di Prima and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-03-26 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

Download or read book Meditations in an Emergency written by Frank O'Hara and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1967 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Grove Press, 1957.

Download or read book The Trees Stand Shining written by Hettie Jones and published by Dial Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 1993 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-two poems from the oral tradition of fifteen North American tribes.

Download or read book S O S written by Amiri Baraka and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “S O S provides readers with rich, vital views of the African American experience and of Baraka’s own evolution as a poet-activist” (The Washington Post). Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century (The New York Times). Selected by Paul Vangelisti, this volume comprises the fullest spectrum of Baraka’s rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to previously unpublished pieces composed during his final years. Throughout Baraka’s career as a prolific writer (also published as LeRoi Jones), he was vehemently outspoken against oppression of African American citizens, and he radically altered the discourse surrounding racial inequality. The environments and social values that inspired his poetics changed during the course of his life, a trajectory that can be traced in this retrospective spanning more than five decades of profoundly evolving subjects and techniques. Praised for its lyricism and introspection, his early poetry emerged from the Beat generation, while his later writing is marked by intensely rebellious fervor and subversive ideology. All along, his primary focus was on how to live and love in the present moment despite the enduring difficulties of human history. A New York Times Editors’ Choice “A big handsome book of Amiri Baraka’s poetry [that gives] us word magic, wit, wild thoughts, discomfort, and pleasure.” —William J. Harris, Boston Review “The most complete representation of over a half-century of revolutionary and breathtaking work.” —Claudia Rankine, The New York Times Book Review