Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation

This collection of scholarly essays builds on interest generated by two recent anthologies devoted to the writings of Beat women: Brenda Knight´s Women of the Beat Generation and Richard Peabody´s A Different Beat. Arguing that before these anthologies Beat women had been given short shrift, the editors have gathered together articles from a variety of critical perspectives that focus on the writings of Helen Adam, Diane di Prima, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Elise Cowen, Brenda Frazer, Joanne Kyger, and Ann Waldman. Johnson (English and American studies, Tufts Univ.) and Grace (English, Coll. of Wooster) contend that despite "their de facto exclusion from discourses of Beat art and creativity, women were integral to Beat´s development and indispensable to expressing its signature disdain of and challenge to establishment culture and conventions." A concluding essay by Tim Hunt (Kerouac´s Crooked Road) highlights and ties together significant ideas expressed in individual essays. The questions presented here are of interest not just in relation to Beat literature but in the broader context of women´s and cultural studies as well. While the essays presented are somewhat uneven, with some conclusions being more convincing than others (as in most such collections), this book will be useful for scholars and graduate students and will provide grist, no doubt, for the term paper mill. William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.