Great Books- In our Library Collection
Minor Characters by Great Books- You'll have to ILL
Women of the Beat generation : the writers, artists, and muses at the heart of a revolution /
Girls who wore black : women writing the beat generation /
Beat down to your soul : what was the Beat generation? /
A different beat : writings by women of the beat generation /
Heart beat : my life with Jack & Neal /
Beerspit night and cursing : the correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, 1960-1967 /
Off the road : my years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg /
Cassady is known for her close ties with Kerouac,Ginsberg & Neal Cassady.
Married to Gary Snyder, Kyger traveled with Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Kyger has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Going On: Selected Poems, 1958–1980, (1983); and, Just Space: poems, 1979-1989 (1991). She has also done some occasional teaching at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of the Naropa Institute, in Boulder, Colorado.
Outside the fame of being Kerouac’s gal, Johnson has written several novels, as well as articles for Harper’s, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and the Washington Post. She won the National Book Circle Critics award for her Minor Characters, her memoir of her time with Kerouac between 1957 and 1958. Door Wide Open is a collection of their correspondence over the same period of time.
It was Hettie Jones and Amiri Baraka’s Totem Press that published di Prima’s first volume of poetry. She is also well known for the same reason as the likes of Cassady and Johnson, having released a memoir of her relationship with members of the Beat Generation, including Baraka, Kerouac and Ginsberg. However, Jones also wrote some twenty-three books, published in prestigious journals, lectured across America on writing, and started the literary magazine, Yugen.
The marriage only lasted a year, but she was Jack Kerouac’s first wife nonetheless. Parker wrote You’ll Be Okay, her memoir of the Beat Generation.
Di Prima is an example of a prolific female Beat poet, who was important to the movement and flourished in the following decades. Her genius and rebellious spirit allowed her to participate as actively as many of the men of the Generation, and became a valuable contribution not just to the Beats, but to American literature.
Parker’s roommate, Joan Vollmer, was perhaps the most active female in the central social circle of the Beat Generation. It was her that spent the night talking with Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Carr, Huncke, and Chase. She married William S Burroughs, her second husband. Eventually, Burroughs shot Vollmer dead while drunk in Mexico.
