How I Became Hettie Jones

Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones, Grove Atlantic
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Hettie Jones ISBN: 9780802196781
Publisher: Grove Atlantic Publication: December 1, 2007
Imprint: Grove Press Language: English
Author: Hettie Jones
ISBN: 9780802196781
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Publication: December 1, 2007
Imprint: Grove Press
Language: English

“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

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

“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

More books from Grove Atlantic

Cover of the book Amedee, The New Tenant, Victims of Duty by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book The Road to Lichfield by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book The Art of Political Murder by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Tokyo Cancelled by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Willful Behavior by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Singing at the Gates by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book An Arabian Journey by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Goodbye Tsugumi by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Searching for Zion by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book The Lieutenant by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Who's Who in Hell by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Olga by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book Just Cause by Hettie Jones
Cover of the book The Rules of Wolfe by Hettie Jones
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy