Love, H: The Letters of Helene Dorn and Hettie Jones By Hettie Jones
Hettie Jones born 1934 as Hettie Cohen is best known as the first wife of Amiri Baraka known as LeRoi Jones at the time of their marriage but is also a writer herself While known for her poetry she has received acclaim for her memoir How I Became Hettie Jones published 1990 by Grove Press. Jones held various clerical jobs at Partisan Review and started the literary magazine Yugen with her husband Jones is currently on the faculty in the graduate program in creative writing at The New School in New York City From 1989 2002 she ran a writing workshop at the New York State Correctional Facility for Women at Bedford Hills which included inmate Judy Clark as a student and which published a nationally distributed collection Aliens At Hettie Jones born 1934 as Hettie Cohen is best known as the first wife of Amiri Baraka known as LeRoi Jones at the time of their marriage but is also a writer herself While known for her poetry she has received acclaim for her memoir How I Became Hettie Jones published 1990 by Grove Press. Jones held various clerical jobs at Partisan Review and started the literary magazine Yugen with her husband Jones is currently on the faculty in the graduate program in creative writing at The New School in New York City From 1989 2002 she ran a writing workshop at the New York State Correctional Facility for Women at Bedford Hills which included inmate Judy Clark as a student and which published a nationally distributed collection Aliens At The Border Jones is a former chair of the PEN Prison Writing Committee and is currently a member of PEN s Advisory Council from Wikipedia site_link It works we re in business yeah Babe So begins this remarkable selection from a forty year correspondence between two artists who survived their time as wives in the Beat bohemia of the 1960s and went on to successful artistic careers of their own From their first meeting in 1960 writer Hettie Jones then married to LeRoi Jones Amiri Baraka and painter and sculptor Helene Dorn 1927 2004 wife of poet Ed Dorn found in each other than friendship They were each other s confidant emotional support and unflagging partner through difficulties defeats and victories from surviving divorce and struggling as single mothers to finding artistic success in their own right Revealing the intimacy of lifelong friends these letters tell two stories from the shared point of view of women who refused to go along with society s expectations Jones frames her and Helene s story adding details and explanations while filling in gaps in the narrative As she writes we d fled the norm for women then because to live it would have been a kind of death Apart from these two personal stories there are as well reports from the battlegrounds of women s rights and tenant s rights reflections on marriage and motherhood and contemplation of the past to which these two had remained irrevocably connected Prominent figures such as Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary appear as well making Love H an important addition to literature on the Beats Above all this book is a record of the changing lives of women artists as the twentieth century became the twenty first and what it has meant for women considering such a life today It s worth a try Jones and Dorn show us offering their lives as proof that it can be done Love H The Letters of Helene Dorn and Hettie JonesThese letters tell us everything that we never think about from the lives of working artists We see their polished finished work the things that they have allowed us to see These letters are raw and beautiful and at many times mundane which is what makes them all the relatable They show a beautiful friendship between two women dedicated to their art and their identities It makes me want to pick up my pen and write letters and poetry English Beautiful Indispensable And I wept when it ended English The book contains some well written letters that demonstrate Jones wit and instinctual poetry but the book itself is quite tedious Longer review at Beatdom English Marion brown was sleeping with hettie Jones That nigga was insane English Reviewed for Publisher s Weekly This is a moving collection of personal letters between two female artists a writer and a painter sculptor who were once married to men of the Beat generation and after the end of their respective marriages forged lives as independent women struggling to remain financially solvent and raise their children as single mothers Spanning the late 1960s through the early 2000s this volume is well worth reading for anyone interested in the lives of women creators English
| Love, H: The Letters of Helene Dorn and Hettie Jones By Hettie Jones |
| 0822361469 |
| 9780822361466 |
| English |
| 384 |
| Hardcover |
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