One of the most important female voices of the Beat generation speaks out in this candid memoir of her life in the 1950s Greenwich Village art and literary scenes. 10,000 first printing. Poet di Prima chronicled her reign as queen of the Beats in her famously explicit Memoirs of a Beatnik (1968). Here she presents an equally frank self-portrait but on a far grander scale, delving so deeply into her past she transcends the personal to illuminate the primal cultural and psychological issues of the fifties and sixties. She was born in New York in 1934 and survived a brutal home life. Precocious and already committed to the writing life as a teenager, she dropped out of college to live a bohemian life in which lovers of both sexes and artist friends of all kinds came and went in a great swirl of Eros and creativity. Experience was valued above security, art was sacrosanct, and women writers were expected to behave like men. But di Prima wanted a child. Her recounting of the dramatic events of her life are riveting in themselves--whether the topic is her struggle as a single mother and woman writer; or the pain and passion of her affair with Leroi Jones, father of one of her five children; or the difficulties of her marriage to a gay man--but, finally, it's di Prima's electrifying perceptions into the nature of sex and love, men and women, art and beauty, drugs and spirituality, and freedom and commitment that keep readers glued to the page. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved ...a...portrait of this singularly talented young woman...who has grown through her friendships and her art toward maturity and self-discovery. -- New York Newsday ...the dramatic events of her life are riveting...[her] electrifying perceptions...keep readers glued to the page. -- Booklist Diane di Prima is the author of thirty-four books of poetry and prose, which have been translated into sixteen languages. Born in New York City in the 1930s, she currently lives in San Francisco, where she works as a writer and teacher. Her most recent books include Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems and Loba, Books I and II . Used Book in Good Condition