The beat generation is a generation started in the 1950's by American artists and writers who refused conformity to traditional American ways and spoke of starting their own alternative lifestyle. The beat lifestyle included the sought after liberation and rebellion from society hindering chains of established, accepted ways of life. Within Paul Lauter's book, 'The Heath Anthology of American Literature,' Ronna C. Johnson from Tufts University, writes an analysis of Troia: Mexican Memoirs as well as synopsis of Brenda's life. Also in Lauter's book is the original Frazer's work Troia. In addition, Brenda Knight, another authority of the beat culture, writes in her book 'Women of the Beat Generation' of Frazer's struggles.
Brenda Frazer had a life nothing short of beat. Born in 1939 in middle class Washington DC, Brenda attended Princeton High School. It has been said that, ?her parents, especially her mother, were unhappy in their marriage, which cast an uncomfortable sadness over the household. Brenda remembers struggling with disorientation and a feeling of not fitting anywhere during her teen years.? (Knight, 269). Personally knowing that uncomfortable sadness and the struggle with finding ones identity, I can see why Brenda, at first unintentionally and then with full purpose, sought after a beat life.
While still in college, Brenda met a beat poet named Ray Bremser and the two of them became infatuation with one another. They married 3 weeks later. Brenda says, ?I adored him, even his eccentricities, and justified my own existence by typing his poems. I identified with Fidel Castro. His patriotism, presented in a lawyer truth, moved me. His actions inspired me to quit school and give thought to a shameful corrupting infl...
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... of her life we see her long for the idea of love, yet denied the love of having a husband or being a mother. Brenda Frazer, gave that all up, for the love of creativity. Brenda speaks of this creativity when she says, ?I defined myself when I sat down to write. It was a rebellion against my most immediate authority figure, who was once again in jail. Writing was a therapy I could afford. It was exciting then and still is to give myself that freedom. Alone I evolved my personal story. There was no mentor or male muse to be an live-in example for me. I have more creativity now. Creativity is in the middle, at the turning point of gender, neither, either, nor.? (Knight, 271).
WORKS CITED
Books:
Knight, Brenda. ?Women In the Beat Generation.? Conari Press, 1997.
Lauter, Paul. ?The Heath Anthology of American Literature.? Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
She was harassed at school by malicious and prejudiced boys, and felt isolated by her limited English language abilities. Her discomfort with puberty was exacerbated by an encounter with a perverted American exhibitionist in a car. She dealt with these issues later in life by becoming a psychologist and analyzing her family's myriad mental problem” (Spark Notes Editors, 2002).
Podhoretz, Norman. "The Know-Nothing Bohemians." Casebook on the Beat. Thomas Parkinson, ed. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1961. 204.
The Dominican Republic was not a very good place to live in during the 1950s. Dictator Rafael Leonid, better known as Trujillo made an effort to associate the country with white Americans in 1939. This caused a generation of Dominicans to hate the nearby Haitians. He banned many traditional rituals and deplored the Haitian people by rewriting history with Haitians being the villains. Eventually, in 1959, Trujillo blamed Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for the Dominican discontent and was assassinated (Bailey). Julia Alvarez’s poem “Exile” is about a girl and her father’s departure from the Dominican Republic to New York, most likely as a reaction to the political uproar in their home country. In “Exile”, Alvarez uses a flashback, characterization, and symbolism to show the internal conflict of a young girl experiencing the American dream while losing her old behaviors.
Leslie Carter, Carter’s sister, died in 2012 because of drugs and alcohol. Since Carter had dealt with the same addictions and won he couldn’t “shake the feeling that Leslie would have found some truth, hope and direction” in his book “and that it might have helped save her life” (Carter 4). Carter was blamed for his sister’s death because he was never there for his sister. Instead of helping his sister get over some of the same struggles he suffered with, he was furthering his own career. Carter began to think that he was the cause of his sister’s death and that in some way he could have prevented it.The overwhelming feeling of guilt in Carter’s life intensified when he didn’t attend the funeral of his sister because he was afraid that his family members would blame him for Leslie’s death as well. The last time him and his sister spoke they did not end on good terms, which added to his feeling of shame. To appease his guilt, he wrote his autobiography so that hopefully other people could find guidance through his struggles and past mistakes. Walls’ first memories were those of poverty, but when she grew older she became successful and provided a good life for herself. Walls now lives in an apartment in New York City but she “could never enjoy the room without worrying about [her] Mom and Dad huddled on a sidewalk grate somewhere” (Walls 4). At the same time she “was embarrassed by them, too, and ashamed of [herself] for wearing pearls and living on Park Avenue while [her] parents were busy keeping warm and finding something to eat” (Walls 4). Walls has conflicting feelings: she feels embarrassed at the way her parent’s chosen lifestyle but at the same time she feels guilty for feeling this way. No matter how hard she tries, her parents will not accept her help because they took pride in
In Kafka Was the Rage, Broyard described his life as a hipster. It was 1947, after the world war II. Brossard chose to live in Greenwich Village with Sherri Donatti, who was an abstract painter, rather than to live with his parents in Brooklyn. The Greenwich Village at that time presented the freedom and new ways of thinking, which was the world of artist and writers. There was peace and prosperity and a bright new world for the young. He insists that he is not the voice of the beat generation, however, his behavior can be regarded as the beat generation. He likes going to clubs and having sex with various girlfriends. “I say that sex used to be more individual, more personally marked, than it is now”(Broyard, p141). He thinks that the topic of sex is much different from the past and there is no shame to talk about the sex. Another hipster, Peggy Guggheim, has many common features with Broyard, since she admits that she has many sexual relation with many artists and writers. From my perspective, Broyard and Guggheim are beatnik since they both being free, believe the sexual liberation and being creative, which match the philosophy of beat generation which is conducting of oneself to reject white society, combining experimentation of using drugs and sexual liberation. Beat is the mindset of the beatnik subculture, which related each other. As Leland mentioned in the book, “The beats prescribed an ethos of lifestyle change”(Leland, p153). Beats generation changed a lot and even can easily tell from the clothing.They prefer to wear unusual or exotic dress. Social responsibility for them means nothing and they hate work and study. They disdain social order, against any stereotypes. Chasing freedom, using drugs and having sex is gradually becoming part of their life. Leland described them in this way, “The beats romanticized black life at the margins, imaging it as
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
Tytell, John. "The Beat Generation and the Continuing American Revolution". American Scholar 42 (1973): 308-317.
America was built on rebellion. This was no different for the Beat Generation whom took Americans in the 20th century, into a new way of life. Middle class free spirited people who questioned the practices of everyday lifestyle and mainstream culture, the beats lived in disillusionment with society. The fifties being a time of conservative family morals encouraged the bohemian nature of the beats for their want to experience more. The nature of this rejection is expected but, why? And how does such rebellion begin to take place, what forms does it take, and does such rebellion provide a lasting change?
Brenda suffered a lot as a child, she was always bullied in school and always f...
...talented female writers have died by their own hand, victims of their own contrary instincts. They have fallen prey to a madness that also plagued their literary sisters, a madness caused by a stifled passion, a passion that eventually finds its outlet through the means of a tragic and untimely death. By examining the lives and works attributed to Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it is easy to see the price a woman must pay from possessing a poet’s heart.
For so long she has been around what she saw as the destination for her life, which was success and happiness, in the lifelong family friends the Lowells. She assumed they were just given this life without ever thinking they had to work as hard as she did to get there, consequently envy and resentment ensued. The resentment started with the whole family and then got more intense and personal when it came to the daughter of the Lowells, Parker, someone Andrea could identify with on a personal level. This story illustrated for us the unseen factors and repercussions that too much ambition to be accepted by anyone can have one's long lasting development into their own person. This journey to prove who you are to others can lead to intense emotions and motives that aren’t normal yours and can cause you to lose sight of the very person you’re trying to prove that you
Continuing her childhood preoccupation with books, Smith developed an infatuation with Arthur Rimbaud as an adolescent. Rimbaud, she thought, possessed an irreverent intelligence and held the keys to an esoteric language (Smith, 29). This language captivated her, although she did not thoroughly grasp it (Smith, 29). In Rimbaud’s writing, Smith found a chiseled imagery of Heaven that she fastened to (Smith, 30). Besides Rimbaud, another influences shaped Smith’s fate. The novels and authors Smith read affected her attitude and her rhetoric as a poet. Inspired by the unconventional tomboy writer Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Smith crafted her own stories (Smith, 16). During this season she hoped she might write a book one day (Smith, 16). During the following year, a rare trip to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia transformed Smith and altered the trajectory of her life (Smith, 16-17). On this trip, Smith realized human beings could create art, and that artists saw what others did not (Smith, 16-17). From that moment forward, Smith sought to become an artist, even though she did not know if she carried the capabilities of an artist (Smith,
“I stood, unmoving, stunned… Tears filled my eyes. I want my mother, I thought. My mother is dead. I thought this every hour of every day for a very long time: I want my mother. My mother is dead.” In Cheryl Strayed memoir “Wild”, the death of her mother demolished her mental stability and consumed her each moment of her life. Not knowing how to handle her grief, Cheryl ended up doing things in her life that many people would consider regretful. She ended up losing her marriage, family, friends, became addicted to drugs, and lost her own state of being. Although Cheryl is sullen, her mistakes and setbacks was her destiny to create a better life.
Morgan, Bill. The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour. San Francisco: City Lights, 2003. Print.
Like Esther, Joan Gilling grew up in the same small town; she also won the writing competition and was sent to New York to work for the same magazine. Joan was also very conscious about how the world identified her as an individual. She didn’t want to conform to what society sa...