Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation
This collection of scholarly essays builds on interest generated  by two recent anthologies devoted to the writings of Beat women:  Brenda Knight's Women of the Beat Generation and Richard  Peabody's A Different Beat. Arguing that before these  anthologies Beat women had been given short shrift, the editors  have gathered together articles from a variety of critical  perspectives that focus on the writings of Helen Adam, Diane di  Prima, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Elise Cowen, Brenda Frazer,  Joanne Kyger, and Ann Waldman. Johnson (English and American  studies, Tufts Univ.) and Grace (English, Coll. of Wooster)  contend that despite "their de facto exclusion from discourses  of Beat art and creativity, women were integral to Beat's  development and indispensable to expressing its signature  disdain of and challenge to establishment culture and  conventions." A concluding essay by Tim Hunt (Kerouac's Crooked  Road) highlights and ties together significant ideas expressed  in individual essays. The questions presented here are of  interest not just in relation to Beat literature but in the  broader context of women's and cultural studies as well. While  the essays presented are somewhat uneven, with some conclusions  being more convincing than others (as in most such collections),  this book will be useful for scholars and graduate students and  will provide grist, no doubt, for the term paper mill. William  Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNYCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.