page_title: Valerie Solanas
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Valerie Solanas / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: The grave of Valerie Jean Solanas at Saint Marys Catholic Church Cemetery, Fairfax County, Virginia. 2012.
context_page_description: Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist and author best known for writing the SCUM Manifesto, which she self-published in 1967, and attempting to murder Andy Warhol in 1968.
  Solanas had a turbulent childhood. She said her father regularly sexually abused her and she had a volatile relationship with her mother and stepfather after her parents' divorce. She was sent to live with her grandparents but ran away after being physically abused by her alcoholic grandfather. Solanas came out as a lesbian in the 1950s. After graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, Solanas relocated to Berkeley, California, where she began writing her most notable work, the SCUM Manifesto, which urged women to "overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex."
  Solanas moved to New York City in the mid-1960s. She met pop artist Andy Warhol and asked him to produce her play Up Your Ass. She gave him her script, which she later accused him of losing or stealing.
context_section_description: On April 25, 1988, at the age of 52, Solanas died of pneumonia at the Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. A building superintendent at the hotel, not on duty that night, had a vague memory of Solanas: "Once, he had to enter her room, and he saw her typing at her desk. There was a pile of typewritten pages beside her. What she was writing and what happened to the manuscript remain a mystery." Her mother burned all her belongings posthumously.
caption: The grave of Valerie Jean Solanas at Saint Marys Catholic Church Cemetery, Fairfax County, Virginia
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