Product Description

In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

"This journey of a young Italian American girl, through the minefields of her childhood in Brooklyn to her breakthrough as a liberated female intellectual decades before the modern women's movement began, is never less than honest and resounds with authenticity." (The Washington Post)

"These 'Recollections' are full of light and wonder." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #742925 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-26
• Released on: 2002-03-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Di Prima, perhaps the best known and certainly among the most talented of the beat generation poets, captures the heady atmosphere of New York's avant-garde community in the 1950s and 1960s, while rendering her own life with intimacy and grace. Born in Brooklyn in the mid-1930s, she remembers her Italian immigrant grandmother with great affection. But she describes frightening incidents from her earliest childhood: her father, a sullen, brooding, man, once beat her until her nose bled; her relationship with her mother was equally abusive. In elementary school, di Prima was bullied relentlessly; it was not until she entered Hunter High School for gifted students that she found a circle of friends; there, reading the great poets, she resolved to become a poet herself. Leaving Swarthmore College after what she perceived as unproductive years, di Prima returned to New York City, and embarked on an independent life as a writer. She describes her bohemian lifestyle love affairs with men and women, experiments with drugs with honesty and wit. Friend to many of the best known figures of the beat world, including Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde and LeRoi Jones, di Prima found fulfillment in her work as an editor and poet, and as a single mother. She tells her story well, skillfully interweaving events with lyrical commentary on her inner life.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
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

Review
...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

Customer Reviews

An Extra-Ordinary Life
Diane di Prima has led an extraordinary life. A rebel from an upwardly-mobile immigrant family, pioneering beat writer, single mother, friend to artists of all stripes, explorer of consciousness, and classical scholar, her story takes the reader through the many worlds of New York City from the 30s to the 60s. At the same time she explores the inner worlds of memory, dream, and vision -- reveals how the soul's struggle for its own liberation is intimately related to the struggle for freedom in society. di Prima uses language with a poet's freedom, weaving her memoir from straight narrative, reflective essay, family stories, inside jokes, journal entries, letters, Buddhist cosmology, and western occultism. di Prima struggled through the abuse of her family and broke the rules of society to create a life on her own terms; as an artist, a woman, and a mother. What a gift this book is.

The Real Thing!
This is a wonderful book, presenting a brilliant vibrant picture of a cultural movement and time, the Beats/Hippies, and a woman who embodied all the artistic and humanistic values in an incredibly pure form. To me, the book (and the woman) are inspiring in their dedication to the values of art, spontanaeity, love, and Zen naturalness. An invaluable read for women artists, especially, and also for artists in general, and people interested in a certain world view and life style.

I Cried
At the end of the book I cried because it was over. That happened once before at age 10 when I finished Black Beauty. This book hit nerves in me that hadn't been touched since On the Road. DiPrima's brilliance, toughness, honesty and forays into the unknown make me want to find her phone number so I can talk to her... this rare woman!