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Hettie Jones

Hettie Jones is a poet and prose writer, author of How I Became Hettie Jones, a memoir of the “beat scene” of the fifties and sixties, published in 1990 (hardcover, Dutton) and 1991 (paper, Penguin) and currently available in a new paperback edition from Grove Press. Jones’s short prose has been published in journals such as The Village Voice and Ploughshares, and she has also written numerous books for children and young adults, including an ALA Notable, The Trees Stand Shining, published in 1971 and reissued in 1993, and Big Star Fallin’ Mama (Five Women In Black Music), selected in 1974 by the New York Public Library as one of the twenty best new books for young adults. Reissued in 1995 in a revised hardcover edition, it was listed by the Library as recommended teen age reading and included on Bank Street’s list of Childrens Books of the Year, and is currently out in a Puffin paperback.

In 1998 Jones’s poetry collection, Drive, was issued by Hanging Loose Press. Hailed as the work of a “potent and fearless poet” (Booklist), with “a good mind and sound ideas” (Independent Publisher) and “the gift to paint with vivid words and to cloak her wit with images that linger in the mind long after the reading” (Midwest Book Review), Drive won the Poetry Society of America’s 1999 Norma Farber First Book Award.

The author of two previous chapbooks, Having Been Her and For Four Hetties, Jones has been reading her poetry and short stories for many years at various venues from cafes to colleges. She is a longtime editor for many of the major publishing houses, and has taught writing at NYU, Hunter College, Mercy College, the State University of New York at Purchase, Parsons School of Design, the 92nd Street Y, The New School, Penn State University, the University of Wyoming, and Lang College of New School University. Jones is the current Chair of the PEN Prison Writing Committee, and since 1989 has run a writing workshop at the New York State Correctional Facility for Women at Bedford Hills, from which she has published a nationally distributed collection, Aliens At The Border. From 1994-1996 she was a member of the Literature Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts. She is currently editorial consultant to the Studio Museum in Harlem and the College and Community Fellowship, a new organization in support of ex-offenders.

In 1958, Hettie (nee Cohen) married the as-yet-unpublished poet LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka). One of the few visible interracial couples at that time, they had two children, co-edited Yugen, an influential literary magazine, and were at the “hot center” of the downtown bohemian New York literary, jazz, and art worlds. It is this story of their life together, and their acquaintance with other outstanding figures of that era, that is told in her memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones. The Kirkus Review called the book “a lively, candid account” and “a splendid job” that is “always insightful and frequently amusing.” Russell Banks praised “the clarity of her writing”; Gloria Naylor said that the book “becomes every woman’s story in the search for a center and a love of self”; Jamaica Kincaid called it a book “every American ought to read; and Lawrence Ferlinghetti said: “A feminist scrutiny such as this is just what those lost decades needed, as the Beats themselves needed it.” The New York Times recommended the book on its summer reading list for 1990, its Christmas 1990 list of the 200 Notable Books of the year, and its “New and Noteworthy” paperback list in 1991.

The mother of two grown daughters, Hettie Jones lives in Manhattan’s East Village, where she can be seen on her bicycle rain or shine.

Bibliography

All Told (poetry collection), Hanging Loose Press, forthcoming 2002.

“Billie Holiday,” selections from Big Star Fallin’ Mama, translation in “Viver a Vida Alphaville,” Sao Paulo, Brazil. Forthcoming 2002.

“When What You See Is Not What You Get,” “Waste Not Want Not,” “Ode to My Kitchen Sink” (poetry), forthcoming Hanging Loose 79, Winter 2002.

“Panel Discussion with Women Writers of the Beat Generation (1996),” Beat Down To Your Soul, ed. Ann Charters, Penguin Books, 2001.

“His Future Career” (fiction), Global City Review, Fall 2000.

“Scenes from the Life of the Water Towers,” “October Journey,” “Highway Praise Song,” “Genuflection to the God of Lost Gloves,” “Love Against Loss,” “Hide,” “At the Miami Vice Rest Stop” (poetry), Hanging Loose 75, 2000.

“My Brooklyn Heirloom,” “The Girl” (poetry), Local Knowledge, 2000.

“Minor Surgery” (fiction), Bearing Life, anthology, ed. Rochelle Ratner, Feminist Press, February 2000.

“Subway Poem,” “In the Eye of the Beholder,” “Words” (poetry), The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Thunders Mouth Press, 1999.

“Babes In Boyland” (nonfiction), The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, Hyperion, 1999.

“Global Warning,” (poem), Blueline, Volume XX, Spring 1999.

Words, Walls, Wire: How To Start A Writing Workshop in a Prison (nonfiction, with Janine Vega), PEN American Center, 1999.

* Drive (poetry collection), Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York, 1998. Winner, Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, 1999.

“The Big Fish” (fiction), Ploughshares, Winter 1997-98.

“Lottie and Oscar” (poem), The Plain Truth of Things (anthology), HarperCollins, 1997.

“Mother America” (poem), 1997 Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry. Monitor.

“Babes In Boyland” (nonfiction), The Poet’s Eye, A Tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Friends of the Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA 1997.

Interviews, Generations: A Century of Women Speak About Their Lives, ed. Alisa Malinovich. Grove Press, 1997.

Interview, “Spotlight on Hettie Jones,” PEN Newsletter 95, 1997.

A Different Beat (anthology), excerpt from How I Became Hettie Jones. High Risk Books, Serpent’s Tail, London, 1997.

Aliens At The Border, ed. Poetry and prose from the Writing Workshop, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Segue Books, 1997.

Preface, The Beat Generation in New York, A Walking Tour, by Bill Morgan. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1997.

Interview, Gadfly, Charlottesville, Va., June 1997.

with Alexander Smalls, Grace The Table (memoir), HarperCollins, 1997.

* How I Became Hettie Jones, a memoir. E. P. Dutton, 1990 (hardcover). Penguin paperback 1991, Penguin USA. New York Times “Noted With Pleasure” column, “Recommended Summer Reading,” “Notable 200 Books of 1990,” and “New and Noteworthy Paperback” lists. Reissue, Grove Press, 1996.

Women of the Beat (anthology), “Sisters, Right?” (fiction), “How She Recognized Her Last Fling When She Found It” (fiction), “Sonnet,” “Words,” “Welcome to Our Crowd,” “Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits,” “Untitled,” “Your House Is Mine” (poetry). Conari Press, 1996.

“Paleface,” “Ode To My Car” (poetry), Ladies Start Your Engines (anthology), Faber and Faber, Inc., 1996.

“Lunch Poem” and “One Hundred Love Poems for Lisa” (poetry), El Signo del Gorrion (anthology), 1996.

“Song At Sixty” (poem) bookmark, Alternative Press, 1997.

Spooky Tales From Gullah Gullah Island, Little Simon Books, Simon & Schuster, 1996.

“Going to Jail” (nonfiction), In the Land of Confiscated Dreams (anthology), Writers & Readers, 1996.

Review, My First White Friend, by Patricia Raybon, Washington Post, Monday, July 8, 1996.

“This is for Hettie September” (poem), Gratis, Alem da Agua (Beyond the Water), Museo de Arte Extremeno e Iberoamericano, Badajoz. May-October, 1996.

“The Third Poem,” “My friend in love,” “Lottie and Oscar,” “Welcome to Our Crowd,” “Manhattan Special” (poetry), Hanging Loose, Spring 1996.

“5:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, November,” “One Hundred Love Poems for Lisa,” Open City, Number Four, 1996.

“Valentine to my Class,” Limited Edition Valentine (anthology,) 1996.

Review, The Color of Water by James McBride and Divided to the Vein by Scott Minerbrook, Washington Post Book World, January 14, 1996.

Review, The Children Bob Moses Led by William Heath, Washington Post Book World, December 3, 1995.

“Sonnet for the Flatiron” (poem), Flatiron News, Fall 1995.

“Sisters, Right?” (fiction), Time Capsule: A Concise Encyclopedia by Women Artists, Performers, and Writers, Creative Time, Inc., with S.O.S. International, 1995.

* Big Star Fallin’ Mama, Five Women In Black Music (biography), Viking Press, 1974. Revised and updated Edition, February 1995. (New York Public Library: Best Books for Young Adults, 1974, Celebrating the Dream, 2001, Best Books for the Teenage, 1995; Children’s Book of the Year, Bank Street Child Study Children’s Book Committee).

For Four Hetties (poetry). Chapbook, IKON Press, 1995.

“Three little love songs,” “Mother America,” “Birthday Presents 1989,” “Freddie, in Memoriam,” “Civil War” (poetry), Hanging Loose, April 1995.

“This Kind of Kaddish” (poetry), Long Shot, Volume 17, Winter 1995.

“Flowers for Albert” (poetry), Long Shot, Volume 16, 1994.

“This is for Hettie Slocum” (poetry), IKON CrossRoads #14/15

“Mama’s White” (essay), Essence, May 1994. Reprinted, Interracial America, Greenhaven Press.

Review, Pushed Back to Strength by Gloria Wade-Gayles, Washington Post Book World, December 2, 1993.

* The Trees Stand Shining, Poetry of the North American Indians, Reissue 1993, The Dial Press, 197l. Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Viking-Penguin USA. ALA Notable Book.

“Manhattan Special,” “Racing With the Moon,” “Winsome, Lose Some,” and others (poetry), Owen Wister Review, University of Wyoming, Fall 1993.

“Enough of This” and “How She Recognized Her Last Fling When She Found It” (fiction), Frontiers, A Journal of Women Studies, Vol 13, #2. 1993.

Lost and/or Gained (poetry), Artist and Homeless Collaborative, Visual Arts Gallery, Henry Street Settlement, Feb. 26-April 4, 1993.

“Home Free” (poetry), Your House Is Mine, a book and street project by Bullet Space Urban Artists Collaborative. Last showing, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1993. Permanent Collection, Lower East Side Credit Union.

“Mother Moon” and “Sharing The Image” (poetry), More In Than Out, also edited by Hettie Jones, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, 1992.

“How To Stand on Your Own Two Feet” (poetry), Special Issue, S.O.S. International, New York, 1992.

Review, Love in Black and White by M. and G. Mathabane, Washington Post Book World, November 1992.

“Letter,” Witness to Dissent: Remembrance and Struggle at Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C. July 1991; at Art In General, New York, March 1992.

“Bernstein on Jazz” (essay), Bernstein Remembered, Carroll & Graf, 1991.

The Portable Beat Reader, Viking Penguin, January 1992. Also The Penguin Book of the Beats (UK). Excerpts from How I Became Hettie Jones.

Review, Voices in the Mirror by Gordon Parks, Washington Post Book World, November 1990.

“Sing a Song of Solitude” (poetry), Heresies 23, 1988.

“How She Beat The Bogeyman” (fiction), Village Voice Literary Supplement, June 1988.

“From Four Hetties” (poetry), Giants Play Well in the Drizzle, 1986.

“This Time It Was Different At the Airport” (fiction), IKON Art Against Apartheid Anthology, 1986.

“The Summer House Secret” (fiction), Secrets and Surprises, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986.

“Having Been Her” (poetry), in Women Brave in the Face of Danger, Photographs and Writings by Latin and North American Women, edited by Margaret Randall, The Crossing Press Feminist Series, 1985.

“The Pause That Refreshes” (poetry), IKON, Winter/Spring, 1983‑84.

Missing Sweet Rose (YA novel), Delacorte Press, 1984.

“The Ironing Board” (fiction), Giants…Drizzle, 1983.

“The Big Fish” (fiction), Infinite Number, Number Press, 1983.

“A Woman Remembers Her Past” (fiction), Noose Memorial Issue, 1982.

“Minor Surgery” (fiction), IKON, Fall/Winter 1982‑83.

Having Been Her (poetry and fiction, chapbook), Number Press, 1981.

Promises in the Dark (novelization), Bantam Books, 1979.

I Hate To Talk About Your Mother (YA novel), Delacorte Press, 1979.

In Search of the Castaways (YA novelization), Pocket Books, 1979.

You Light Up My Life (novelization), Pocket Books, 1977.

Forever Young, Forever Free (YA novelization), Berkley Publishing, 1976.

Mustang Country (novelization), Pocket Books, 1976.

How To Eat Your ABCs: A Book About Vitamins (children’s nonfiction), Four Winds Press (Scholastic), 1976.

Living With Wolves (children’s nonfiction), Macmillan, 1975.

Coyote Tales (Native American Legends), Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974.

Longhouse Winter (Iroquois Transformation Tales), Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972.

Poems Now (editor), Kulchur Press, 1968.

Lectures, Interviews, Readings, Workshops:

2001: Poetry Society of America (seminar); National Book Foundation; People’s Poetry Gathering; Pacifica Radio News; 14th St.YMHA; CUNY Women’s Studies; Sarah Lawrence College; WBAI PEN Prison Writing Awards Ceremony; D’Zora House, Harlem; St. Mark’s Church, Poet’s House San Francisco (ALA Convention).

2000: NY Open Center; Bluestocking Bookshop; St. Marks Church; Cambridge (Mass.) Center for Adult Education; WBAI Radio; Pen & Brush; Tufts University; Bard College; Harvard University; Y Women Series. Forthcoming: The Golden Notebook, Woodstock, NY; Gathering of the Tribes, New York Public Library.

1999: St. Marks Church; College of Wooster, Ohio; The New School Graduate Writing Program; Barnes & Noble Chelsea, Astor Place; Brooklyn Public Library Main Branch; NY Public Library, Richmondtown, Brooklyn Public Library, Flatlands; John Jay College; 92nd St. Y; Ceres Gallery (Planned Parenthood Benefit; Why (YMHA) Women Series, Bennington College, Borders Books.

1998: PEN Awards Ceremony, The New School; Northern Westchester Center for the Arts; Poets House / Brooklyn Public Librarians; Brooklyn Museum/ Hanging Loose Press; No. Moore Theatre; Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; Olean Public Library, Hinsdale, NY; Adams House, Harvard, for Grolier Poetry

Bookshop, Boston; University of Massachusetts, Boston; Union Square (Barnes & Noble with St.Marks Poetry Project); WNYC Radio; Poets House / New York Public Librarians; Phlebus Bookshop, Phoenicia, NY; Exoterica, Riverdale, Bronx; “Mysteries and Scandals,” TV, E Channel; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of the City of New York; Museum of Natural History, New York; Gaia Bookshop, Berkeley, CA; La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley, CA; NY Academy of Medicine/ Open Society Institute; D’Zora House, Harlem; New York Public Library, Donnell Branch; National Public Radio; WBAI Radio.

1997: WPKN Public Radio, Bridgeport, CT; Knitting Factory; St. Marks Church; Barnes & Noble: Astor Place; Bway/83rd St.; Pulse Art Gallery; New York Public Library, Donnell Branch; WCXJ Radio, Pittsburgh; Thin Air Video; Concentric Media, “Dear Dr. Spencer” (film); Optic Nerve (BBC Video Documentary); WBAI Radio; Fresh Air Fund Summer Camp Program; Butler University, Indianapolis; Penn State University; The Puffin Foundation, Teaneck, NJ; Net of Souls Concert, Bedford, NY; Brooklyn Public Library; Sundance Channel, “The Last Beat Movie.”

1996: Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Modern Art;

D’Zor House, Harlem, NY; St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA; Medicine Show Theatre; New York Public Library, 115th St. Branch; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Salon, Women Centerstage Festival; Biblio’s Bookshop; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival; Borders Books, San Francisco; West Coast Live (radio), San Francisco; Friends World College, Long Island University; Barnes and Noble, 17th Street; KQED FM Radio, San Francisco; Bancroft Library, University of California.

1995: St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA; Cody’s Bookstore, Berkeley, CA; KPFA Radio; Heaven Cafe; Sarah Lawrence College; Fordham University; Hudson Valley Writers Center; D’Zora House, Bronx, NY; East Side Synagogue; WBAI Morning Show; Netherlands Public Radio; Civic Center Synagogue; Charles Olson Festival, Gloucester, MA; Art Against Death, Nuyorican Cafe; Whitney Museum of American Art.

1994: The Birth of Books Project, Laramie, WY; Laramie Art Museum; University of Colorado at Boulder; St. Marks Poetry Project (PEN Prison Award); University of Wyoming at Casper; The Mind-Body Connection–Women’s Conference; The Beat Generation, Legacy and Celebration–NYU School of Education; St. Marks Poetry Project (Beat Women Reading); WBAI (Pacifica Radio); Smalls Jazz Club.

1993: The Second Story Bookshop, Laramie, WY; Laramie Senior Lyceum; Northwest College Writing Festival, Powell WY; Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne; University of Wyoming Campus Center; Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO; The Bookstore, Sheridan, WY; Biblio’s Bookstore, New York; D’Zora House, Bronx, NY.

1992: The Bryant Library, Roslyn, NY; Pauline Oliveros Foundation, Woodstock, NY; Sarah Lawrence College; PEN Prison Writing Project Awards; Exit Art, Your House Is Mine; St. Marks Poetry Project: Portable Beat Reader; Woodmere-Hewlett Public Library; University of Connecticut, Storrs; Middlebury College, The Starr Library; Parsons (College of Liberal Studies)

1991: College of New Rochelle School of New Resources; PEN Prison Writing Awards; Vera List Center (New School); Parsons (College of Liberal Studies); New York Public Library, Jefferson Market Branch; Robert Frost Poetry Conference, New Hampshire; Just Buffalo Literary Center (Buffalo, NY); WBFO (Nat’l Public Radio affiliate, Buffalo); Rochester Inst. of Technology (Rochester, NY); Nuyorican Poets Cafe; Medicine Show; The Gas Station; Marshfield, Vermont Public Library; Galaxy Bookstore, Hardwick, Vermont; A Novel Experience (bookshop), Saranac Lake, NY; North Country Womyn, Saranac Lake, NY; Judith’s Room; Tower Books; The Ron Reagan Show (TV);

Woodmere-Hewlett Public Library; SUNY Purchase; Nassau Community College

1990: Ramapo College; Brentano’s/New School Women’s Studies; Women In Need (benefit); State University of New York at Stony Brook; State University of New York at Purchase; Yhe Knitting Factory; Mauricio’s Cafe; Dixon Place Performance; WNYC Radio (Lopate); National Public Radio (Fresh Air); mosaicBooks; The Fairfield Exchange (Cable TV, Connecticut); KPFA Radio and KMEL Radio, San Francisco; City Lights Bookshop; Bay Bridge Books (Oakland); The Bookstore (Gloucester, Mass.).

1989: St. Marks Poetry Project; Smokestack’s Lightnin Writers Reading Series; Sing Sing Prison Writers Workshop; Educational Alliance West; Harlem School of the Arts

1988: New York Public Library (Stapleton); SUNY Purchase;

The Gas Station (with WBAI Radio); Video Loft Productions; Hatch-Billops Collection, Artist and Influence Series.

1987: Wesleyan University; Tompkins Square Park; WBAI Radio

1986: Parsons (College of Liberal Studies); Educational Alliance West; The Ear Inn.

1985: State University of New York (Purchase); New York Public Library (Tompkins Square); City University of New York, College of Human Services; WATV, Woodstock, NY.

1984: Skidmore College; NYU Graduate Center; Central Falls Gallery; Galeria Morivivi; The Marxist School; Life Cafe.

1983: Yale University; The Basement Workshop; Mercy College; Womanbooks; Newfoundland Theater.

1982: WBAI Radio; Yale University; The New School; Newfoundland Theater; St. Marks Church.

1981: WBAI Radio; Newfoundland Theater; Mercy College; Ear Inn.

1980: Newfoundland Theater.

1979: Performance Space 122

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Books By Hettie Jones

January 1997

How I Became Hettie Jones

by Hettie Jones