Hettie Jones and Bonnie Bremser: Complicating Feminist and Beat Master Narratives

Abstract

The Beat master narrative suggests that all Beats ignored racism; the feminist wave model suggests that there was no feminist activism between the first and second wave of feminism and no attention to the intersection of race and gender prior to the third wave. Both models discount and in the process erase the efforts by Beat writers Bonnie Bremser and Hettie Jones who challenged racism and sexism before the more visible civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s. Employing Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity to analyze the intercultural/interracial attitudes present in Bonnie Bremser’s Troia and Hettie Jones’ How I Became Hettie Jones reveals how these Beat writers’ attitudes regarding Otherness were problematic, but also progressive for their time.