Hettie Jones

Hettie Jones (née Cohen; born in 1934) is an American poet. She has written twenty-three books that include a memoir of the Beat Generation, three volumes of poetry, and publications for children and young adults, including The Trees Stand Shining and Big Star Fallin' Mama: Five Women in Black Music. Early life Hettie Jones was born Hettie Cohen on June 15, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family. She was raised in Laurelton, Queens. She entered Mary Washington College in Virginia in 1952. She had not traveled far from her home until college, and had not experienced antisemitism up until that time: "The roommates didn't want to live with me because I was a Jew." Career After graduating from college and returning to New York, Jones married LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), an African-American writer. Her family initially disowned her for marrying a black man, but her husband's family was welcoming. Despite living in the diverse Lower East Side of Manhattan, they were sometimes harassed in public for being an interracial couple. In 1957, the couple founded the literary magazine Yugen, and launched the publication house Totem Press. They published early works by Beat generation figures Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank O'Hara, Joel Oppenheimer, and Charles Olson, all of whom they'd befriended as well.