Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation - Paperbackby Ronna C. Johnson (Editor), Nancy M. Grace (Editor) What do we know about the women who played an important role in creating the literature of the Beat Generation? Until recently, very little. Studies of the movement have effaced or excluded women writers, such as Elise Cowen, Joyce Johnson, Joanne Kyger, Hettie Jones, and Diane Di Prima, each one a significant figure of the postwar Beat communities. Equally free thinking and innovative as the