Conversation

Letters, Friendship, & Feminism: Hettie Jones & Claudia Moreno Parsons

Thu, May 11, 2017

6:30 PM–8:00 PM

The Skylight Room (9100)

As letters have largely become a thing of the past, conveying a kind of intimacy that is increasingly hard to achieve, Love H: The Letters of Helene Dorn and Hettie Jones, a selection from the forty year correspondence between poet, writer, and teacher Hettie Jones and sculptor Helene Dorn, is a treasure trove of essential social history. While these letters explore the battlegrounds of women’s rights, tenants’ rights, marriage, motherhood, and a shared past that kept the two irrevocably connected in the Beat bohemia of the 1960s, they are also the portrait of deep and abiding friendship. In celebration of the publication of the book, Hettie Jones will read from the letters and present her side of the story. She will be joined by Professor Claudia Moreno Parsons of LaGuardia Community College in a discussion of the importance of letters and friendship in the documentation of social history. The discussion will be followed by Q & A.

Cosponsored by Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and Intellectual Publics at the Graduate Center, CUNY.