The Bad Girls of Literary History

Kathy Acker  (1947 – 1997)

Image via Art Lyst

This lady is the punk princess of prose. Born in New York, Kathy Acker travelled in underground literary circles throughout the ‘70s before moving to  San Diego to write and work as a stripper. Acker published with small presses until 1984, when she produced Blood and Guts in High School, a text that has since been described as literary terrorism.

Acker is everything but a nice girl, as her writing is violent, explicit, sexual, and in most places, outright rude—but she doesn’t give a fuck, and she’d be the first one to tell you.

Acker spawned the punk movement of the ’80s with her leather jackets and graffiti grunge style. What’s more, she paved the way for a generation of guerilla-warfare journalists, not unlike Hunter S. Thompson.  Acker destroyed conventional approaches to writing and reporting, demonstrating how literary culture can be just as vulgar and in-your face as any counterculture.

To Read: “Blood and Guts in High School”

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Image via Famous Poets and Poems

Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath was born a generation too soon. Had she been born in the ‘50s or ‘60s rather than the ‘30s,  she would have escaped a rigid and painful coming-of-age in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s.  Perhaps, if born a generation later, Plath would’ve never stuck her head in an oven at age thirty, swiftly ending her life.

Her only novel, “The Bell Jar” has been described as a near-perfect piece of prose, and her collection of poetry “Ariel”  is so painstakingly truthful and captive of adolescence, it still resonates in the chests of teens today.

To Read: The Bell Jar

Joan Didion

Image via Living History Museum

In person, Joan Didion was an inconspicuous character. Standing at only five-feet and two-inches, Didion disappeared into the background, and many people forgot she was there. In her writing, Didion used her smallness to her advantage, inserting herself into scenes like a fly on the wall. Her eavesdrop reportage demonstrates a style of journalism that’s so framed yet so objective. Diddion would never say she thought someone was stupid, she’d quote them, word-for-word (known as verbatim reporting), showcasing her subject stumbling like an idiot.

Diddion would frame conversations and anecdotes in such a way that she made it seem as if she was simply “presenting evidence,” but her stylized writing and the layout of her work were  rhetorics unto themselves, the kind of thing that twists your arm without you even noticing. Don’t trust the quiet ones!

To Read: “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”

Adrienne Rich (1929-present)

Image via Wikipedia

Though she may look like a daddy’s girl, Adrienne Rich was one bad ass. At age twenty, she attended Harvard; at age twenty-four, she married her professor. A poet and essayist, Rich is cited as the most influential female artists of the latter half of the 20th century

To Read: “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children”