Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience
 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0892...30#reader-linkSisters of the Extreme: Women writing on the drug experience, Including Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, Billie Holiday, Nina Hagen, Carrie Fisher, and Others

Edited by Cynthia Palmer & Michael Horowitz

I just finished this book and couldn't wait to share it. There are so many books detailing the drug experiences of famous male writers (Burroughs, Kerouac and Kesey, to name a few), but far less that discuss their female contemporaries.

After a quick overview of ancient texts that refer to women such as the oracles and their drug use, the book really begins with Victorian (19th century) women and their experiences with opium, morphine and hashish, among other substances.

This is followed by chapters on early psychonauts like Laura Huxley (mescaline), female beats and hippies like Diane Di Prima, and finally modern women who possess great drug knowledge and wisdom, such as Ann Shulgin.

I really liked the format of the book; it gave a quick overview of the time period and what drugs were around, then moved on to specific authors. A short bio of the author was given, then passages from her work that had something to do with drugs.

Many of the passages were fascinating personal experiences. Some of my favorite passages were by Louisa May Alcott, Anais Nin, Diane di Prima, and Ann Shulgin.

This is a must read for anyone who wants to know more about the female spectrum of drug users throughout the last 200 years.

Re: Sisters of the Extreme by Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz
 

Hey thanks, will recommend this to my llama; she's been complaining that most of these anthology-types have few/no female experiences!
Don't get me wrong she's not a crazy feminist type (I don't think so anyway!) but she thinks it would be nice to have something from a ladies perspective - she's heard they do drugs too...

Re: Sisters of the Extreme by Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz
 

Have not heard of this one: Will definitely give it ago, thanks for the recommendation.

I am a (fairly) crazy feminist type, and I think the that drug-use and gender is a fascinating subject.

PA: I strongly recommend "Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground" by Marek Kohn. It's a brilliant read on drugs, sex, race and social control. Here's some blurb:

"A drug panic. Murder. Terrifying and mysterious black and Chinese immigrants. Dope Kings. Jazz. War. An actress dead of an overdose. Dope Girls is about the transformation of drug use (especially morphine and cocaine, which until then had been available in any chemist's shop) into a national menace. It revolves around the death in 1918, in the last furious stages of the World War, of Bille Carleton, a West End musical actress. Its cast of characters includes Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor, and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica. They were identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menace. Around them in the streets off Shaftesbury Avenue and in Chinatown there swirled a raffish group of seedy and rebellious hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated. The drug problem was born, amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.

The establishment saw the episode as a threat to white womanhood, menaced by the cocktail of sex and drugs on offer from racial inferiors. Dope Girls remains a highly topical and instructive book."

Re: Sisters of the Extreme by Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz
 

Thanks! I'm also a pretty hardcore feminist, and I love getting book recommendations. I'll definitely give it a look.