Ginsberg, Allen

Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America, October, 2005 by Laura M. Miller

GINSBERG, Allen

GINSBERG, Allen (b. 3 June 1926; d. 6 April 1997), poet, activist.

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey. His father, Louis, was himself a moderately successful verse writer. Ginsberg's mother, Naomi—tough-minded and political, a consequence of growing up Jewish in western Russia during a time of pogroms—was a member of the local Communist Party chapter. This immersion in radical politics and verse profoundly influenced Ginsberg's life and work.

At school, the young Ginsberg was both apt and practical. Never athletic, he relied on his wits to survive. When bullies tormented him with anti-Semitic slurs, Ginsberg turned his considerable vocabulary against them and, somehow, managed to defuse disagreeable situations. His classmates...

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