Procure Sisters Of The Extreme: Women Writing On The Drug Experience Edited By Cynthia Palmer Print

was a great smorgasbord of fiction and memoir by women writers both wellknown and obscure on the drug experience my toread pile is surely to grow with the full works of many writers sampled within.
My only complaint is how I wish there were a volumefeaturing writers fromto the present day, this was a pretty sick book in a good way! there was a lot of imagery and the writings were fantastic, particularly the victorian era pieces and the works from the sixties and seventies.
definitely worth getting from the library this is a great book to open up and read random excerpts of debaucherous women's drugs experiences, . . lovein' it. Oh my gawd, I keep finding all these amazing books on here! I wonder if someone would pay me just to sit around and read books for the rest of my life.
. . This book should not be as boring as it is, Apologies for the flurry of druglit reviews lately I swear, its almost over and Ill go back to normal books soon

So after reading this, I was googling the editors real quick, just to see what their background is.
Imagine my surprise when I discover that theyre Winona Ryders parents And Timothy Leary, god to any psychonaut is Ryders godfather And they were all friends with Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip K Dick

Girl hit the familial goldmine, is what Im saying.


In the foreword, the commentor hits the nail on the head: “A specifically female approach to mindaltering substances emerges, a phenomenon that has been widely disregarded.
” Yes. Yes it has. Women do drugs differently than men do drugs, There are different things we can access, Great deal of overlap, of course, and Im not suggesting any innate differences in how we use drugs, but were socialized differently, so of course our perspectives on something as personal and identityrich as drug use is going to be different.
Particularly in regards to genderbased religious roles,

And this compilation, Is. Flawless. Did I wish this into being This is everything, everything,

Here are the women youve heard about, the writers, the poets, the nobles, the activists, and here they are playing with their brains in ways you never knew they had, in ways youd be startled to discover.


Here, too, and perhaps even more interesting, are the women you never hear about but always wished you had, The kind of women who didnt do anything of particular note with their lives except to live it, and to live it in unexpected ways.
The kind of women who moved to China in thes alone to teach English on a whim, who dreamed of being an opium addict as a little girl along with being a lion tamer and a ghost expert, and other strange desires of childhood.
And who goes over to an apartment to vibe with her new Chinese friends a man! Shes chilling in an apartment with some random high Chinese men in thes! So much for the image of the demure preWWAmerican woman.
She notices theyre smoking opium and says shes never seen it done before and adds, I shit you not, “But Im sointerested” and when he offers, answers “Oh, yes” childhood dream about to come true!.
Ive never read a more modernsounding account than hers, This sounds like something any college kid would experience today perhaps with weed, not opium, but still,

Admittedly, there are a few fruitcakes Adele Getty has hundo p gone round the twist entirely but even a fruitcake now and then is worth eating.


This, by the way, is not an academic text, Its sort of spacey and talks about drugs a liiiiiittle too fondly to be taken seriously as a history of female drug use or anything like that.
You can tell, the editors try hard to be detached and scholarly, but they just cant contain their reverence for

a nice, meaningful drug experience.


But its an anthology, you dont read it for the introduction, And Mama Coca bless this odd little couple for pouring through hundreds of unpublished writings to bring us this, Wellchosen and from startling sources, I cant ask for a better curation of material, This was fairly interesting. It's a collection of media and cultural images of women using and distributing various kinds of dope, some from the point of view of the users and distributors and some seen from afar.
Due to the year this came out there is a heavy emphasis on psychedelics, although they also discuss heroin, cocaine, and the other American favorites.
Heavily illustrated and very pretty to look at, Fantastic book with a great collection of imagery and storytelling about these fascinating women from various points in time, An anthology of writings by some of the most influential women in history on the often misunderstood and misrepresented female drug experience,

With great honesty, bravery, and frankness, women from diverse backgrounds write about their drug experiences,

Women have been experimenting with drugs since prehistoric times, and yet published accounts of their views on the drug experience have been relegated to either antiseptic sociological studies or sensationalized stories splashed across the tabloids.
The media has given us an enduring, but inaccurate, stereotype of a female drug user: passive, addicted, exploited, degraded, promiscuous, But the selections in this anthologypenned by such famous names as Billie Holiday, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, and Carrie Fishershow us that the real experiences of women are anything but stereotypical.


Sisters of the Extreme provides us with writings by women from diverse occupations and backgrounds, from prostitute to physician, who through their use of drugs dared cross the boundaries set by societyoften doing so with the hope of expanding themselves and their vision of the world.
Whether with LSD, peyote, cocaine, heroine, MDMA, or marijuana, these women have sought to reach, through their experimentation, other levels of consciousness, Sometimes their quests have brought unexpected rewards, other times great suffering and misfortune, But wherever their trips have left them, these women have lived courageouslyif sometimes dangerouslyand written about their journeys eloquently, .