Bonnie Bremser (b. 1939), born Brenda Frazer, is a

Beat Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of inte ...

writer and

protofeminist Protofeminism is a concept that anticipates modern feminism in eras when the feminist concept as such was still unknown. This refers particularly to times before the 20th century, although the precise usage is disputed, as 18th-century feminism ...

figure known for her epistolary memoir ''Troia: Mexican Memoirs'', also published in the U.K. as ''For Love of Ray''.

Life and career

Bremser was born Brenda Frazer in 1939 in Washington, D.C. She briefly attended Sweet Briar College in Virginia before dropping out to marry Ray Bremser, whom she'd met three weeks earlier. Bremser and her husband and infant daughter fled to Mexico in 1961 because her husband was wanted for parole violation. In Mexico, she engaged in sex work at the urging of her husband. After Ray Bremser was jailed in 1963, Bonnie Bremser sent him weekly two-page letters chronicling their journey in Mexico and her experience of sex work. She has said the couple told jail authorities that the letters were business correspondence to get around a one-page personal letter maximum. Those letters later were compiled into ''Troia: Mexican Memoirs'', originally published in 1969. The word "troia" is Italian slang, meaning "sow" or "whore," but also references

Helen of Troy Helen (), also known as Helen of Troy, or Helen of Sparta, and in Latin as Helena, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda (mythology), ...

. ''Troia'' was republished in 2007, drawing renewed interest to Bremser's life and work.

Reception

''Troia'' has been described as a "lost classic of experimental writing that speaks the movement’s aesthetics and ethos from the vantage of a woman living the 'beat' life." Bremser's work frequently draws comparisons to

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

for her autobiographical chronicle of life on the road. Since the republishing of ''Troia'', Bremser has also drawn recognition for her awareness of gender and race and her attitude toward those issues, which was nuanced especially for the 1950s and among the Beats.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bremser, Bonnie 1939 births Living people American women non-fiction writers Beat Generation writers