My True Stories: Drug City, Brenda Frazer
Book Specifications:
92 Pages
210 mm x 130 mm x 6 mm
Perfect Bound
Print run of 100
Publication Date: 15.05.23
ISBN: 978-1-7399499-4-5
£15.00
Credits:
Design: Lucy Wilkinson
Front cover illustration: Evans Kati and Lucy Wilkinson
Printed and bound at Dean Print, Stockport, UK
Editors and contributors: Jerome Poynton and Timothy Coster
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Brenda Frazer wrote Troia: Mexican Memoirs in 1963, recounting her experience living in Mexico from 1961-62 with her husband (Ray Bremser) and their daughter Rachel. It was published in 1966 with Croton Press, under her married name of Bonnie Bremser. It was then republished by Dalkey Archives Press in the 1990s. The day-to-day writing of the manuscript is described in Drug City. Both books are an attempt at self-analysis, expressing the inner conflicts that come with feeling you are owned by a justice system that was only in place to incriminate. In Drug City, Brenda and Ray have returned from Mexico, their child Rachel has been placed into the adoption system. Rife in drug addiction and drug sickness, they live in various places around New York City until Ray gets arrested. Whilst Ray serves his five-year prison sentence, they have very little communication, and Brenda writes one page letters to him, which became the manuscript for Troia.
Including an introduction by Jerome Poynton.
Further reading:
My True Stories collection: Poets and Odd Fellows, Drug City, Artista, Cherry Valley Ballads and Stories. You can also purchase a limited edition collection of all 4 books in a slipcase here. We will be republishing Some American Tales in the summer of 2023. I also recommend Troia: Mexican Memoirs published by Dalkey Archives Press in 2002 now called Deep Vellum.
Reviews/Press:
'Finally Brought to Light: Brenda Frazer’s My True Stories' (2022) by Heike Mlakar in Beat News.
'Brenda Frazer' (2022) by Peter Hale (Allen Ginsberg Project).
Interview with Brenda Frazer by Nancy Grace.
'Brenda Frazer's My True Stories' (2023) by Dawn Swoop in Beat Scene.
Biography
Brenda Frazer published her first book Troia in 1966. She has also appeared in The Portable Beat Reader (edited by Ann Charters, ) and A Different Beat (Richard Peabody), as well as multiple periodicals from the 1950s and 60s such as Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts and Blue Beat. She was married to the poet Ray Bremser. She lived in New York City during the late 1950s and 60s and moved to Cherry Valley in New York in 1970, living at The Committee set up by Allen Ginsberg for poets, writers and artists to live communally. In 2020, death of workers whilst building skyscrapers published Some American Tales.
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