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Allen Ginsberg (The Sixties in America)

Early Life

Allen Ginsberg’s father, Louis, was a modestly successful lyric poet and his mother, Naomi, was a communist who suffered a mental breakdown during Ginsberg’s childhood. This background, combined with his sexual attraction to other men, helped to make Ginsberg a literary rebel and a nonconformist. While attending Columbia University in New York City, from 1943 to 1948, he formed a circle of friends that included William S. Burroughs and

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