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Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk – Kathleen Hanna’s memoir recounts the 90s Riot Grrrl movement, and other musings
Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk is an electric, searing memoir from Kathleen Hanna, the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.
Hanna takes us from her tumultuous childhood home to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band. As Hanna makes clear, being in a “girl band,” especially a punk girl band, in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightening rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.
But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her, including with her bandmates, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Johanna Fateman; her friendships with Kurt Cobain and Ian MacKaye; and her introduction to Joan Jett, were all a testament to how the punk world could nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its later exclusivity.
The raw and insightful new memoir traces Hanna’s life from her tumultuous childhood home to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band. Hanna makes clear that surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination as she and her bandmates faced male violence and antagonism at every turn. In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how it continues to fuel her revolutionary art and music.
Hanna’s rallying cry to feminists echoed far and wide through the punk scene of the 90s and beyond. Her band, Bikini Kill, embodies this iconic time, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl” and “Double Dare Ya” are embedded in pop culture and more powerful than ever. In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful–and how it continues to fuel her revolutionary art and music.
Available from Harper Collins.
Kathleen Hanna is a legendary punk singer, artist, and the frontwoman of the seminal punk bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Hanna is the subject of the award-winning documentary The Punk Singer and a staple in feminist publications, from college curriculums to bestselling books. She is a founding member of the Riot Grrrl movement, an outspoken women’s rights activist, and has been named one of the best live performers of our time.
About the Author
Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.