The Pop Corporation

Like Bikini Kill? Well, you’re in for a treat if the headline didn’t already completely give it away – Kathleen Hanna is going to be releasing a new memoir called ‘Rebel Girl: My Lift As A Feminist Punk’. It’ll be looking at the ’90s punk movement, with an emphasis on the women within it (as well as other things pertinent to her life and all that).

Of course, it’ll be heavy on the Riot Grrrl and is surely going to be a perfect complement to Kim Gordon’s ‘Girl In A Band’ memoir, which is obviously high praise as well as a lazy comparison. Hey ho.

“In ‘Rebel Girl’, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she 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,” reads the description. “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 lightning 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.”