Rebel Girl - by Kathleen Hanna

Book Synopsis

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.

Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want

Kathleen Hanna's band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like "Rebel Girl" and "Double Dare Ya" are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?

In Rebel Girl, Hanna's raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumul-tuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in 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, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman. And her friendships with musicians like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, and Joan Jett reminded her that, despite the odds, the punk world could still 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 exclusivity.

In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful--and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.

Review Quotes

"Hanna holds nothing back in a debut that traces her chaotic childhood through to founding the riot grrrl punk feminist movement and her time in such bands as Viva Knievel and Le Tigre. Visceral prose is undergirded by clear-eyed insight into the flaws of early punk feminist activism--including its overwhelming whiteness--making this a memoir with depth and edge to spare." - One of Publishers Weekly's Top 15 Summer Reads
"Hanna has gained the emotional and creative freedom to finally share the haunting but candid stories that she has hinted at in her music for so long." - Cultured
"Engrossing . . . An addictive read . . . The stories Hanna dislodges from the recesses of her brain are raw enough to be plucked from a diary, and that frankness, once again, renders Hanna's life story in its full three dimensions." - Pitchfork, "The Best Music Books of 2024"
"Hanna applies the same wicked sense of humor and sharp eye for injustice that have always defined her music to an insightfully frank account of her difficult childhood, the art she has made as a lifeline for herself and other marginalized people, and the hard-won happiness she's found in work, friendship, and family." - Time, "The 100 Must-Read Books of 2024"
"Kathleen Hanna is the queen of her own world now." - USA Today
"The Bikini Kill rocker's searing new memoir, Rebel Girl, tells intimate stories of trauma, sexism, fame, and everything in between." - Daily Beast
"[Hanna's] disarming memoir encompass-es far more than her time fronting the formative indie bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Tales of an upbringing and young adulthood marked by rampant emotional and sexual abuse are leavened here by a ferocious wit and undimmable creative spirit." - New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"Rebel Girl is the kind of book that leaves readers, like concertgoers after watching their favorite band play its last song, wishing it wasn't over." - Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"An intimate look at how she became one of the most unwavering political voices in music. . . . To read her life story now, Rebel Girl is a reminder that Riot Grrrl will always have a place for anyone who is down with the cause."
- Jezebel
"A no-holds-barred account...Hanna's visceral prose captivates, and she's refreshingly candid about the riot grrrl movement's failures...It's a raw and revealing portrait of a vital figure in the feminist punk scene." - Publishers Weekly
"A potent, revelatory, often bloody and heartbreaking but all in all triumphant rock-and-roll memoir." - Interview
"In her memoir, Rebel Girl, Hanna shares her journey from a challenging childhood through college and her first shows to love, Lyme disease and Le Tigre. Intimate and candid, Hanna graciously explores it all, including the duplicity of the punk scene with its caring collectivity and underlying exclusivity, racism and misogyny." - Ms.
"[Rebel Girl] is at times hilarious and other times incredibly dark. [Hanna] is unflinching in her descriptions of the staggering amount of male violence women endured in the 80s and 90s. (And sadly, too often still.). . . A well-realized document of the youth of the often-overlooked Generation X." - Salon
"[Hanna] tells her story. . . with brutal honesty. . . . [P]oignant and heartbreaking." - Spin
"[Hanna] chronicles her life story in Rebel Girl with a visceral voice." - Seattle Times