Sleater-Kinney Books
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Introduction
Welcome! This page features information pertaining to the 2024 Granfalloon celebration. You will find a feature on Sleater-Kinney (this year's headliner) and the Riot Grrrl movement along with the 2024 bookshelf with links to access these texts through IU Libraries.
Sleater-Kinney & Riot Grrrl
This year, the legendary band Sleater-Kinney will be headlining Granfalloon. Sleater-Kinney emerged from the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s and has been a staple of the American indie rock scene for 30 years. Sleater-Kinney was formed in Olympia, Washington in 1994 by Carrie Brownstein (of Excuse 17) and Corin Tucker (of Heavens to Betsy), along with Janet Weiss (of Quasi) who was their long-time drummer, though she no longer plays with the band.
Sleater-Kinney has released 11 albums over their prolific and influential career. Recently, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their album Dig Me Out, they released a covers album titled Dig Me In: A Dig Me Out Covers Album featuring musicians like St. Vincent, Wilco, Courtney Barnett, Black Belt Eagle Scout, and The Linda Lindas (who are also performing at Granfalloon this year!).
This guide contains contextual information on the riot grrrl movement and DIY feminist subcultures. You will find books, films, zines, and music related to riot grrrl and Sleater-Kinney.
Video: Jumpers (Official Music Video). Sleater-Kinney (2006).
Further Reading:
- Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker talk Sleater-Kinney, and 30 years of making music (Fresh Air, NPR)
- Sleater-Kinney: ‘Music has always been the playground of men’s sexuality’ (Laura Snapes, The Guardian)
- Riot Grrrl United Feminism and Punk. Here’s an Essential Listening Guide (The New York Times)
- Riot Grrrl: The Birthplace of Moshing, Screaming, Pierced, Tatted, Raging Teenage Girls (Lauren E. Mei, The Harvard Crimson)
- Little Rope Review (Jenn Pelly, Pitchfork)
Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began in the 1990s in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It is considered a subcultural movement that combines (third-wave) feminism, punk music, and politics. Reacting to the misogyny, sexism, and harassment in the male-dominated punk scene, women published zines and formed bands that would allow them to have a voice in the music scenes they cared about. Read the Riot Grrrl Manifesto here. Some of the key bands of this movement include Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, Slant 6, Emily's Sassy Lime, Huggy Bear, The Slits, and Skinned Teen. Queercore groups like Team Dresch and the Third Sex were also a part of riot grrrl.
"I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real."
-Riot Grrrl Manifesto (1991)
Video: Riot Grrrl: The '90s Movement that Redefined Punk. Polyphonic (2018).
Below you will find articles and books with contextual information on the riot grrrl movement. For more information on the bands related to Sleater-Kinney and their members, see the music tab. For information on zine/DIY subculture, see the Zines! tab.
Articles
- Riot Grrrl (Rita Cipalla, HistoryLink.org)
- Riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna: ‘A lot of men really get off on watching a woman get angry’ (Fiona Sturges, The Guardian)
- Interview: Kathleen Hanna (Melissa Febos, BOMB Magazine)
- ‘It reeked of hope and ambition’: 30 years of riot grrrl label Kill Rock Stars (Daniel Dylan Wray, The Guardian)
- Riot, Grrrls: Marisa Crawford on Why Feminist Lit and 1990s Girl Culture Need More Critical Attention (Eleanor Whitney, Lit Hub)
- What Does It Mean When We Call Women Girls? (Robin Wasserman, Lit Hub)
- 20 bands keeping the riot grrrl spirit alive in their own unique way (Augusta Battoclette, AP Alternative Press)
- Sexual exhibitionism, Riot Grrrl and climate change activism: 30 years of raging by Peaches, Bikini Kill and Björk, still going strong (Andrea Jean Baker, The Conversation)
Books
Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! by ISBN: 9781906155018Publication Date: 2007-11-20A vivid documentation of the indie-punk feminist movement that emerged from suburban America in the late 1980s, 'Riot Grrrl' explores this pioneering scene and profiles leading exponents such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and Huggy Bear.
Girls to the Front: The true story of the Riot grrrl revolution by ISBN: 9780061806360Publication Date: 2010-09-28At the beginning of the 1990s, the Senate didn't believe Anita Hill, Rush Limbaugh compared feminists to Nazis, and a study found that girls tended to start hating themselves during adolescence. It was a hard time to be a young woman, to be growing up on promises of equal rights that didn't square with reality. It was enough to make a girl want to scream. Riot Grrrl roared into the spotlight in 1991: an uncompromising movement of pissed-off girls who had no patience for sexism, no stomach for double standards, and no intention of keeping quiet. Incendiary punk bands—like Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and above all Bikini Kill—spread the word. Thousands of riot grrrls published handmade magazines, founded local groups, and organized national conventions. Girls to the Front, the first-ever history of Riot Grrrl, is a gripping narrative with a sound track: a lyrical, punk-infused chronicle of a group of extraordinary young women coming of age angrily, collectively, and publicly.
Girl Power: The nineties revolution in music by ISBN: 9780865479791Publication Date: 2010-02-02In the early nineties, riot grrrl exploded onto the underground music scene, inspiring girls to pick up an instrument, create fanzines, and become politically active. Rejecting both traditional gender roles and their parents' brand of feminism, riot grrrls celebrated and deconstructed femininity. The media went into a titillated frenzy covering followers who wrote "slut" on their bodies, wore frilly dresses with combat boots, and talked openly about sexual politics. The movement's message of "revolution girl-style now" soon filtered into the mainstream as "girl power," popularized by the Spice Girls and transformed into merchandising gold as shrunken T-shirts, lip glosses, and posable dolls. Chronicling the legacy of artists such as Bratmobile, Sleater-Kinney, Alanis Morissette, Britney Spears, and, yes, the Spice Girls,Girl Power points the way for the future of women in rock.
We Were Feminists Once: From riot grrrl to CoverGirl®, the buying and selling of a political movement by ISBN: 9781610395908Publication Date: 2016-05-03Feminism has hit the big time. Once a dirty word brushed away with a grimace, "feminist" has been rebranded as a shiny label sported by movie and pop stars, and fashion designers. It drives advertising and marketing campaigns for everything from wireless plans to underwear to perfume, presenting what's long been a movement for social justice as just another consumer choice in a vast market. But what does it mean when social change becomes a brand identity? Andi Zeisler, a founding editor of Bitch Media, draws on more than twenty years' experience interpreting popular culture in this biting history of how feminism has been co-opted, watered down, and turned into a gyratory media trend. Surveying movies, television, advertising, fashion, and more, Zeisler reveals a media landscape brimming with the language of empowerment, but offering little in the way of transformational change. Witty, fearless, and unflinching, We Were Feminists Once is the story of how we let this happen, and how we can amplify feminism's real purpose and power.
Girl in a Band by ISBN: 9780062295897Publication Date: 2015-02-24Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith's Just Kids. Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir. Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.
Black Punk Now: Fiction, nonfiction, and comics by ISBN: 9781593767457Publication Date: 2023-10-31Black Punk Now is an anthology of contemporary nonfiction, fiction, illustrations, and comics that collectively describe punk today and give punks—especially the Black ones—a wider frame of reference. It shows all of the strains, styles, and identities of Black punk that are thriving, and gives newcomers to the scene more chances to see themselves. Curated from the perspective of Black writers with connections to the world of punk, the collection mixes media as well as generations, creating a new reference point for music-lovers, readers, and historians by capturing the present and looking towards the future. With strong visual elements integrated throughout, this smart, intimate collection is demonstrative of punk by being punk itself: underground, rebellious, aesthetic but not static - working to decenter whiteness by prioritizing other perspectives.
Revenge of the She-Punks: A feminist music history from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot by ISBN: 9781477316542Publication Date: 2019-05-07As an industry insider and pioneering post-punk musician, Vivien Goldman's perspective on music journalism is unusually well-rounded. In Revenge of the She-Punks, she probes four themes—identity, money, love, and protest—to explore what makes punk such a liberating art form for women. With her visceral style, Goldman blends interviews, history, and her personal experience as one of Britain's first female music writers in a book that reads like a vivid documentary of a genre defined by dismantling boundaries.
Women Make Noise: Girl bands from Motown to the modern by ISBN: 9780956632913Publication Date: 2012-12-11In Women Make Noise musicians, promoters, journalists, and fans explore the best girl bands of the last fifty years. Includes interviews with members of the original '60s girl groups and classic punk outfits like The Raincoats and The Slits as well as household names of today.
Inspired by Riot Grrrl
The Riot Grrrl Thing by ISBN: 9781931824804Publication Date: 2019-03-30"To read The Riot grrrl Thing is to participate in what is, and can only be, the Riot Grrrl Thing--a condition of vivacious unlimiting. The brilliant Sara Larsen knows that thing firsthand; I can only know it imaginatively, linguistically, and in awed recognition of its exuberant, and it would seem ancient, power. Sappho did the Riot Grrrl Thing, and she was not the first, nor will Kathleen Hanna or Janis Joplin or Kathy Acker be the last. Every bad-assed magnificent spirit refusing to serve as amusement or servant does the Riot Grrrl Thing as she rambunctiously plies incessant skepticism and supplies wild altruism. Larsen's book is pissed off, playful, excessive, erudite, and free. Read it and feel the whole of it."--Lyn Hejinian
Grrrl by ISBN: 9780975396445Publication Date: 2006-05-02Grrrl is the story of a young girl searching for herself in the midst of the riot grrl movement. For young Marlie, music is more than just something to listen to. It's her salvation from the banality of the suburbs. She dreams of one day becoming a rock star and taking music back for the girls, but first, she has to struggle through high school, her own budding sexual awareness, her possible homosexuality, and her dangerous flirtation with an older indie rocker. Set in the suburbs of Toronto, Grrrl is a tender and beautiful novel about the pains of getting older.
Stray City by ISBN: 9780062666697Publication Date: 2019-03-19Twenty-three-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood–and the closet—to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend's betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers she's pregnant—and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby. A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father she's never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life she's worked so hard to build. A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families we're born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.
Gurlesque: The new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics by ISBN: 9780981859149Publication Date: 2010-03-01Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics brings together eighteen poets of wide-ranging backgrounds, united in their ability to push the aesthetic envelope through radical, femme, Third Wave strategies, and pairs them with visual artists who do the same. At the turn of the millennium, we are witnessing the emergence of a vital—perhaps viral—new strain of female poetics: the "Gurlesque," a term that describes writers who perform femininity in their poems in a campy or overtly mocking manner, risking the grotesque to shake the foundations of acceptable female behavior and language. Built from the bric-a-brac of girl culture, these works charm and repel: this work is fun, subversive, and important. Poets include Brenda Coultas, Brenda Shaghnessy, Cathy Park Hong, Matthea Harvey, and Sarah Vap.
Explore riot grrrl through the following playlists:
- Riot Grrrl Album Guide: Essential LPs from Nineties rock's feminist revolution (Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone)
- Riot Grrrl United Feminism and Punk. Here’s an Essential Listening Guide (Evelyn McDonnell & Elisabeth Vincentelli,The New York Times)
- RIOT GRRRL/FEMME PUNK Playlist (@abbymak17 on Spotify)
- Riot Grrl Playlist (Spotify)
Below, we will highlight some videos of riot grrrl bands and groups associated with Sleater-Kinney and its members.
One of the most prominent riot grrrl bands is Bikini Kill, founded in Olympia, Washington in 1990 by Kathleen Hanna, Billy Karren, Kathi Wilcox, and Tobi Vail. Kathleen Hanna also published a fanzine titled Bikini Kill for their 1991 tours.
Video: Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
Bratmobile, also founded in Olympia, Washington (in 1991) is the project of Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman.
Video: Bratmobile - Cool Schmool
Around this time, Carrie Brownstein, Becca Albee, and Curtis James formed the band Excuse 17, also in, you guessed it, Olympia, Washington.
Video: Excuse 17 - I'd Rather Eat Glass
Excuse 17 frequently played shows with Heavens to Betsy, the band of Corin Tucker and Tracy Sawyer.
Video: Heavens to Betsy - She's the One
Over in Portland, Oregan, Janet Weiss and Sam Coomes founded the indie rock band Quasi in 1993.
Video: Quasi and Elliot Smith - The Poisoned Well
And in 1994, Sleater-Kinney was founded by Corin Tucker (vocals/guitar), Carried Brownstein (guitar/vocals), and Janet Weiss (drums/harmonica/vocals).
Video: Sleater-Kinney - You're No Rock N Roll Fun
Central to the proliferation of the riot grrrl movement and message (Revolution Girl Style Now!), was the production and distribution of zines. Zines (short for magazines) are self-published, DIY (do it yourself) creations. Before the emergence of the riot grrrl movement, music scenes (especially the punk scene) in the Pacific Northwest had their own sophisticated DIY cultures. Women in these scenes took advantage of this existing infrastructure, writing their own zines to circulate their ideas. This feminist ethos follows a long history of women utilizing alternative publishing modes to spread their writing and beliefs, ones which would otherwise go unpublished. We can think of the history of women's letter writing, the travel journal, and diaries as other examples of women writing outside of the mainstream.
Below, you will find digital archives with some of the most important zines of the riot grrrl movement along with articles and books on zine culture.
Images: The cassette cover of Bikini Kill's Revolution Girl Style Now. Courtesy of The Riot Grrrl Collection; The Fales Library & Special Collections New York University; The cover of the first Riot Grrrl 'zine. Courtesy of The Riot Grrrl Collection; Jigsaw, zine, No. 4, Summer 1991; MoPOP Permanent Collection
Articles:
- POP+ Punk: "Love Rock Revolution Girl Style Now!" - A Closer Look at Riot Grrrl Zines (Museum of Pop Culture)
- In the Riot Grrrl Archive: Punk and the limits of individualism (Rachel Greenwald Smith, The Yale Review)
- Start a Riot (and a Zine), Grrrl (Ashawnta Jackson, JSTOR Daily)
- Before Blogs, There Were Zines (Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily)
- Zines (IU Libraries)
Digital Archives:
- Riot Grrrl Collection (NYU)
The Riot Grrrl Collection documents the evolution of the Riot Grrrl movement, particularly in the years between 1989 and 1996. Because Riot Grrrl was (and is) both a political and a cultural movement, its output was diverse, including writing, music, performance, film, activism, photography, video, and original art, as well as documentation of activism and performance. This research collection provides primary resources for scholars and others who are interested in feminism, punk activism, queer theory, gender theory, DIY culture, print history, and music history. - Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP)
The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was first launched in November 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities.
Books
The Riot Grrrl Collection by ISBN: 9781558618220Publication Date: 2013-06-11Before the rise of the Internet or desktop publishing, the zine and music culture of the Riot Grrrl movement empowered young women across the country to speak out against sexism and oppression, creating a powerful new force of liberation and unity within and outside of the women's movement. While feminist bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile fought for their place in a male-dominated punk scene, their members and fans developed an extensive DIY network of activism and support.The Riot Grrrl Collection reproduces a sampling of the original zines, posters, and printed matter for the first time since their initial distribution in the 1980s and '90s, and includes an original essay by Johanna Fateman and an introduction by Lisa Darms.
Writing a Riot: riot grrrl zines and feminist rhetorics by ISBN: 9781433150777Publication Date: 2018-02-19Riot grrrls, punk feminists best known for their girl power activism and message, used punk ideologies and the literacy practice of zine-ing to create radical feminist sites of resistance. In what ways did zines document feminism and activism of the 1990s? How did riot grrrls use punk ideologies to participate in DIY sites? In Writing a Riot: Riot Grrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics, Buchanan argues that zines are a form of literacy participation used to document personal, social, and political values within punk. She examines zine studies as an academic field, how riot grrrls used zines to promote punk feminism, and the ways riot grrrl zines dealt with social justice issues of rape and race. Writing a Riot is the first full-length book that examines riot grrrl zines and their role in documenting feminist history.
The Archival Turn in Feminism by ISBN: 9781439909515Publication Date: 2013-07-26In the 1990s, a generation of women born during the rise of the second wave feminist movement plotted a revolution. These young activists funneled their outrage and energy into creating music, and zines using salvaged audio equipment and stolen time on copy machines. By 2000, the cultural artifacts of this movement had started to migrate from basements and storage units to community and university archives, establishing new sites of storytelling and political activism. The Archival Turn in Feminism chronicles these important cultural artifacts and their collection, cataloging, preservation, and distribution. Cultural studies scholar Kate Eichhorn examines institutions such as the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, The Riot Grrrl Collection at New York University, and the Barnard Zine Library.
Making Feminist Media: Third-wave magazines on the cusp of the digital age by ISBN: 9781771121200Publication Date: 2016-08-30Making Feminist Media provides new ways of thinking about the vibrant media and craft cultures generated by Riot Grrrl and feminism's third wave. It focuses on a cluster of feminist publications—including BUST, Bitch, HUES, Venus Zine, and Rockrgrl—that began as zines in the 1990s. By tracking their successes and failures, this book provides insight into the politics of feminism's recent past. Making Feminist Media brings together interviews with magazine editors, research from zine archives, and analysis of the advertising, articles, editorials, and letters to the editor found in third-wave feminist magazines. It situates these publications within the long history of feminist publishing in the United States and Canada and argues that third-wave feminist magazines share important continuities and breaks with their historical forerunners. The stories, struggles, and strategies of these magazines not only represent contemporary feminism, they create and shape feminist cultures.
The Magazine by ISBN: 9780262528665Publication Date: 2016-02-19The artist's magazine as a place where new ideas and forms can be imagined and created, from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. The multiple platforms of the digital era have not diminished the role of the magazine for artists as an alternative medium and experimental space. Intrinsically collaborative, including readers' active engagement, the magazine is an inherently open form that generates constantly evolving relationships. It was integral to the emergence of art criticism in the Enlightenment period and to the development of artistic dialogues around notions of culture, politics, and the public from the modern era avant-gardes to the present. This collection contextualizes the current condition and potential of the artist's magazine, surveying the art worlds it has created and then superseded; the commercial media forms it has critically appropriated, intervened in, or subverted; the alternative DIY cultures it has brought into being; and the expanded fields of cultural production, exchange, and distribution it continues to engender.
Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution by ISBN: 9781788735384Publication Date: 2020-03-24A landmark collection spanning two centuries and four waves of feminist activism and writing, Burn It Down! is a testament to what is possible when women are driven to the edge. The manifesto—raging, demanding, quarreling and provocative—has always been central to feminism, and it's the angry, brash feminism we need now. Collecting over seventy-five manifestos from around the world, Burn It Down! is a rallying cry and a call to action. Among this confrontational sisterhood, you'll find the Dyke Manifesto by the Lesbian Avengers, The Ax Tampax Poem Feministo by the Bloodsisters Project, The Manifesto of Apocalyptic Witchcraft by Peter Grey, Simone de Beauvoir's pro-abortion Manifesto of the 343, Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female by Frances M. Beal, and many more.
Publishing Manifestos by ISBN: 9780262537186Publication Date: 2019-04-23Manifestos by artists, authors, editors, publishers, designers, zinesters explore publishing as artistic practice.Independent publishing, art publishing, publishing as artistic practice, publishing counterculture, and the zine, DIY, and POD scenes have proliferated over the last two decades. So too have art book fairs, an increasingly important venue-or even medium-for art. Art publishing experienced a similar boom in the 1960s and 1970s, in response to the culture's "linguistic turn." Publishing Manifestos gathers texts by artists, authors, editors, publishers, designers, zinesters, and activists to explore this rapidly expanding terrain for art practice.The book begins in the last century, with texts by Gertrude Stein, El Lissitsky, Oswald de Andrade, and Jorge-Luis Borges. Many texts are reproduced in facsimile-including a handwritten "speculative, future-forward newspaper" from South Africa. Some are proclamatory mission statements, others are polemical self-positioning; some are playful, others explicitly push the boundaries.
Music, Art and Performance from Liszt to Riot Grrrl: The musicalizaton of art by ISBN: 9781501330131Publication Date: 2018-11-01Opening with an account of print portraiture facilitating Franz Liszt's celebrity status and concluding with Riot Grrrl's noisy politics of feminism and performance, this interdisciplinary anthology charts the relationship between music and the visual arts from late Romanticism and the birth of modernism to 'postmodernism', while crossing from Western art to the Middle East. Focused on music as a central experience of art and life, these essays scrutinize 'the musicalisation of art' focusing on the visual and performing arts and detailing significant instances of intra-art relations between c.1840 and the present day. What distinguishes these studies are the convictions that music is never alone and that a full understanding of the "isms" of the last two hundred years is best achieved when music's influential presence in the visual arts is acknowledged and interrogated.
The DIY Movement in Art, Music and Publishing by ISBN: 9781317555667Publication Date: 2016-04-20This book considers the history of Do It Yourself art, music and publishing, demonstrating how DIY strategies have transitioned from being marginal, to emergent, to embedded. Through secondary research, observation and 30 original interviews, each chapter analyses one of 15 creative cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dusseldorf, New York, London, Manchester, Cologne, Washington DC, Detroit, Berlin, Glasgow, Olympia (Washington), Portland (Oregon), Moscow and Istanbul) and assesses the contemporary situation in each in the post-subcultural era of digital and internet technologies. The book challenges existing subcultural histories by examining less well-known scenes as well as exploring DIY "best practices" to trace a template of best approaches for sustainable, independent, locally owned creative enterprises.
Gender in the Music Industry by ISBN: 9780754638612Publication Date: 2007-07-28"Why, despite the number of high profile female rock musicians, does rock continue to be understood as masculine? Why is rock generally assumed to be created and performed by men? Marion Leonard explores different representations of masculinity offered by, and performed through, rock music, and examines how female rock performers negotiate this gendering of rock as masculine. A major concern of the book is not specifically with men or with women performing rock, but with how notions of gender affect the everyday experiences of all rock musicians within the context of the music industry."
Freak Scenes: American indie cinema and indie music cultures by ISBN: 9781474414067Publication Date: 2022-12-13Freak Scenes explores the increased licensing of indie music and representation of indie music cultures within American independent cinema since the 1980s. Indie music has, since the 2000s, become highlighted in some indie films as an attraction, but this book probes how the appeal of indie music stretches back to the late 1970s, when punk music made its impact on filmmaking. Sexton looks at a range of issues where indie music and indie film intersect, including commercial concerns, the growth of niche marketing, the increased employment of popular music in cinema and questions of authenticity, as well as the fraught tensions between commercial and artistic concerns.
Girls Make Media by ISBN: 9780415972772Publication Date: 2006-05-11More girls are producing media today than at any other point in U.S. history, and they are creating media texts in virtually every format currently possible--magazines, films, musical recordings, and websites. Girls Make Media explores how young female media producers have reclaimed and reconfigured girlhood as a site for radical social, cultural, and political agency. Central to the book is an analysis of Riot Grrrl—a 1990s feminist youth movement from a fusion of punk rock and gender theory-and the girl power movement it inspired.
Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual by ISBN: 0826514502Publication Date: 2004-06-11These fourteen original essays examine the fascinating world of music scenes, those largely inconspicuous sites where clusters of musicians, producers, and fans explore their common musical tastes and distinctive lifestyle choices. Although most music scenes come and go with hardly a trace, they nevertheless give immense satisfaction to their participants, and a few--New York bop jazz, Merseybeat, Memphis rockabilly, London punk, Bronx hip-hop--achieve fame and spur musical innovations. To date, serious study of the scenes phenomenon has focused mainly on specific music scenes while paying less attention to recurrent dynamics of scene life, such as how individuals construct and negotiate scenes to the various activities. This volume remedies that neglect.
The Weird Sister Collection by ISBN: 9781558613003Publication Date: 2024-02-13Collecting the best of the underground blog Weird Sister, these unapologetic and insightful essays link contemporary feminism to literature and pop culture. Launched in 2014, Weird Sister proudly staked out a corner of the internet where feminist writers could engage with the literary and popular culture that excited or enraged them. The blog made space amid book websites dominated by white male editors and contributors, and also committed to covering literary topics in-depth when larger feminist outlets rarely could. Throughout its decade-long run, Weird Sister served as an early platform for some of contemporary literature's most striking voices, naming itself a website that "speaks its mind and snaps its gum and doesn't apologize." Edited by founder Marisa Crawford, The Weird Sister Collection brings together the work of longtime contributors such as Morgan Parker, Christopher Soto, Soleil Ho, Julián Delgado Lopera, Virgie Tovar, Jennif(f)er Tamayo, and more, alongside new original essays.
Popkiss: The life and afterlife of Sarah Records by ISBN: 9781628922189Publication Date: 2015-11-19From 1987 to 1995, Bristol, England's Sarah Records was a modest underground success and, for the most part, a critical laughingstock in its native country—sneeringly dismissed as the sad, final repository for a fringe style of music (variously referred to as "indie-pop," "C86," "cutie" and "twee") whose moment had passed. Yet now, more than 20 years after its founders symbolically "destroyed" it, Sarah is among the most passionately fetishized record labels of all time. Its rare releases command hundreds of dollars, devotees around the world hungrily seek out any information they can find about its poorly documented history, and young musicians--some of them not yet born when Sarah shut down--claim its bands (such as Blueboy, the Field Mice, Heavenly, and the Wake) as major influences.
- Theses on Sleater-Kinney.Doane, R. (2003). Theses on Sleater-Kinney. Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, 3(3), 357. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1177/1532708603254435
- Singing It Out: Riot Grrrls, Lilith Fair, and FeminismHuber, J. L. (2010). Singing It Out: Riot Grrrls, Lilith Fair, and Feminism. Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research, 9, 65–85.
- Start your own revolution: agency and action of the Riot Grrrl networkKaltefleiter, C. K. (2016). Start your own revolution: agency and action of the Riot Grrrl network. International Journal of Sociology & Social Policy, 36(11/12), 808–823. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1108/IJSSP-06-2016-0067
- Riot Grrrl, Race, and RevivalNguyen, M. T. (2012). Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 22(2–3), 173–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2012.721082
- Feeling Collective: The Queer Politics of Affect in the Riot Grrrl MovementSiegfried, K. (2019). Feeling Collective: The Queer Politics of Affect in the Riot Grrrl Movement. Women’s Studies in Communication, 42(1), 21–38. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1080/07491409.2018.1563579
- Criticism as punctuation in the riot grrrl backlashNewton, E. (2023). Criticism as punctuation in the riot grrrl backlash. Punk & Post-Punk, 12(1), 45–60.
- From Riot Grrrl to Radical: Reflections from a Working-Class FeministWhitfield, G. (2006). From Riot Grrrl to Radical: Reflections from a Working-Class Feminist. Canadian Woman Studies, 25(3/4), 185–187.
- I Can Sell My Body If I Wanna: Riot Grrrl Body Writing and Performing Shameless Feminist Resistance
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Perry, L. (2015). I Can Sell My Body If I Wanna: Riot Grrrl Body Writing and Performing Shameless Feminist Resistance. Lateral, 4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48671777 - Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular FeminismLusty, N. (2017). Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular Feminism. Australian Feminist Studies, 32(93), 219–239. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1080/08164649.2017.1407638
- Grrrl Zine Networks: Re-Composing Spaces of Authority, Gender, and Culture.Comstock, M. (2001). Grrrl Zine Networks: Re-Composing Spaces of Authority, Gender, and Culture. JAC, 21(2), 383–409. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20866409
- Girl Zine Networks, Underground Itineraries, and Riot Grrrl History: Making Sense of the Struggle for New Social Forms in the 1990s and BeyondRadway, J. (2016). Girl Zine Networks, Underground Itineraries, and Riot Grrrl History: Making Sense of the Struggle for New Social Forms in the 1990s and Beyond. Journal of American Studies0
- “We ARE the Revolution”: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment, and DIY Self-PublishingDunn, K., & Farnsworth, M. S. (2012). “We ARE the Revolution”: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment, and DIY Self-Publishing. Women’s Studies, 41(2), 136–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2012.636334
- Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular FeminismLusty, N. (2017). Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular Feminism. Australian Feminist Studies, 32(93), 219–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2017.1407638
- Preserving Contradiction: The Riot Grrrl Collection at the Fales LibraryDarms, L. (2012). Preserving Contradiction: The Riot Grrrl Collection at the Fales Library. Women & Performance, 22(2/3), 335–341. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1080/0740770X.2012.720823
- Zine-Making as Feminist PedagogyCreasap, K. (2014). Zine-Making as Feminist Pedagogy. Feminist Teacher, 24(3), 155–168. https://doi.org/10.5406/femteacher.24.3.0155
- Xerox, Paper, ScissorsCane, S. M. (2015). Xerox, Paper, Scissors. Aperture, 218, 46–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24475136
The Punk Singer : A documentary film about Kathleen Hanna by Publication Date: 2014A look at the life of activist, musician, and cultural icon Kathleen Hanna, who formed the punk band Bikini Kill and pioneered the "riot grrrl" movement of the 1990s.
Dont Need You The Herstory of Riot Grrrl by Publication Date: 2005A documentary film that tells the story of the origins of Riot Grrrl in the American independent music scene of the 1990s and how this feminist movement evolved into a revolutionary underground network of education and self awareness through music writing activism and women friendly community
Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution by Publication Date: 2017A documentary on Queercore, the cultural and social movement that began as an offshoot of punk and was distinguished by its discontent with society's disapproval of the gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender communities. Available to stream on Amazon.
MOXiE! by Publication Date: 2021Inspired by her mom's rebellious past and a confident new friend, a shy 16-year-old publishes an anonymous zine calling out sexism at her school. Available to stream on Netflix.
Starting a Riot (Podcast) by Thirty years ago, a movement called riot grrrl started in the Pacific Northwest. It wasn't just music–it was politics, feminism, culture and zines. Starting a Riot tells the history of riot grrrl: why it started in the Pacific Northwest, and what its lasting impact has been. And we focus on the stories that haven't often been told as part of the history of the movement. We'll hear from people on the margins, people who felt left out, and the people who insisted on being part of the conversation anyway.
And we would be remiss if we didn't add Portlandia, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen's observational satire set in Portland Oregon:
Portlandia by Publication Date: 2011-2018Portlandia is an American sketch comedy television series starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, set in and around Portland, Oregon, and spoofing the city's reputation as a haven for eccentric hipsters.
Granfalloon Bookshelf
Below you will find the 2024 Granfalloon Bookshelf. Click on the links to access these titles through IU Libraries.
Jailbird by ISBN: 9780385333900Publication Date: 1999-01-12Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government—and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate's least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.
Lucky Mud and Other Foma: A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut's Environmentalism and Planetary Citizenship by ISBN: 9781644212257Publication Date: 2022-12-06A fascinating deep dive into Kurt Vonnegut's oeuvre and legacy, illuminating his unique perspective on environmental stewardship and our shared connections as humans, Earthlings, and stardust. Vonnegut's major apocalyptic trio-Cat's Cradle, Slapstick, and Galapagos-prompt broad global, national, and species-level thinking about environmental issues through dramatic and fantastic scenarios. This book, Lucky Mud and Other Foma, tells the story of the origins and legacy of what Kurt Vonnegut understood as "planetary citizenship" and explores key roots, influences, literary techniques, and artistic expressions of his interest in environmental activism through his writing. Vonnegut saw writing itself as an act of good citizenship, as a way of "poisoning" the minds of young people "with humanity . . . to encourage them to make a better world." Vonnegut's remedies took many forms, from the redemptive power of the arts to artificial extended families to vital communities and engaged democracies.
All the President's Men by ISBN: 9780671217815Publication Date: 1974-06-15Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing with headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward kept the tale of conspiracy and the trail of dirty tricks coming -- delivering the stunning revelations and pieces in the Watergate puzzle that brought about Nixon's scandalous downfall. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for "The Washington Post" and toppled the President.
Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom by ISBN: 9781627791502Publication Date: 2022-01-11In this triumphant memoir, Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of All the President's Men and pioneer of investigative journalism, recalls his beginnings as an audacious teenage newspaper reporter in the nation's capital--a winning tale of scrapes, gumshoeing, and American bedlam. In 1960, Bernstein was just a sixteen-year-old at considerable risk of failing to graduate high school. Inquisitive, self-taught--and, yes, truant--Bernstein landed a job as a copyboy at the Evening Star, the afternoon paper in Washington. By nineteen, he was a reporter there. In Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recalls the origins of his storied journalistic career as he chronicles the Kennedy era, the swelling civil rights movement, and a slew of grisly crimes. Funny and exhilarating, poignant and frank, Chasing History is an extraordinary memoir of life on the cusp of adulthood for a determined young man with a dogged commitment to the truth.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by ISBN: 9781594486630Publication Date: 2015-10-27Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as "America's best rock band" by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock. With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one's true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.
Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out by ISBN: 9781628929768Publication Date: 2016-05-19Sleater-Kinney's 1997 album Dig Me Out is built on Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein's competing guitars, Janet Weiss's muscular rhythms, and layered vocals that teeter between an urgent, banshee-like vibrato and a lower accompaniment. Dig Me Out was the band's third studio album, but the first one written and recorded with Weiss. It inaugurated Sleater-Kinney into a lineup that would span its two-decade career. This 33 1/3 follows the narrative of Dig Me Out from its inception in Olympia to its recording in Seattle and its reception across the United States. This story of Dig Me Out chronicles how Sleater-Kinney won the fight to define themselves on their own terms - as women and as musicians - and, in the process, how they redefined the parameters of rock.
Still Left Out in America: The State of Homelessness in the United States by ISBN: 9781620063286Publication Date: 2020-08-21As a career journalist and candidate for vice president of the United States, Pat LaMarche lived in homeless shelters and situations across the nation while campaigning. Her intent was to highlight the plight of folks she cared most about in our society: veterans, babies, kids and their parents, the elderly and the tempest-tossed (to quote Emma Lazarus from the Statue of Liberty). All those folks—she thought—were left out of the discussion during the 2004 election cycle. The book followed in 2005. Fast forward 15 years—Pat has since worked running homeless shelters, fought with the system, crisscrossed the nation multiple times, and directed the kindness of others to help those I identified as needy. This newly expanded book more than doubled the size of the original as Pat shares her experiences from the front lines. Mass sheltering, housing regulations, climate change caused homelessness, epic disasters affecting babies, toddlers, school kids, the working poor, veterans, and the elderly are chronicled—including Hurricane Katrina (where she was stationed as a journalist) and more recently Paradise, California, the site of the deadliest wildfires in California history which rendered 27,000 people homeless in a day. She also examines the coming eviction tsunami.
Kursid Kids: For the Love of Pearl by ISBN: 9781737881568Publication Date: 2022-12-24When science fantasy collides with social injustice we peek into a world where the wealthy own all the natural resource and all the scientific discovery. In Kursid Kids the human spirit and a quest for fair play struggle to triumph over greed and selfishness. Dr. Marmalade, society's greatest scientist and his trusty robotic best friend have are compelled to protect society from their owner. They smuggle their greatest invention away from the billionaire who controls him—hoping for the best. Kursid Kids is a lively tale about a homeless family's struggle to survive. Alone, their odds aren't good. Thanks to Dr. Marmalade and his inventions—they aren't alone for long.
a Year & other poems by ISBN: 9781571315472Publication Date: 2022-03-15From the celebrated author of feeld comes a formally commanding third collection, dexterously recounting the survival of a period suffused with mourning. Jos Charles's poems communicate with one another as neurons do: sharp, charged, in language that predates language. "A scandal / three cartons red / in a hedge / in / each the thousand eye research of flies." With acute lyricism, she documents how a person endures seemingly relentless devastation--California wildfires, despotic legislation, housing insecurity--amid illusions of safety. "I wanted to believe," Charles declares, "a corner a print leaned to / a corner can save / a people." Still the house falls apart. Death visits and lingers. Belief proves, again and again, that belief alone is not enough. Yet miraculously, one might still manage to seek--propelled by love, or hope, or sometimes only momentum--something better. There is a place where there are no futile longings, no persistent institutional threats to one's life. Poems might take us there; tenderness, too, as long as we can manage to keep moving.
Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by ISBN: 9781571315274Publication Date: 2020-12-22"Some girls are not made," torrin a. greathouse writes, "but spring from the dirt." Guided by a devastatingly precise hand, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound—selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—challenges a canon that decides what shades of beauty deserve to live in a poem. greathouse celebrates "buckteeth & ulcer." She odes the pulp of a bedsore. She argues that the vestigial is not devoid of meaning, and in kinetic and vigorous language, she honors bodies the world too often wants dead. These poems ache, but they do not surrender. They bleed, but they spit the blood in our eyes. Their imagery pulses on the page, fractal and fluid, blooming in a medley of forms: broken essays, haibun born of erasure, a sonnet meant to be read in the mirror. greathouse's poetry demands more of language and those who wield it.
Homeward by ISBN: 9781400241101Publication Date: 2023-10-10The country is changing, and her own world is being turned upside down. Nothing—and no one—will ever be the same. Georgia, 1962. Rose Perkins Bourdon returns home to Parsons, GA, without her husband and pregnant with another man's baby. After tragedy strikes her husband in the war overseas, a numb Rose is left with pieces of who she used to be and is forced to figure out what she is going to do with the rest of her life. Her sister introduces her to members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—young people are taking risks and fighting battles Rose has only seen on television. Homeward follows Rose's path toward self-discovery and growth as she becomes involved in the Civil Rights Movement, finally becoming the woman she has always dreamed of being.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by ISBN: 9781635571868Publication Date: 2019-03-05Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight.As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls. With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai'i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.
How High We Go in the Dark by ISBN: 9780063072640Publication Date: 2022-01-18In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet. From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
The Body Papers by ISBN: 9781632061836Publication Date: 2019-04-09Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan's critically acclaimed memoir The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors' Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse. Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family's legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were "illegal." Family, she's told, must be put first. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating such abuse and trauma, and supplementing her story with government documents, medical records, and family photos, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.
V for Vendetta by ISBN: 9781401208417Publication Date: 2008-10-24Set in a futurist totalitarian England, a country without freedom or faith, a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask strikes back against the oppressive overlords on behalf of the voiceless. Armed with only knives and his wits, V, as he's called, aims to bring about change in this horrific new world. His only ally? A young woman named Evey Hammond. And she is in for much more than she ever bargained for...A visionary graphic novel that defines sophisticated storytelling, this powerful tale detailing the loss and fight for individuality has become a cultural touchstone and an enduring allegory for current events.
