XENITH

Grrrl Art
by Hannah Withrow

WHENNNNN they went to school . . . in OLYMPIA, leftist leanings were entrenched. They were young, they were feminists, they were queer, they were survivors, and more than anything they were all idealists. They wanted their own revolution, a revolution that would reclaim the word “girl” so it could be used as a pistol. We could always be called girls now, badass girls, even when our hair slipped into white and the sun pushed in our creases. We could be loud, pretentious, angry artists and activists, in a way that had not been seen before.

Girls it was time we had our own riots, it was time to pick up a guitar. It was time to SCREAM.

You could pull up your shirt and write “cunt”–beat those assholes to the punch and flip them off while you were at it. It was the original Girl Power–less cute, less commercial–more angry, more authentic.

And I was just a child.

The Riot Grrrls weren’t there for me when I needed them most. In my world they did not exist, no one told me about them. No one told me being a girl could be a good thing. I often wonder now how it would have been for me, if I could have found zeroxed zines waiting for me in the mailbox when I got home from school as a teenager. I wonder what those zines would have said to me, and what I could have written back. I wonder what would have happened if I had put a tutu over some fishnets and combat boots, spiked my hair, and gone to a show where people didn’t whisper when they talked about the bad shit that had happened to them. The shit that happens to you just because you are a girl. Where you could scream aloud about your ugly hidden girlstory. I wonder what would have happened if someone had told me I was 100% person, that I was not half-a-human, that my vitality did not need to be verified by someone else. That I did not have to earn the right to my own life. My own expression. I speculate now, as to what I could have made if I had known I was allowed to make things.

Much of my anger growing up stemmed from being pissed off about the stereotypes/fetishes people had of me because I had Oriental blood–strangers in the street found it easier to touch me without asking, call me names pertaining to my Asian heritage, interrupt me while I’m speaking, and step into my personal space without giving a shit. Before, I used to punch people in the streets who did this. Seriously! I used to . . . . Now I channel those frustrations elsewhere, or take people up on the invitation to speak about it.

(“Asian FUCKING Stereotypes” by Sabrina Sandata from the zine Bamboo Girl)

I wonder if it would have really changed anything for me if I had understood feminism back then at fourteen-fifteen-sixteen. Had felt it was okay to assert myself and fight back. What kind of art would I have made if I had the self-confidence to try it? I wonder if I would have been able to turn around in the hall and look at that boy who had just grabbed my ass in front of everybody. I wonder if I would have been able to say to him–don’t you ever fucking do that to me again motherfucker.

That is just how boys are–I used to think. It’s okay; the best I can do is laugh and pretend I like it. They defined me, determined if I was pretty or not, cool or not, real or not. The gaze of the boys. What the boys wanted from me. What the boys let me hold onto about myself. That was all I had. And it was never enough. I always ended up feeling lonely and rejected, unattractive and insignificant. No one wanted me as his girlfriend. No one loved me enough to legitimize my existence. My developing body and mind had turned against me, they had been taken over. I wasn’t sure who it belonged to, but it definitely wasn’t me. I stared in the mirror, pinched the fat on my inner thigh, and sighed.

I was one of those cool, chill girls who likes to hang out with the guys. Girls were catty. It was too much drama. I didn’t trust them, but I could trust boys. I was the girl Friend in the movie, the one standing to the side as the boys foolishly chased around the mean hot chicks. The girl who gets along with guys better than girls as a sign of evolution and hipness. The girl who gets the stud in the end when he realizes what everything he has been searching for is standing right in front of him. But what I really wanted was for them to like me. For one of them to finally choose me without dropping me in what seemed like seconds.

Wendy and I sat at the table full of boys; they talked about cars and music. We joined in, and occasionally the attention shifted to us. They asked us probing offensive questions about our periods and breasts. They asked what bra size we wore and if we had a heavy flow. We giggled–shut the fuck up . . . you perv. But it didn’t stop. Slut was a term of endearment coming from them I believed. Bitch was a hilarious compliment.

Tim was sitting next me, sitting very close to me. I was wearing his sweatshirt, but still shivering, so he sort of leaned into me, his arm supporting my back. He was listening to me. We had come to the elementary school parking lot bringing with us the razor scooters owned by younger siblings. It was sort of a joke, us riding razors, but it was also fun. And it was dark and cloudy. No one else would know. I was tired and not feeling well and the two of us were sitting for the moment. His friends called out to him–Tim, you big pussy, what are you doing? Get over here! But he laughed and ignored it. Stayed with me. We talked. I told him about Marie having a slower time than me in the 50 Free, but my horrible coach put her in the relay at State instead of me. “Just because she doesn’t like me.” I was also really afraid for my Western Civ test, I hadn’t been studying. Those problems weren’t that big, they were really quite superficial. I couldn’t risk telling him what was really wrong. I was feeling alone and miserable, he and his friends kept hurting me, but I bundled all that up. Still I was very grateful to have him there, looking and listening. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention, and maybe the point of it all was that he could put his hand on my ass, but it was something. Tim called me every night for a while, but I hurt his feelings–he hurt mine–and dramadrama nothing ever happened. And yes, he had been listening, but only in secret. At lunch he had trashed me with the rest of them. At lunch, he called me a skank and tossed pennies down my cleavage, laughing and loving it when I fished them out red-faced and whiney. He mocked my personality and exploited my insecurities. It was the high school way, the girls did it too, but it was more wounding for me when boys said it. It held more weight because without their respect I must really be that worthless. Boyfriendless was equivalent to a sales item at the boutique sitting there in the back because no one wanted to wear that ugly thing. Tim had been a chance for me–he wasn’t the hottest, the smartest, or the nicest. But he was there, I didn’t mind settling. Something is better than nothing. The Riot Grrrl movement sprung up in Olympia, Washington and Washington DC in the early 90s. It was established by a bunch of Punk Rock girls tired of being pushed to the sidelines and harassed at the male-dominated hardcore shows. Punk Rock was supposed to be an empowering Do-It-Yourself environment, a safe-haven for all freaks, more of a concept or an ideology than a style of music. But it wasn’t actually like that, and the girls figured they needed to make their own space, be really Punk Rock, fuck shit up. They needed a place where they could pick up their own guitars and drumsticks, pick them up and scream, pick them up and jump up and down. Throw their bodies around the stage, make their own fashion, and Subvert the Dominant Paradigm. So they did it. They put together bands and learned to play their instruments on stage, they put together consciousness raising groups, they wrote and distributed fanzines, and they made their own festivals. GirlLand.

It doesn’t even matter if I’m good, because that’s not what punk’s about! It’s about the ideas behind it and the passion behind it and the energy behind it.

(Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now, p.17) Like so many radical movements before, the Riot Grrrl movement eventually collapsed under the weight of media distortions and infighting. The movement without leaders that was meant to include women of all types was unsurprisingly white and middle class. Today there are still many women who identify as Riot Grrrls, and plenty of bands influenced by its music. Yet it is hard to find a cohesive and active group of them in the sense that that such groups used to exist. And to this wannabe, it seems that there have been no sufficient replacements. In high school in 2000, I spent my weekends at the mall in my WASPy white suburban habitat. Punk shows were not in my town, and I seldom made it to the concerts up in Seattle. I rarely even knew who was playing. And I had never heard of Bikini Kill, 7 Year Bitch, Bratmobile, Team Dresch, any of them. I still listened to boy-led punk bands if I was listening at all. Instead of lip rings I had cubic zirconium studs in my ears. Instead of shiny black Dr. Martens up to my knees I had brown clunky sandals. Instead of posters of Corin Tucker and Kathleen Hanna, I had a seascape my mother had bought for me in middle school. I was boring; I went to the mall almost every weekend and spent the rest of my time working to earn more shopping money.

My school performance was excellent; the work I turned in was stunning in its mediocrity. I would wrap myself around the syllabus like a cobra. I would suck the emphases out of my instructors’ speeches and handouts, then regurgitate them in the work I handed in, albeit in a slightly different form so that it might appear I had some ownership over them; nevertheless, I turned in bullshit. My teachers would then think I was really getting what they wanted us students to get out of the class; I was getting it and taking it to a deeper level. I bet it made them feel so good. It seldom occurred to me to construct my own meanings and ideas, to reveal my true inner personality and feelings. It never occurred to me that such a thing might be worth my while. I did not dare risk a bad grade, and I was completely unwilling to do anything that might expose my true self. I was a fake cowardly viper, sucking out my success, swallowing one simplistic ideology after another, slithering onto the next one without a second thought at the new semester.

Occasionally, upset and depressed, I would rant to my journal. Anger and ugliness poured out of me in messy deep pencil strokes. The next day I ripped out the pages and crumpled them into the garbage can, I had to forget those thoughts, I had to keep going and be that person I was supposed to be. Otherwise I might make a mistake, I might crash. A failure. Unloved. Everyone would leave me when they saw me as flawed.

There was another boy. Blonde hair and so America, he loved fast cars, baseball, and loud music. He wasn’t the cutest boy, he wasn’t the smartest boy. I thought I had a chance with him. I thought if I loved him I would get something back. I wasn’t asking for all that much was I? Just my own blonde American boy. Some attention and a cuddle buddy. I was lonely and unconvinced of my human worth. Only, a boy could give me what I needed, could give me some proof that my presence was more than a flutter that passed you in the halls at the school. So I dedicated my mind and hopes to him. I pushed myself toward him, longed to be a fold in his pant leg, died at the sound of his voice. I gave him double years, and all of my mind. He told a friend he liked me, was going to ask me to homecoming. He didn’t and I gave him the silent treatment as punishment. I had faith in hidden cues and feelings, that they were magic, that my love went from my heart to his, that he couldn’t miss it. It was a romantic-comedy fairy tale. I was the star, but no one could see it. He had to see it. Just had to.

I remember sitting with a group of women, half of them women of color and the other half were white. We talked about power, about how an internal sense of agency materializes into action. Us white girls had been taught that it was never our fault if we got hurt. We had been taught not to resist, and just don’t die if attacked. The women of color looked at us with confusion. No, their mothers had said to fight back, to not let it happen. To take care of themselves as best they could. What a good idea, Patty and I said. I wish I had grown up thinking that I didn’t have to let men do things to me just because they were men and that is how it always has been. Sure our experiences were not universal in either case, and it wasn’t meant to be blame-the-victim time, but from our discussion I began to see that it wouldn’t be bad–it had never been bad–to actually fight back.

It felt good to imagine myself with power, throwing back my shoulders and staring him down when he called me that word and shoved me into a corner. In my mind I could now push his hands off me and get away from there. I could tell that other guy to stop looking at me like that, to stop ruling my mind. It felt good to know these things, and yes it was too bad I hadn’t known them before, but at least I knew them now.

The Manifesto I Wish I Had Then:

There are many of us who have something about us that can be used to take us out. A thing like being a woman, a person of color, queer, or disabled. Something people will give as their reason for hate; pull out scientific studies, anecdotes, and generalizations, use whatever they can to make the anger inside of them logical. Moral. Because people will hate us for this thing, we must hold onto it and love it. We must wear it as a symbol around are necks and tattoo it on our forearms. We must flip that hate back on to them, we must let it slip off us like running water and continue to look on, clear-eyed and strong. It ought not to be such a burden. This quality they find most hateful, it cannot be changed; it should not be hidden or distorted to meet their needs. For it is what gives us life, gives us dimension.

Revolutions may be seen as silly and youthful. They may be seen as doomed romantic fantasies. Essentially masochistic. We grab onto a hope, conceive of utopia, but in the end many are disappointed. Still, we wake up and cry out to the barricades we have imagined when our dreams broke down the barriers of common sense. We need to walk onto the field as though we might win. It is the only way we won’t lose everything. The only way we won’t get swept into pre-appointed lives. It is the only way to Not be dominated.

Just as we can find power in loving that which is unlovable and dirty to others in ourselves, there is power in loving it in each other. Praising its very existence, and owning the strength given to us in return for all we live through.

Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and L7 speaks of female artists who merely seek out a space for themselves in existing forms as “assimilationist . . . they just want to be allowed to join the world as is; whereas I’m into revolution and radicalism and changing the whole structure. What I’m into is making the world different for me to live in,” (She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll, p. 5).

When I read things like that, I get this hollow feeling. I wonder where such strong sense of agency could come from. I can’t imagine believing I could have such a substantive effect on the world around me. Still I find encouragement in such thought, to take control of the moments occurring in my daily existence. The ability to tell someone s/he is a homophobe or a racist, right to the face. When someone I don’t really know calls me “darling,” I can ask him not to do it again. A sense of my own solidity is a nice thing to have.

The Riot Grrrls were hated on many fronts. At shows, men spit on and attacked the performers. They paid to get in and then spent the whole time shouting-Dyke! Whore! Your music blows! Newspapers printed slanderous and offensive pieces about the movement. “They screech, they spit, they snarl, they swear. Every word they scream through their microphone is a prayer against men. When their music stops, you are left with a pounding head, buzzing eardrums and no doubt that men are ‘the enemy’. Meet the riot grrrls.” (Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now, p. 39)

Any display of righteous Girl anger will get you vilified. Ask any moderately active leftist activist. And if you ever see any heavily tattooed and pierced woman in her mid-thirties with a scruffy hip haircut walking down the street in Seattle or Portland with a Home Alive patch or an International Pop Underground button on her messenger bag, you should ask her what happens to mouthy girls. She will have some good stories for you. She may tell you how she has been worn down, she may conclude with an apathetic shrug. Or maybe not. If she doesn’t shrug, then perhaps I had better meet this person. Perhaps she has something to say that I need to hear.

I wish I had grown up reading zines like this, learning about what it actually felt like to experience such things:

he asks me if I’ve ever done drugs. i answer him honestly, yes, i’ve smoked pot, done mushrooms, LSD, and cocaine; never alcohol, all recreational. he states the reason i have a panic disorder is because of my one-time-only cocaine use and the reason why i suffer from severe depression is because i’ve smoked pot. i tell him that is not true, cos it’s not. Yes, say yes, I say no.

(“Wednesday night . . . “ by Witknee from the zine Alien)

I wish I had written zines like this and been proud of them. I wish I could have felt that they meant something and were going to change things. I think it would have made life much more bearable and given me a sense of my own identity. Isn’t it enough that I am writing now? Why is it that my feelings of past powerlessness are keeping me from having hopeful visions of the future and the things I will write? Is that I feel too old, that I missed those moments of unadulterated idealism and the chance to write about it? Why do I mourn the naïve girl I never fully got to be? Why is that important?

Here was a movement that allowed young women to speak out about their pasts, to talk about sexual abuse, mental illness, drug use, self-harm, domestic violence, abortions, being queer, stripping, prostitution, and the daily harassment they faced as women. Here was a movement that allowed young women to take on a radical political stance, to name and frame patriarchy, capitalism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ablism, lookism, classism, and sometimes even racism. It gave woman a chance make outrageous suggestions and to sustain hope and commitment in each other, to create mantras and manifestas for one another. To not accept.

Finally I met the boy to make everything right. A boy who really liked me and took me on bona fide dates. We talked about our relationships with our parents, thoughts on life and religion, what growing up was like, disappointment with friends, anything. He touched my hair with his tan Panamanian-Irish hands; his hair was dark and his muscles thick, he smiled and liked to hold me. He told me I was so smart, so pretty, that he felt lucky to be with me. He came to all my swim meets and water polo games; he cheered and told me I was pretty and strong. He wanted me to do well, was impressed when I did. He was there. I was not alone, and people saw us. People were jealous that my boyfriend always showed up, my girlfriends told me was hot and asked me to hook them up with his brother. I began to have some self-assurance. I began to feel that I was okay.

But things weren’t perfect. He was a couple years older, had flunked out of college and now lived with his parents. He smoked a lot of weed, drank too much, and couldn’t keep a job. If I had too little self-confidence, he had too much, not a great handle on reality, of the actual limitations that faced him in his future goals. I found it frustrating; I wondered if what he saw as his own limitless potential meant that all the good he saw in me wasn’t really there either. And everything wasn’t fixed. I still worried and hurt and never felt good enough. If a boy couldn’t save me, what could?

Resist the temptation to view those around you as objects + use them . . . Resist the intenalisation of capitalism, the reducing of people + oneself to commodities meant to be consumed . . . Resist psychic death . . . Figure out how the idea of competition fits into your intimate relationships . . . Recognise your connection to other people and species . . . Close your mind to propaganda of the status quo by examining its effects on you,

cell by artificial cell. (Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now, p. 114)

Growing up, I ate propaganda for breakfast. When I talked about not wanting to have children, or how much I liked math I got either laughed or yelled at. Feminists were femininazis, and anyone with problems was to be ignored and pushed out. The cure for depression and dissatisfaction was shopping and relationships were about appearances not love. I didn’t know any different, but I knew I didn’t like it.

Girl Love. It is not about homosexuality, it is not about sex, it is about a love that could save us. These badly written zines, that scratchy voice, those out of tune guitars–they speak of something beautiful. Something many people do not want teenage girls to know about because they might become rebellious and want to change things. Solidarity. Girl Love says don’t be jealous of your sisters, don’t fight over men, don’t scapegoat one another. Join up, don’t let yourself become another commodity of patriarchy. Don’t let yourself be thus dehumanized. Don’t ever define yourself by your relationship to men. Help each other.

Sarah and I confessed to each other, we had a mutual crush on Craig. What were we going to do about it? Let’s promise that if one of us dates him the other won’t be mad. Yeah, it isn’t worth ruining our friendship over a boy. We promised. I knew it would be hard, she was prettier than me; she was definitely going to get him. But Sarah was one of my closest friends; I could always find a new crush. In the end neither of us dated him, we were all just friends. Nice friends.

But it wasn’t usually like that. My friends and I called each other whores, sluts, and bitches (and not in that empowering, reclaiming the words kind of way). In college we mocked the sorority girls. We slept with each other’s boyfriends. We stole clothes from our roommates. We spoke softly about her eating disorder. We didn’t invite that one girl to go out with us. We tore one another apart; we dismantled the sense of self, the sense of significance. We become the tools of our sick society, pulling the hairs from the heads around us, never noticing that our lives have been hijacked, that we may never have actually had them.

I want to choose Girl Love.

In my past there was little room for empathy and openness. Safety and trust were not well known to me coming from a place where the backstabbing and gossip didn’t end with high school. I had to move away to learn about such things. I had to meet different kinds of people and see different kinds of trouble. I had to experience new problems and challenges. Most of all I had to make new friends who were kind and reliable. I had to heal and see some better ways before I could become the kind of person I wanted to be. A person who doesn’t judge what she doesn’t know.

I no longer crave the stage.

For a long time I was addicted to the smell of sweat, money, and cheap cigarettes. The stage was a place where, not quite eighteen, I learned about being a chameleon. I could seduce a credit card from a bum. I was like a shapeshifter. Any man could look at me and see whatever shape he wanted most. I was an airhead, an intellectual, a dog, a mistress. I was every kind of pervert and dominatrix and girl-next-door he could imagine. I could slide and spin on the stage and ultimately have the whole room, women and men, in a trance, in love.

I thought I was learning about being a woman. . . .

I’m all woman–tiny, sagging, stretched breasts and all. And if Governor Weld and his welfare reform forces me back to the club someday before I finish my teaching credentials, they’ll go with me just the way they are.”

(“Pregnant at the Glass Slipper” by “June” from the zine hip Mama)

Why should I have ever looked down on strippers and other sex workers? I could be one of them; it is one of the few ways to make a living for a woman on the margins. I remember when I worried that I could never go to college. That there would never be the money or the help I needed. I got lucky I suppose, but I have heard it’s not so bad. No more exploitative than working as a waitress, housekeeper, or store clerk. A friend is going to Las Vegas, tip those girls well, I say, they deserve it. Just as the barista deserves it.

I think of the way men look at me as I walk down the street. I remember my days at the café. I have not forgotten the way I was treated. I could tell that to them, I was a serving object. I knew that in their minds I did not form a full human.

I was watching a television show the other day and there was a young woman, a sexual abuse survivor. She went up on the stage, went up and pulled off her shirt, her pants. You don’t have to do this, said her friend. But she smiled and told her it was better this way, that it allowed her to decide who looked at her and when. She had control for once.

I imagine if it were me on the pole, I imagine showing my breasts for money. Go ahead, look, I would think. Look all you like. You won’t touch me. You won’t know me. I am a hundred miles away from you now. Just as I am a hundred miles away when they look at me that way. Just as I can barely hear them when they call out–Where you headed, sweetie?

I don’t want to go home with you, but sure, I will take your money.

Well, okay. I did want to kiss her. I really liked her. It’s totally innocent kissing someone. But she stuck her tongue in my mouth, and that woke up all the other I ideas I didn’t know where there, of things you can do to someone. She started it, kissing me, and then she started touching me, and then I just touched her back. I don’t know. But she liked it, she totally liked it. It wasn’t like she said later. She loved it, the whole time.

(“Girl Picnic” by Elissa Nelson from Hope)

“Don’t hold my hand; people will think we are lesbians!” I told my friend. Something inside me always pulled back hard at female touch. Often girl friends would look hurt and walk away after trying to hug me and noticing my cringe. I didn’t know why I did it, I just knew I could feel all my muscles tighten at the feel of a soft hand, a light head on my shoulder. The tenseness stayed with me for minute after minute. It made me angry, why were all my friends so into touching and hugging anyway? What was the point of all this touching anyway, and was there really such a thing as platonic touch anyway?

Why was I so afraid of the hints that some of my high school friends were discovering themselves to be lesbians and bisexuals? Why was I so angry and afraid of their self-conscious advances? Why did I tell other people about it, when I knew what would happen to these girls when I did? I look back at myself in shame. And I am angry that I was merely acting as my superiors would have wanted. I was their little puppet, shaming my confused friends into the closet. Further confusing them. Closing my mind to the wideness of human expression. She came on to me, I whispered after an awkward encounter. And the rumors spread through the arteries and veins of our school. So sick! She called and asked if I had told Alicia she was a lesbian. No, of course not. If I couldn’t have been taught differently, why was that not a direction I could have taken my angst and rebellion? Why were the gay boys cute and fun and the lesbians gross and frightening? I suppose at the time I was a true homophobe, afraid of what would surface if I explored ways of loving between two women, ways of crushing between two girls.

It’s been strange to slowly uncover my bisexuality in my twenties, realizing what all these tiny moments and strange interactions in my past actually meant. And wondering what it means that I never really considered such a thing as possible for myself. It was easy to assume I was straight since I had so many crushes on so many boys. I never gave a second thought to the feelings I had about girls, brushed them away without really noticing. In my community being gay wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t real. It was a perversion and a choice. Of course that wasn’t me. Friends talk about when they first knew there was something different about them as teenagers or children, or about the first time they felt a strong sexual attraction to a person of the same gender; I don’t have any memories like that. There are just awkward scenes; impulsively grabbing hold of a friend’s inner thigh and tickling her without realizing what I was doing, or waking up during a sleepover with my arms wrapped around a girl friend who had her head resting on my stomach. I tended to forget those uncomfortable moments as quickly as possible. It wasn’t until I got away from the silencing and hiding of the suburbs and became friends with other queer people that I began to understand what sexuality was all about. It wasn’t until I was all “grown up” that I could see sexuality as something that didn’t have to fit into the small box I had always been shown before.

At the end of high school I left them all behind, the boys. I had a boy break–broke off contact with all the dudes from high school, kept my new interactions and relationships with boys chill and platonic for a few years. I went to school, I went to work, I dug in and started reading and writing again. I found feminism. I gave myself some space, learning to feel that I am okay as I am. And I made some truly good girlfriends, spent time with them, and really talked with them. I saw that being on my own and independent didn’t make me alone and valueless.

Gradually, as I have untangled myself from the many screwed up and distorted elements of my fundamentalist Christian upbringing, I have found a new person within that I never knew existed. Learning about the riot grrrls and the beautiful work they did has opened up new ideas and possibilities for how to live and see myself. So many whispers have become howls and laughs as I have begun to write and write, to make collages, and engage in activism. Art is testing ground for action. Art is where change starts. And even in my snooty-pretentious-picky-art-snob mind, I can see that angry youthful art, art that you might call bad, is better than No Art. No Art will suck our lives away. Without art the young people will all atrophy into the next callous gatekeepers of hegemony. Without art we are stuck forever. I wish I had seen and made some grrrl art when I was younger, but luckily it isn’t too late for me.

Sources:
Gaar, Gillian G. She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock and Roll, 2nd ed. New York: Seal Press, 2002.
Green, Karen and Kristan Taormino, eds. A Girls Guide to Taking Over the World: Writings from the Girl Zine Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Juno, Andrea. Angry Women in Rock, Volume One. New York: Juno Books, 1996.
Monem, Nadine, ed. Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007.
Raphael, Amy. Grrrls: Viva Rock Divas. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

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Hannah’s piece is about her love for the Riot Grrrl movement, something she missed almost completely because of her age. The piece is a sort of combination of academic writing, reporting, and personal essay. Also, she admits it has very bad grammar (hopefully it’s evident that it was done purposefully). She currently lives in Denver, holds an MFA from Ashland University, and is working on a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. She does know how to use a semi-colon; she just doesn’t want to in this case.