'A roadmap for a new generation' VOGUE 'Radical funny and fearless' VANITY FAIR THE SUNDAY
TIMES BESTSELLER An electric searing memoir by the original Riot Grrrl and legendary
frontwoman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre Kathleen Hanna's rallying cry to feminists echoed far
and wide through the punk scene of the 1980s '90s and beyond. Her band Bikini Kill embodies
this iconic time and today their gutsy radical lyrics of 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 tumultuous
childhood home to her formative college years in Olympia Washington and on to her first
years on tour fighting hard for gigs and for her band. As Hanna makes blindingly clear being
in a 'girl band' especially a punk girl band in those years was not a simple or a safe
prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn and surviving as a band took
limitless amounts of grit and bravery. But the relationships she developed during those years
buoyed her - including with her bandmates Tobi Vail Kathi Wilcox and Billy Karren her
friendship with Kurt Cobain and her introduction to Joan Jett - and they were a testament to
how the true punk world nurtured and cared 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 later bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly
about the Riot Grrrl movement and its decline documenting with love its grassroots origins but
critiquing its later exclusivity. In an uncut voice all her own Hanna reveals the darkest
hardest times along with the most joyful - and how it all fuelled her revolutionary art from
the 1980s to today.
