Riot Grrrl: A Feminist Re-Interpretation of the Punk Narrative

by Jannika Bock

Revision with unchanged content. "We're Bikini Kill. And we want Revolution Girl-style now!!!" In the early 1990s, a female youth movement named Riot Grrrl formed around the feminist punk band Bikini Kill. The band's singer, Kathleen Hanna, became one of the most visible and outspoken activists of Riot Grrrl, which gained momentum particularly in the Pacific Northwest and Washington, D.C. Jannika Bock looks at the beginnings of the youth movement and uncovers its reliance on Second Wave feminists and their works. In her analysis she traces Riot Grrrl's double its indebtedness to feminism and the (male) punk scene, two seemingly opposing discourses. Culminating in a case study of Biniki Kill and their first CD Jannika Bock demonstrates how Riot Grrrl re-interpreted the punk narrative in feminist terms. The book is geared towards Americanists and Musicologists, former activists of the youth movement and all people interested in this exciting part of US cultural history.

120 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2008

Reviews

[Lindsay Bernhagen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thesis of this book is that riot grrrl is a feminist revision of punk and a punk revision of feminism. Not wrong, but not particularly novel either.

[Scrapz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative, I guess, but not worth the price at all.