Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution

by Sara Marcus

Girls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of Riot Grrrl, the radical feminist uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s and included incendiary punk bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and Huggy Bear. A dynamic chronicle not just a movement but an era, this is the story of a group of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Punk, Politics, Biography

367 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2010

Reviews

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to the library print-out left inside this book, in 2013 someone else checked this book out along with Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, The Riot Grrrl Collection, and How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You.

I want to know that person.

I was a smidge too young when Riot Grrrl was a thing that was happening. In fact, by the time actually I heard of it, it was essentially over and one of the letter 'r's had been dropped from the second word - I always seemed to see it called Riot Grrl. Maybe that was laziness from people later, or maybe I'm just mis-remembering. In any case, what I do know is I missed out on the original movement, and that's always made me a little sad. Like they might have been my people, but I would never actually know because our paths didn't cross at the right time. Like a Missed Connection listing.

Interestingly enough, though, I didn't miss out entirely because what this movement did in the early 90s in different parts of the country were also sort of happening in the Midwest in the late 90s at the women's college I attended. Except by then, or in that situation, it didn't entirely work for me either. Maybe I'm just too fickle for any movement; there's always something that rubs me the wrong way or doesn't sit well with me.

Reading this book was simultaneously eye-opening, inspiring, frustrating, and irritating. I was on board with so much the author said about the movement until she started repeating herself and putting so much stock on Olympia, Washington that even I started rolling my eyes. The author is a Riot Grrrl fan-grrrl, and that's cool and all, but from what I also understand, she didn't even get all of her facts straight. I have no basis for that myself, but have to keep an open mind that some of the key players discounted parts of what Marcus wrote.

The biggest problem with the movement is that it lacked any real direction or leadership. It's funny coming from me, because normally I'd be all "Anarchy!" and cheering on the fact that there was no true organization. But for what these young women wanted to accomplish, there needed to be more of a direction, a focus, a combined effort. Everyone had an agenda that more or less matched up, but when it didn't match up, it really didn't match up. Like that time now-music critic Jessica Hopper was banished from the movement entirely because she spoke to the media in the middle of a media blackout. The author really still doesn't like Jessica Hopper, guys. Every time there was a mention of her, the paragraph practically drips with derision. It's awkward and uncomfortable.

Which leads us to one of the biggest complaints about the movement I've heard over the years, which is as a group they were pretty exclusive. These young women found each other, and I love that they did. They claimed to have open doors to outsiders, but outsiders never really felt accepted, and then Jessica Hopper happened and ate someone's tofu, and holy shit. (No joke, there was a story about how she ate someone's tofu and she laughed about it when confronted. Weird, right?)

In addition to that, the movement historically was especially white. Women of color have commented that they didn't feel this movement was open to investigating their issues and their concerns - which is just like pretty much every other feminist movement in history. Can we not get our shit together, ladies? C'mon. It's really not that complicated.

Sigh.

So I understand the complaints, and I understand why the movement sort of fizzled out after a while. But I can appreciate the sentiment. What they did was start the conversation. They opened the door. Think what you want of Kathleen Hanna, but she helped open the door for other women to rock out and she stood up for women in the audience at shows, calling on them to stand at the front of the stage to avoid intimidation by others in the crowd. Having almost gotten in a fight myself at a Sleater-Kinney show a few months ago (with another woman, even), I can appreciate that since I too hate assholes at live shows. Girls were finally starting to have a voice at places that girls didn't normally have voices. That was exciting.

What's unfortunate is that no one seems to be continuing the conversation that the Riot Grrrls started. Because they refused to talk to the media (except for that pesky Jessica Hopper), the rest of us never really had a very good idea as to what they were all about. There were a lot of stereotypes being thrown around, a lot of misinformation. Would things have been different if they had not opted for the media blackout? It's hard to say. In a time before YouTube and most of the Interwebz and before cell phones, the way to reach out to others was to write in Magic Marker on their hands, make Shrinky-Dink necklaces, and hope someone would ask them about it. That was a crazy time, kids. Magic Marker. Can you believe it?? We had things called zines. Filled with feelings, these mythical zines. No PhotoShop, just scissors and a fucking glue stick.

I'm all for a good revolution. People like to color the entire movement as being a bunch of "angry girls", and there is some truth to that. Except "angry girls" shouldn't be a derogatory statement. There was a lot of reason to be an angry girl in the early 90s, just as there are still a lot of reasons today. If you're not angry, then you're not paying attention.

All the music-talk was fantastic and made my 90s-girl heart beat with excitement. Reading those sections is when I wish I was there the most, and not in junior high trying to be one of the popular kids, thinking that would be the answer to all of my problems. Had I known about Riot Grrrls at that time, even if I hadn't joined them, at least it would have given me another perspective, reason to believe that there was more to life than just being popular.

Anyway, if anyone wants to continue the conversation that was started in the early 90s, I'll be over here in the corner with my glue stick.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 5 out of 5]

REVOLUTION!!!



GIRL STYLE



NOOOOWWWW!!!!!!



So began the primal scream of a frustrated girl, an angry band, a feminist movement.

Girls to the Front is about the Riot Grrrl movement of the early '90s, and when you speak of Riot Grrrl, you speak of Kathleen Hanna and her band Bikini Kill. Hanna released her rage against the sexism that surrounded her through music, discovering a sort of cadre of like-minded girls in Olympia, WA, some of whom were already entrenched in grassroots feminist punk ideology. Together they formed a united sisterhood that sought an end to sexist behavior and actions - be it catcalls or rape - through violence if necessary. They were sick of boys (and men) keeping them down, holding them back, and they were ready to fight for equality.

At its pinnacle of success, Riot Grrrl was a glorious camaraderie of young women gathering together to express themselves, their fears, their longings, to pour out their darkest nightmares thrust upon them by horrifying encounters. Some had suffered worse than others, but nearly all rejoiced in having a safe place to gather and discuss their stories, whatever backgrounds may have driven them to Riot Grrrl.

At its lowest point, Riot Grrrl was a misunderstood and misguided, amoebic, antagonistic entity flailing against the mass media that infiltrated and eventually corrupted it, just as much as it flailed against itself, with grrrls fighting grrrls over petty squabbles or the very fabric of their own ideology.

While in college, a friend and I attempted to go to a Bikini Kill concert in Boston, but it was cancelled. Rumor had it that a fight had broken out at the previous night's show and, due to some guy getting his ass kicked by a bunch of girls, the tour was on hold. From an outsider/boy's perspective, that was Riot Grrrl. As an outsider on the fringe of this underground movement - going to shows and putting out my own zines - I wanted to know what was going on. But this was a girls' club and I wasn't invited.

Luckily, along came Sara Marcus' book, perhaps 20 years too late for me, but I was glad nonetheless to finally lift the veil and discover what I'd missed, to learn what had really gone on. Marcus wields her words with a deft hand, a mighty stroke and blunt force. Girls to the Front is not perfect (It gets an extra star from me for pure nostalgia's sake), but you are in good hands with this writer on this topic. Most of society won't get this. Those girls that were part of this movement won't need this. But for those of us who collected riot grrrl band 7 inches or caught their record store shows with a couple dozen other folks, but got no closer, this book is for us.

[julieta · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the riot grrl movement was happening in the 90's, I was growing up in Tijuana, and playing in my first bands. I really had no clue all this was going on, so it was great to read about all these teenage girls getting together and speaking about how they felt about being women in the 90's. What I take especially from this book, is how mass media can turn anything into candy, the worst danger for this small movement was when the media got interested in them. I learned a lot, even if at some parts of all this, she narrates a lot of the bickering and fighting, and I think that really does not help explain what happened, or why the movement lasted for such a short time.

[jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tobi Vail has discussed this book here and here.
Johanna Fateman has discussed it here.
Allison Wolfe discussed it here.

I found all of their reviews and insights to be a great supplement to the actual book, since Sara Marcus worked on this book for five years, researched the hell out of it, but didn't cover everything or get it all right. You could say that no one could cover everything or get it all right, and ok, that's true.

I have really been soul searching over the last two weeks, trying to find just the right words to describe the three thousand ways I feel about this book. Riot grrl is all about personal history, and mine greatly affected my reading of the book, so....

First of all, I'm was born too late & in the wrong location, but I was immersed in a post-riot grrl world in my developing years. I wrote zines, booked shows, did some activism, traveled to see bands, went to feminist conferences with shitty food and sleeping bags for my formative east coast college years. I was witness to a sort of post-riot grrl backlash. I mean, it was kind of "what comes next." Feminist & queercore bands were regularly dialogged with or protested for feminist inclusion or racist missteps, and Le Tigre was a glaring trespasser numerous times. The author of Girls to the Front has a reverence and appreciation for Kathleen Hanna that, frankly, seems cloying and naive from my perspective. KH is like She-ra in this book, seriously, and that's an unfair portrayal.

Second of all, I live in Olympia, WA. I moved here for the greatest love of my life, and I have found it to be an entirely charming place to raise a family, be a gay mom, grow a garden, see some art happen. It's slow-paced and there are a lot of hippies, but there are plenty of radical people and happenings to keep things awesome. Tobi Vail says that she feels that GTTF represents Olympia in an unfairly dismissive way. That was a really diplomatic way of addressing this issue. About 2/3 of the way through the book, I was ready to chuck it across the room if Sara Marcus mentioned the "blackberry-picking kids" of Olympia one more time.

This is a difficult, largely undocumented time in feminist history (considering how many zines they wrote), and it is evident that the author put a lot of work into this book. I don't envy her for this task. I enjoyed reading it, and seeing how events unfolded at various points in different locations. It was sometimes hard for me to keep track of the timeline - wait, this was happening in NYC while this was happening in DC while this was happening in Oly, etc? I think this is a good jumping off point for someone interested in feminist history & riot grrl, but I hope that it's not the be-all-end-all narrative of this time.

I hope some girls read this book & go write a zine (wait, zines are dead, too, right? so, go write a blog?) or start a band or just start a fight with something unfair. That infectious, rowdy, disobedient anger was the most powerful thing about riot grrl, and it would be great to see another generation find ways to articulate their rage. Grown-up riot grrls have done a considerable job of creating their own feminist canon. Some of them are still doing radical and inspiration work out in the world. Maybe I am delusional too, but maybe older grrls (now: ladies) still have a chance at revolution too, if we find room for resistance to be a possibility not only for the youngest.

Also, reading this was a reminder of so many ways that the lived experiences of women are better and worse than they were in the 1990s. Some things are better, but other things are worse. We have more women in government, I think, but one of them is Sarah Palin so...

Then everyone starts talking about whether riot grrl is dead, and I'm pretty sure as long as there is a girl somewhere out there who identifies as a riot grrl, it can't be dead. It's like a unicorn.

[Alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt profoundly disappointed by this. I feel almost as if I had another expectation of what Riot Grrrl was, and this book sort of killed it.

Sadly, I felt like there was a structural problem to this book. The author was either too in love with the subject, or she wasn't removed enough from the activities. There was a tonal problem to what was written here.

I also felt that the book had way too much of a focus on Kathleen Hanna, but again, I think that's because I expected her to be chronicling something different than what she actually did.

I did appreciate how she gave a chronology of some of the history and did show the problems and conflict in the movement.

There were things about this book that made me highly nostalgic. I was a hard core reader of Sassy magazine and I have fond memories of listening to music, going to shows, writing penpals, and reading zines that I got in the mail. Some of the things that were affected Riot Grrrl also had an impact on my own feminism and political/activist ideas. It was fun to retread that time, and I sort of miss the zeal/energy of it. But as the author said, that's also part of being a young woman, and that anger does change/dissipate after a while.

Almost wish that someone else of my generation/ peer group would read this and give me their opinions.

[Ananda · Rating 2 out of 5]

You would think that the author of any "true" story would not cherry-pick and distort the truth, but that is exactly what Sara Marcus did. As a contributor to her research and analysis for the book, and as a character in the story, I was surprised later (despite rounds of corrections) to see the extent to which she went on to simply ignore my first-person accounts and instead, filter them through what she apparently believed was true or was easier for her to write. Painful, sometimes traumatic, personal history was rewritten, even downplayed.

Sara Marcus's handling of my contributions to the book were unethical, and, by her own admission (with regard to one scene in the book) "sloppy reporting." However, as a former Riot Grrrl, I otherwise found the book fascinating. Marcus is not a bad writer, but should stick to fiction.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a few years too young and living in a place that was too isolated to have any knowledge of the Riot Grrrl movement as it was happening. Such is the tragedy of the pre-Internet world: if that didn’t happen somewhere you could reach it through word of mouth or publications you could get your hands on, you missed it. I always felt kind of sad that this was something that had passed me by, because as soon as I learned about it, it felt like was something that I would have loved to be a part of. My budding feminism (inspired by my mom’s) fell on deaf ears in high school (where I was made to feel like an absolute freak because I came from a queer-friendly household where conversations about periods, safe sex and consent were normalized), and the message the mainstream pushed at girls in the late 90s and early aughts was that we didn’t need it anymore: we had been liberated, we were fine. But it didn’t really feel like we were fine at all, and when I learned that there were girls out there making music that called out what the mainstream refused to talk about, it was like a veil had been lifted. I wasn’t crazy, there were still huge systemic problems that some people were not only willing but eager to talk about, people who wanted to create spaces that were by girls, for girls. And due to an accident in geography, I didn’t have access to it.

So obviously, I wanted to read this book when I found out about it, I wanted more information about how the movement had started and who the key players had been, and what they had done and said. This is an important chapter of feminist history, but it often gets about as much attention as a footnote – for a variety of reasons.

One of the things that struck me reading this book is that so many of the issues discussed by the original Riot Grrls and so much of the language they use is now part of the more mainstream conversations about feminism. They lacked visibility, but they were well ahead of their time – or society at large really has a lot of catching up to do – or both! The irony of this book opening with a take down of Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment scandal and the possibility of Roe vs. Wade being overturned in 92 made me cringe. JFC, how I loathe our collective inability to learn anything at all from our painfully documented history.

Marcus has a clear case of hero-worship here, and she paints Katheleen Hanna as a saint who can do no wrong, which is a big disingenuous. I think I would have appreciated a more even-toned narrative here, because I cherish my Bikini Kill records and I admire many things Kathleen has said and done, but I think making her into this flawless leader figure is incoherent, as the main problem with the Riot Grrrls was the lack of leadership and direction (which in fairness, would have been an extremely challenging thing to accomplish given that there were a handful of chapters scattered across the USA and Vancouver, with no other real means of communication but the zines they mailed to each other and the occasional long-distance phone call), and the ease with which they let their community get fragmented.

That leads me to another small issue I had with the book: Marcus has a hard time concealing the glee with which she spills tea. That can often overshadow her main point, which is that these girls didn’t just want to hang out with other girls: they had a real political agenda for societal change, which was undermined by what almost always happens, which is that self-promotion and constantly shifting hierarchy (which are often reproduced in the process of trying to dismantle them) made it unsustainable. She does point out some of the flaws in the movement, like the lack of intersectionality and their attempts at addressing them and fixing them, but this still gets overshadowed by stories of how everyone reacted to these events.

I don’t mean to be down on the book at all: I obviously enjoyed it, and I highlighted a lot of stuff. It’s an incomplete history of fragmented movement, so obviously, it won’t be perfect, and the amount of work necessary to produce it commands respect. It is also both inspiring and very moving to read about those girls forming such strong bonds over their desire to make the world a better and safer place and finding community in each other. It’s frustrating to read about a handful of egos taking over the narrative, but this is such a frequent issue grassroot efforts struggle with that I was not especially surprised.

To quote Tobi Vail: “Riot Grrl belongs to whoever needs it and believes it has the power to give their lives meaning and change things. That is the reason for all of this. Change the world. Don't accept things "the way they are now". Create your own meanings. Make your own definitions. Use culture as a tool. Just know you will have to be quick and constantly on your toes and maybe it's harder than ever to create something ephemeral, to live in the moment, but maybe it's even more than necessary now. The now of now.”

[Ciara · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was nervous but excited to read this book. i bought it six months ago & kept putting it off because i wanted to be able to really relish it, & i kept thinking i should read my library books first. & i always have a new library book. but i finally read this last week & it was awesome.

first of all, i'm not going to pretend that this is perfect book. all historical accounts are subjective, even when they were written by people who were actually there or extremely passionate & knowledgeable about their subject. sara marcus became interested in riot grrrl in 1993 or so, as a teenager. so she was as involved with the scene as i was...which is to say, peripherally in a lot of ways. i was a young teenager living in small town ohio in the early 90s. i wrote zines, contributed to zines, traded zines, had tons of pen pals, traded mix tapes, was introduced to & introduced other people to riot grrrl bands through said mix tapes, etc. but i never made it to a riot grrrl convention (i was too young & my parents wouldn't let me go--they thought riot grrrls were "man haters" & "lesbians"), i never saw a lot of those classic riot grrrl bands play live, i was never in a local riot grrrl group (my best friends as a teenager were weirdo punk feminists, but they weren't interested in riot grrrl, even when i tried to get them pumped for it), i never even read some of the now-canonized riot grrrl zines, like "i'm so fucking beautiful" or "jigsaw" or "wrecking ball". so reading this book was really interesting, because i actually learned a lot about this movement that i definitely considered myself a part of at the time, & that was pretty awesome.

sara opens the book with her own personal history of learning about riot grrrl & trying to become involved. she then goes on to profile some halfways well-known riot grrrls who influenced the movement in a lot of ways, using a chronological framework. she starts with the formation of bikini kill & writes about the different places that kathleen hanna & tobi vail were coming from in terms of their feminist analysis. i found that really interesting, especially now that i am in a feminist book club populated by all kinds of people coming to feminism from so many different perspectives, with so many different ideas about what feminism is. sara writes about kathleen's history doing domestic violence outreach, & tobi's background in understanding gender as a social construct & feminism as one prong of a revolutionary movement encompassing all kinds of different liberation struggles. tobi has written a few posts about this book (including critiques, errors, & clarifications) on her blog, including taking sara to task for suggesting that women in domestic violence shelters don't care if gender is a social construct. i have to say, i agree with tobi about that: to say that reinforces the idea that domestic violence only happens among the undereducated. the way sara wrote about tobi & kathleen's differences also seemed to suggest that tobi was all about book-learnin' while kathleen was in the trenches, doing real work. i think that's a total judment call that says more about sara's own value system than anything else.

she writes about the formation of bratmobile, & allison wolfe wrote a piece in response, questioning why sara felt the need to constantly refer to her as "strange" or "dorky" every single chance she got. i have to say, i was way into both bikini kill & bratmobile back in the day. i probably liked them equally. & i never thought of allison as especially "strange" or "dorky". i have no idea where sara is getting that...but it informs most of her writing about bratmobile, which is kind of unfortunate. she seems to see bratmobile as more of a novelty or joke band, especially in comparison to bikini kill. she writes at one point that "bratmobile was always just something fun to do on school vacations," which allison refutes in her piece. who knows where sara got that idea, or more to the point, why she felt the need to write it down in a history. tobi wrote something about how the problem with histories like this is that things get written down & people perceive of them as the truth, even when they're not completely (or even a little bit) accurate.

so i definitely tried to keep my critical thinking lenses on while i read this book, reminding myself that this is one version of the riot grrrl story. i think it is the best version i have yet heard. there are only a smattering of other books about riot grrrl, & most of them frame it as a musical genre or a fashion statement. sara takes great pains to contextualize the rise of riot grrrl activities within the geopolitical moment. even though i was obviously alive in 1992, i never realized how close roe vs. wade came to being overturned that year--what a real & present danger it posed to american women. she writes about the clarence thomas hearings, the prevalence of sexual assault & sexual harassment, the crystallization of the beauty myth, all these things going on that informed riot grrrl's political militancy. & in response to critiques that riot grrrl was TOO militant, which scared away more timid girls that may have otherwise enjoyed the consciousness raising dynamics at meetings or the zine culture, she argues that militancy was less a tool of elitism within riot grrrl than it was the definition of riot grrrl. i would agree with that, & i do feel it's a piece that has largely been written out of the history of riot grrrl & is part of the reason i have a hard time with modern-day riot grrrl nostalgia. it's not just about listening to bands & dancing in the front at shows & having a goofy haircut. riot grrrls were angry, justifiably so. i think in the last twenty years, the anger element within feminism has been played down a lot in order to make feminism seem more appealing to larger masses of people, & i think that's unfortunate, because it robs feminist projects of some of their concrete politics sometimes.

anyway, moving on. sara doesn't just write about bands. she also writes about the formation of riot grrrl groups in washington DC, olympia, vancouver (canada), humboldt county, minneapolis, & elsewhere. she writes rather a lot about the riot grrrl conventions that happened in washington DC & omaha, nebraska. she writes about media coverage of riot grrrl at the time, & the differences of opinion about how riot grrrls should handle requests from the media. she writes about the different decisions that different riot grrrls made & the fallout that they experienced (both positive & negative). she writes about the formation riot grrrl press (the first zine distro i'd ever heard of back when i was like 15 or whatever), the prevalence of bisexuality among riot grrrls (& how it was alienating to queer girls who were otherwise interested in riot grrrl), the dearth of race & class diversity within the movement (& within punk as a whole), questions about whether riot grrrl was a punk spin-off or a political movement, the role of mail order culture...tons of stuff.

one of my favorite elements of the book was its dishiness. she writes extensively about jessica hopper's involvement in riot grrrl minneapolis, & how she agreed to give an interview to "newsweek" even after a lot of other riot grrrls had decided not to talk to the media anymore. but she didn't just give an interview. she also gave the reporter photos, letters, & zines she'd received from other girls involved with riot grrrl. the reporter used these items & people felt very betrayed. jessica immediately disassociated herself from riot grrrl & started hanging out with rock stars (like courtney love) instead, but the damage was done & a lot of people who felt betrayed by her actions had to try to make their peace with the fact that you can't always trust someone just because they say they're on your side. the stuff about jessica also illustrates the way that calls for a media black-out happened in a somewhat autocratic manner, & how a lot of difficult issues of elitism & self-promotion has to be addressed.

she also touches on erika reinstein, who wrote "fantastic fanzine," among other zines, & is kind of infamous in certain circles for writing a zine in which she uses the racist anetbellum "one-drop rule" as a justification for speaking on behalf of people of color everywhere & positioning herself as an anti-racist authority...even though she doesn't know for sure that she has any ancestors of color, & benefits from white skin privilege. a lot of zinesters of color at the time went to great lengths to call her out on that, & she responded by dropping out of the zine scene & re-emerging a few years later with a new name, writing zines on a different topic (but still engaged in the act of using oppression as currency & positioning herself as the most oppressed person of all time). sara writes about how this transformation, from outspoken, tough high school feminist to major star of the oppression olympics, started to happen. she doesn't go into the details that i did here, but she does write about other things i didn't really know anything about, & these stories illustrated the problems of a lack of diversity within riot grrrl, as well as the issues that plague all political movements & subcultures, in terms of in-fighting, sanctimoniousness, hypocrisy, etc.

i, for one, appreciated the hell out of these tales from the darker side of riot grrrl. ideas about riot grrrl have filtered down to the next generation of young punk feminists, who seem to have this idea that it's just all about girls going to shows together & being best friends. i think sara's book did a great job of illustrating the fact that riot grrrl really did aspire to be a real political movement in a lot of ways, & that it was hindered by authoritarianism, real & imagined hierarchies, betrayal, self-aggrandizement, etc--all things that we should be staying cognizant of & trying to avoid still.

obviously this book is just kind of the tip of the iceberg in terms of what could be written about riot grrrl, & i hope that as the girls that were involved in the 90s continue to grow up, more & more books & other histories emerge.

[Madeline · Rating 2 out of 5]

1. Girls to the Front has a lot of issues. That's fine. Or it could be fine. I mean, in theory. But Girls to the Front also has a lot of problems, and ends up being totally disappointing and weirdly tone deaf. (Oh God, is that even acceptable in a discussion about a music book? Ugh. Probably not. Sorry, everyone.) OKAY, to be fair: maybe it is less "GttF has a lot of problems" and more "I have a lot of problems with GttF."

2. Whenever there's a, like, a feminism contest - you know what I mean, "these people are good feminists, these people are bad feminists" - it gets fucked up pretty quickly. So I wasn't surprised about that. I read feminist blogs, I am familiar with girl on girl crime of the "you are holding your sisters back, you stupid slutty tool of the patriarchy" variety. And that stuff has been endemic in feminism since the beginning, right (Victoria Woodhull, The Sealed Letter, the Sarah Grand or Mary Jeune, and on and on); and that's only when we're talking about a bunch of straight cis white women with fairly similar class backgrounds. When you try to encompass the experiences of women of color and women from different class backgrounds and with different sexualities (not that heterosexuality isn't itself on a spectrum, buuuut) then the comparatively-privileged start to feel threatened and it turns into "look at how un-racist I am" or "why can't you be quiet and appreciate how hard I am working for you??!!" Like "they cannot represent themselves; they must be spoken for" is even slightly acceptable any more. (Especially when "they" are right there). Anti-oppression turns into a game of one-up-personship pretty quickly, which is why it is difficult and discouraging and why you need to approach it thoughtfully and with open ears, among other things. As a chronicle of that tragedy/thing that happens, I guess GttF is all right. But, perhaps because Marcus wants a broad audience, she doesn't give a really thorough investigation of ideas. You know, phenomenology is a vital part of feminist awakening and consciousness, but so is a good understanding of the reasons behind your experiences - and I don't mean, like "Timothy, my exboyfriend" or something. I mean the structural and abstract components. (To be fair, at the end, Marcus talks about how RG lacked administrators.) The final chapter - "The Cruel Revolution" - is particularly problematic and sort of enraging.

3. Well, okay, and also I don't really listen to any of the Riot Grrrl music. I mean, I have a free anniversary sampler from Kill Rock Stars, but I got it for the Thao Nguyen songs. I do like the two Le Tigre songs I've heard (1, 2) but I haven't tried to hear others. So I lack the very personal connection Marcus stresses as so important to the movement. In fact, she opens with her own passionate, tentative involvement - and that's, sadly, the best part of the book. It's the most authentic and the most sincere and the most vivid section. Despite this passionate connection, the movement itself doesn't emerge as particularly vivid or, even, specific. The characters - which, in this kind of non-fiction, you need (Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found) - weren't established clearly enough for me, so there was very little sense of knowing who these women were, or why I should care about them, or keep track of them. There are a couple of women who were just easier to keep track of because you hear their names more often, but the teenage girls, who are obviously such an important part of how Marcus conceives of the RG movement don't come through very strongly, in most cases.

4. There are a lot of tortured metaphors. And these passages . . . I don't know, was she trying to do In Cold Blood, but intermittently? They were So Awkward. I don't get second-hand embarrassment that often reading books. But it's not just in those weird interludes - I don't know what else to call them! - but sprinkled throughout, particularly in the introductory descriptions. You know, those three adjective descriptions that introduce people to you.

5. I assume she's talking about Chris Brown when she says in the epilogue "A pop star beat up his girlfriend and his career barely missed a step" because of the timing (2009). But that's obviously ridiculous, I mean, have you heard any Chris Brown songs lately? Anyone? Anyone? No. (Although he was in that one movie, right?) Rihanna's doing pretty well, though! Her songs get played - her new ones, I mean. She shows up places and people care. She sings hooks on Kanye songs. She has an annoying perfume commercial I see in movie theaters. (Why are movie theater commercials the most annoying commercials? Never mind, I know why. Yet another way the state of modern advertising would disappoint Don Draper. I mean, damn, Roger Sterling would be disappointed. And you know how far you've fallen when Roger's disappointed, okay? You've fallen really, really far.) I know this is tangential, and a stupid thing to get hung up on. Yet I cannot stop myself. There were plenty of stupid, tangential things I got hung up on while reading this - when there are that many it has stopped being a problem with me.

6. Okay, but the episode of Sound Opinions where Sara Marcus is interviewed is actually really interesting and engaging. It was what made me check out the book!

7. Seriously, is this a non-fiction/history book for young adults? Not that this means I'd give it a pass, but then I could at least excuse it as a (misguided) attempt to connect with a younger generation without many of the reference points for the period? (As I am between the current YA-reader crop and the RG crop, I also lack a lot of first-hand context and history classes stop at detente. Musically, I came of age with boy bands and the Spice Girls.)

8. And I so wanted this to be a fun, cool, enlightening book. Instead it like . . . I don't even know. Somehow it hit me as too-earnest (hallmark of the 90s!) and disingenuous. Yeah, you figure that one out. I am throwing this review up not because I think negative reviews are particularly useful to potential readers, but because I think other people might finish the book and have some problems with it too, and they might need another dissenting voice. Judging by the reviews already on here, GttF resonated with a bunch of people, which is totally fine and good and I'm glad - that's what books are supposed to do. I'm sorry that didn't happen with me. If it didn't happen with you either, step right up.

[Alka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takie książki chcę czytać!💪🏻💜

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Girls to the Front made me realize how little I really know about riot grrrl. In my defense, during the years portrayed in this book, I was attending a suburban Catholic university with a conservative administration and a mostly conservative student body. The fact that I read Gloria Steinem and listened to Tori Amos made me more radical than about 97 percent of the people there. So really, most of what I know about riot grrrl I learned from Sassy magazine.

For this reason, I found this book fascinating from a purely informational standpoint. It was great to learn more about the key players (mostly musicians) and their scenes, about the regular non-musician girls who picked up the gauntlet and ran with it, about the prevailing philosophies and important events of the movement. The eventual infighting that occurred didn't bother me—you're always going to have this in any group of strong-willed people, and honestly, it was good gossipy fun.

More importantly, I was inspired by the creativity of these women and by their determination, when they didn't fit into the prevailing culture, to critique the culture instead of just buying into the idea that there was something wrong with themselves. Like Susan Brownmiller's In Our Time, this book reminded me that you don't need a huge number of people in order to have an impact on society, just a small group of people with a compelling vision. Riot grrrl may not have lasted long, but I think it was a pivotal step in the ever-evolving and necessary project of feminism, and this book does it justice.

[fioo ! ♡ ∗ ˚ ˖࣪ ∗ ‎˖ ݁ . ° · ˚ ₊ · Rating 4 out of 5]

UGH! SO EMPOWERING. LOVED IT.

[いんたねっと · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. I decided to read this book because I am very interested in Riot Grrrl culture and the feminist revolution in the 1990's. It interested me because it was written by a woman who was a part of the revolution and gave first hand recounts of what happened, as well as interviewed some of the girls who were at the front lines of the revolution.

2. This book completes the "Books that teach you about a different time in history" category because it is about events that happened in the 1980s and 90s. I like reading books in this category because it teaches you about real life things that happened and historical events.

3. The ideas in this book widened my knowledge and made me think about a lot of issues in the world I had previously ignored. This book explores and documents the "Riot Grrrl" wave of radical feminism in the 1990s and it's affects on todays society. An idea I found most interesting was girls taking power and fighting against male oppression and patriachy. Marcus writes a concise account of the struggles girls such as Kathleen Hanna and Allison Wolfe, both prominent figures in the revolution, and how they attempted to overthrow patriachy and end male-dominated culture. Both women started out small, but with big ideas. Both were the lead singers of revolutionary all-girl bands, and showed that girls can do everything boys can do and we don't deserve to be oppressed by men for and be told to "get back in the kitchen" or "go make a sandwich". Women don't have to fit into the stereotyped "housewife" or "full time mum" roles. Women can do anything and everything, from fighting wars to managing large corporations. Women must unite against the undeserved oppression shown to us by men.

4. A quote I found particularily important was "We are tired of begging for our rights from men in power. We are going to take power". I find this quote very important because it represents the anger women feel towards patriachy and the force that is needed to end it. I think that women DO need to take power for themselves because many women are being harrassed and abused on a daily basis by men, which is terrible, and needs to stop NOW.

5. I learned from this book that women's revolutions and feminism is an important part of our history and present. Although there have been some laws put in place to benefit women since the Riot Grrrl revolution in the 90s, there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure equality among women and men.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this because it sounded interesting – feminism, the 90s, awesome girl bands, youths! – but the book dragged on and on as if to fully capture the painful experience of the riot grrrl's inexorable decline.

Still, because I love reading about strong, independent females creating art, speaking up, and taking action, I was going to give it three stars, even though the writing was subpar:

"Sure, she wouldn't mind getting somewhere with her art. The guys she hung out with in Seattle, fellow photographers shooting grunge bands, were hitting the big time all around her, landing national gigs and making beaucoup bucks selling their photos to east coast magazines. Her motivations weren't just about herself, though."

Or:

"People grew out of Riot Grrrl, but that doesn't diminish the movement's value, any more than trigonometry diminishes the value of algebra." T'was never a more hard-core analogy to be found.

However! In the epilogue, after finally slogging through 300+ turgid pages (how is a book with "riot grrrl" in the actual title so mind-numbing), the author casually slips in a slight of the Spice Girls. NOT ON MY WATCH.

[nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was much harder for me to connect with this book than I thought it would be. I always thought I had something in connection with this group of women who were into music and political change. I grew up reading Sassy, even though I was much younger than the intended demographic, and listened to Tori Amos and wrote a journal cataloging my motions and injustices suffered. But my definition of being a feminist is so far removed from their experience that it sort of took my breath away. It actually made me question whether I had ever been one at all.

I grew up in a time of Title IX, playing soccer with equal field time, funding and town support as the boys' team had. I attended workshop after workshop dedicated to promoting women in the maths and sciences as a Girl Scout. With musical education properly funded in public education, it never occurred to me that I might not be able to one day be in a band because of my genetic makeup. I took co-ed karate classes, on days when I wasn't taking dance lessons. I attended an all-women's college within a larger co-ed university. I have only had women bosses. I have always had strong female role models from all walks of life.

I was never, ever told that I couldn't do something because of my gender. I could wear a dress or pants, cut my hair long or short, get weekly pedicures or not -- none of that changed who I am on the inside. I did well in school, always spoke my mind, had places where I felt that I belonged and pursued any opportunity I could to get myself to the points I wanted to be in my life. I was raised to believe I could have it all, not because of what gender I was, but because making the best of your time here on this world was what mattered most of all.

Am I a feminist? Yes. I believe in equal opportunities for women, be it political, economic or social. I believe in a woman's right to choose, whether that is in relation to her biological, sexual, educational, or occupational parts of life. But I don't let this world anger me the way the Riot Grrls did. At heart, I'm not just a feminist - I'm a humanist. I believe in the power of the human experience, that focusing on service and action can bring positive change to an environment. I believe in the power of people, for good or for bad, regardless of the arrangement of their race, class, creed and gender.

I couldn't believe the petty inclusiveness of this scene. Granted, I'd read enough books on the rise and fall of other scenes and participated in enough basement band shows to know the score. I was surprised by the preoccupation with totalitarian control of image -- taking it back the control from corporations and media, only to keep it locked up in regional meetings due to an aversion to the inevitable media spotlight. As a teenager, I'd alway sort of yearned for having had the opportunity to participate in this larger cultural phenomenon, but after reading this, I'm glad I grew up in the time that I did.

And if there were to be a second coming of girl revolution, I know the woman I'd want to lead it.

Leslie Knope.

Why? Let me break it down for you. A revolution is not dying your hair, standing with linked arms in the front of shows, creating different rules of conduct for different genders, writing your personal thoughts and feelings on paper for a public forum and then getting angry when major news outlets reprint it. It's not dancing at strip clubs when you say you're deconstructing the system or wearing girly barrettes in your late teens or starting a DIY band.

The real revolution is this -- earnestness.

Anger can get you so far, but the ability to wake up every morning and do the best you can to fight for what you believe in, as a calm, cool, collected professional who gets results, is never given the credit it deserves.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Every Girl is a Riot Grrrl."

Was the message of this book that I could relate to. I graduated from high school in 1999 in a very small town in upstate New York. My cousin Jeff, who was 3 years older than me, introduced me to hardcore punk rock and skating music, and I gobbled it up. I loved the energy of the mosh pit, the political rants, plus, I could throw elbows and slam dance with the best of them. However, after one particularly rough show, I ended up with some broken toes and that's when I invested in a pair of steel toed Doc Martins and I never had a broken toe again.

My only question was where were the punk princesses? Then one of my old baby sitters sent me a mixed tape entitled "Girl Bands That Rock" with a sticky note on it that said I think you'll really like this one and featured songs by: 'Bratmobile', 'Calamity Jane', 'L7', 'The Eyeliners', 'Go Betty Go', 'The Distillers' and of course 'Bikini Kill' and felt for the first time like: 'oh wow, that's so cool that there are girls out there already doing this, and oh yeah maybe I can do this too.'

I was inspired by the DIY style and started writing personal'zines and even had a garage band. My friends and I were making our own 'Grrrl style revolutions' and we didn't even realize that it had a name. Not until I moved out of there and went to college near Pittsburgh was the first time I heard the term 'Riot Grrrl' and thought 'oh so that's what it's called, ok, whatever. I've been doing it for years.'

These are my personal memories that were conjured from reading this book. I like feminism, I like the DIY style, I love the music, and I'm glad that Sara Marcus wrote this book, but her googlie eyed idolization of Kathleen Hanna got old really fast. Still worth reading though.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit, I'm a millennial (born in '88), and I tend to look back on the 90s with nostalgia... especially events or trends in the early '90s that I don't quite remember. Riot grrrl and the wave of grunge-punk rock that came out of the PNW is one of those things. Especially being a girl who enjoys going to rock shows, has had more than one 'bow to the face or gotten mowed over standing next to increasingly violent pits, I appreciated the riot grrrl movement and what they stood for all those years ago.

But sometimes we need to take off those rose-colored glasses. When I first started this book, I was worried it would just be a nostaglia-laden memoir of the movement that elevated these grrrls to goddess-like status. But as the book went on, I realized I was wrong.

First off, I never realized that the riot grrrl movement was 'over' almost as quickly as it had begun. The movement never gained that much traction, with only a few chapters and members dispersed among the coasts, with were continually disrupted by people moving or going away to school. Sara Marcus describes how quickly the movement seemed to fracture, just by the logistics of communication.

Secondly, I never really understood 'zine culture. I'm fascinated by it. I wish there was an insert of images within the book to show some of these 'zines because the DIY aspect of pre-Internet printing and distribution is just amazing.

Thirdly, I am impressed and grateful that Marcus did not shy away from the fact that riot grrrl was not a perfect movement - it wasn't always inclusive or supportive and in many ways was gentrified. It kept people out and tried to internally (and greedily) retain this image and aura of riot grrrl rather than spreading the message beyond their underground circle. Girls would write on their naked bodies "EVERY GIRL IS A RIOT GRRRL" but then get angry at girls who granted interviews to magazines, claiming "SHES NOT A REAL RIOT GRRRL." It was hypocrisy and paranoia of appropriation that drove riot grrrl out of the spotlight.

But Marcus leaves us with the question: even though riot grrrl was a short-lived movement, is it really dead? Did it ever really die? Some of the powerful messages of the RIOT GRRRL movement are still being fought for today (i.e. women's right choose, support of women's healthcare, stronger voices against sexual assault) so it has continued to some extent.

Overall, I am impressed with this book. It had a good balance of sympathy and critique. If you're interested in feminist movement or underground subcultures of the '90s, I would recommend it.

[Krista Danis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love. Sarah Marcus illuminates the Riot Girl movement as an undefinable subculture of young women that were unsatisfied with cultural and subcultural power hierarchies that cultivate and accomodate violence against women. Picking what they wanted from second wave feminist theory and leaving the rest, Riot Girls insisted that the personal is the political. "If you're angry or confused or depressed about things that are totally unfair, is it really your reaction that's the problem?" queries Marcus. As she details, one of the goals of this movement was to turn the critical lens outward instead of inward, with an emphasis on healing and consciousness-raising whose roots hold strong in sixties feminist activism.

Marcus illustrates how the interaction between art and activism created a nurturing environment for the movement to develop in Olympia and DC. It is this relationship that sets Riot Girl apart from other social justice movements. Though Kathleen Hannah rejects her position as the leader in a worthy effort to remain communal, she played a critical role in drawing women to feminism through music.

The author's ability to chronical the end of Riot Girl without devolving into essentialist rhetoric or stereotypes was refreshing and commendable. She states, "Ambivalence enters the living room and sprawls out on the couch when the image you're using to mark something substatial gets decoupled from its meaning. Adrift from its original reason for existing, yet still scented with some totemic version of it, the symbol becomes portable, malleable, saleable". Just when Riot Girl was at its most successful, the urge to define it, by the mainstream media and, subsequently, the Riot Girls themselves, was what eventually undermined the revolution. Once the patriarchy could define it, the patriarchy could control it.

Girls to the Front is a much needed history. Riot Girl's resistence to the mainstream played a critical role in its success and potential disappearance forever.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good introductory book to use if you are teaching Intro to Women's Studies or a class focusing on the Third Wave of Feminism. Overall, this book was very detailed and thankfully didn't put the emphasis that the Riot Grrl movement was created/maintained by one person. The author makes SURE that we realize and understand that it took a combination of women's efforts that made Riot Grrl what it was. The history of Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, the writings on skin, the popularity of the zines, and the uncertainity of being a girl in the early 1990s make this book hit home.



What the author really emphsized what after Riot Grrl and the bands picked up followers and the movement began to spread, the media dogs came biting down. The misconceptions, stereotypes, and labels that some on the nations leading magazines put on the Riot Grrl cause so much friction that I believe it eventually causes the premature death (along with other things) of Riot Grrl.



Like many of the other reviewers, Riot Grrl was before my time. But the things they experienced are things that many other teens in the 90's experienced (myself included). It's truely sad that Riot Grrl, punk, feminism, women's lib ,etc. are mislabled by the media and earlier generations of adults who just don't understand what the media does to a teenage girl. Movements like Riot Grrl (and movements after it) could have been revolutionary if only society would have let it.

[Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

i didn’t wanna get my hopes up about this book but it was really enjoyable!! felt personal but not overly so, didn’t shy away from conflict but didn’t glorify it, and even though it’s been out for a while nothing feels outdated in an offensive way. my only complaints are i do wish it interacted more with queercore, bc it and riot grrrl had a lot more overlaps than i feel were present in this history. sometimes the politics were a little lackluster for my tastes, but that’s on the author rather than the movement; and there were many points where genuinely insightful political points /were/ made. finally i wish it had footnotes instead of endnotes, but that’s personal preference. solid 4 stars, would happily recommend to people that are clueless about riot grrrl.

my other important (imo) critique is that nothing should be considered a “definitive” or tell-all about counterculture movements, and this definitely attempts that. but that could also definitely be up to the editors.

[Kurt Neumaier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Radical.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fair and thorough historical account. While my own views differ dramatically, I can appreciate and remember the drive to craft out a space during my own teenage years. Unfortunately, this also seems to account for the fact that once something gets too big, with too many hands in the pot, no matter how noble the original intentions, it falls.

[Molly (MoMo) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved even though it took me forever to finish it. My new favorite niche genre is punk rock in DC. My new fav nichier niche is feminist punk rock in DC. Had me utterly fascinated by the emergence of punk, riot grrl culture and the ups and downs of a political movement. I thought the author did a good job of encompassing the strengths and weaknesses of Riot Grrl and want to read more about it. Also is super fun to read about somewhere you live.

[Catarina Neves · Rating 5 out of 5]

2021 Reading #7 | (Belated) Women's History Month
(Kim Gordon made me do it.)

After reading Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band, I wondered a lot about the Riot Grrrl movement. During my teenage years, my iPod would always be blasting bands like Bikini Kill, The Breeders, Veruca Salt, L7... But I never delved too much into what they represented as a movement in the 1990s. When Gordon mentioned Kathleen Hanna (about whom I was absolutely crazy when I was a teenager!), her band and the movement, I looked for a good book or biography on it... and found this one. And let me tell you: what a hell of a find! It surely did not disappoint!

This book reflects, once again, on one of my teenage self's first encounters with female empowerment. Reading about a group of girls who started a movement that was much more than musical was very cathartic. The movement was a political, radical and liberating act — all things I craved as a teenager and even more so now as an adult. I grew up with the songs that came out of this movement, which definitely became the soundtrack of my first defining dives into feminism. And little did I know that Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail (also from Bikini Kill) were outspoken about reproductive rights and gender struggles and advocated for domestic violence victims even outside of their music. And like them, many other Riot Grrrls — how amazing is that? Looking back, I am glad I decided to keep delving deeper into the people behind the “obnoxiously loud noise” my parents complained so much about. (My mom’s words, not mine!)

"But whose motivations for political action are ever pure? People join political cultures or subcultures for a combination of reasons: to feel righteous, to feel less helpless, to distance ourselves from a dominant culture that repels us, to feel like we have a purpose, to make friends, to find love or sex, to relive the way you felt once when a certain song swept through you at a rally or coffeehouse or club or basement and aligned all the molecules in your body."

The more I learnt about the movement, the more fascinated I got. All the zines, conventions and marches for women’s rights… And the overall organisation of the Riot Grrrls! It is impressive how groups of teenage girls in the 90s managed to do something so cool and with such a broad outreach. However, and this has to be said, I was utterly oblivious to most of this movement’s inner workings: all the fighting, rivalry, bickering, individualism over the collective (Jessica Hopper, I am looking at you!), and lack of diversity seemed to go against the tide of sisterhood this movement demanded to succeed. Maybe that is why it did not last so long? Or was it the media's misinterpretation and vilification? I guess we will never know!


[Read between 19 March 2021 - 15 May 2021. | Review written on 11 June 2021. || Bookstagram: @asreadbycatarina]

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool Schmool.

Sara Marcus lavishes as much attention on the zine writers as much as Kathleen Hanna or the members of Bratmobile (whose on-stage demise feels utterly heartbreaking), as well she should. I happened to read this the same week Daniel Tosh suggested that it would be hilarious if a female heckler in his audience would get gang raped by his very male, very macho audience, and so I got to read women explain, AGAIN, to men how real a threat rape is to their lives, how constricting that could be. Surely things have "come a long way" in punk or indie rock, I guess, in the sense that women are being featured more often on stage and in print. But during a war to defund Planed Parenthood and trans-"V" ultrasounds, the Komen for the Cure fiasco, and eighteen years of ultra-conservative, misogynist national politics, it feels like the everyday realities these grrrls faced - the very fact of their femininity making targets of them in the larger world - is much more pressing than the Excuse 17 - Wild Flag lineage.

Marcus walks a severe tightrope in the books final pages, where infighting, pointless arguments and exhaustion join male leering and abuse in dissolving the grrrls hard-won unity, but it struck a nerve in this cis dude for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with Olympia. At every turn I was reminded by all the things I loved about the place (THE SHOWS HAPPENING IN BASEMENTS! THE SERIOUS CONVERSATIONS! PEOPLE MAKING THINGS HAPPEN ON THEIR OWN AND LIVING LIKE THEY HAD CONTROL OVER THEIR LIVES!) and all the things I didn't (THE CLIQUEYNESS! THE I'M-MORE-RADICAL-THAN-YOU PURITY TESTS! THE HUMORLESSNESS!). There were so many times I wanted to shout at the principal arguers "OH MY GOD IT WAS BECAUSE YOU WERE TWENTY THREE! I KNOW, I'VE BEEN TWENTY THREE, NOTHING MADE ANY SENSE! YOU'RE BOTH ON THE SAME SIDE! QUIT ARGUING ABOUT HOW SOMETHING IS SPELLED!"

That been said, there's a larger conversation to be had nibbling at the heels of this book, which is what, exactly, were the results of the media attention and subsequent blackout? Does Riot Grrrl have a hold on the national conscious because it was such a great idea, the way to fuse punk with feminist concerns into something that made more sense to the kids of the nineties (a lot of the Riot Grrrl meetings reminded this author of the "rap sessions" read about in other books, zinemaking be damned) and because Bikini Kill were so good? Or was it just because they had an arresting look and played loud rock n' roll and Kurt Cobain dated one of them and so Spin covered them? A lot of the satellite groups formed as a result of the dreaded Spin and Newsweek articles, after all, and it was the old guard, themselves not more than five or six years older, that couldn't be bothered. I certainly don't have an answer for that.

Also, it was relieving to learn that Jessica Hopper was an insufferable shithead in high school, too.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I really enjoyed this book and it made me reflect a lot on my own adolescence (just a tiny bit too late to be part of the Riot Grrl movement) as well as on youth and social movements in general. The author did really exhaustive research through interviews, video footage, zines, letters, and mainstream media coverage. She does a great job connecting the Riot Grrl movement with what was happening on the larger political and social scenes, which really puts the story in context. She also describes her personal investment in the topic (her own participation in the scene), which I appreciated. And I liked her emphasis (throughout the book) on what the movement was really supposed to be about: empowering women and girls to resist the limited options offered to them. Reading this re-connected me with some parts of my feminism that I haven't paid as much attention to lately. Thanks!

My main problem with the book was that I dislike the narrative voice she used (a kind of omniscient narrator) when it comes to describing people's inner experiences. It's a journalistic pet peeve of mine. It seems to me that the individual voices get lost in this style of narrative, since we're never sure how much was directly said by the person and how much is the author's interpretation. I really would have preferred more lengthy direct quotations, even if they included a lot of "um"s and "you know"s. At times the author went over the top in trying to give amazing descriptions of people's internal experience, where it would have been more powerful spoken directly in the person's voice. Example: "A layer of Molly's self-hatred burned off, and its charred remains drifted out the car window." (p. 181). Did Molly actually say that? Cause if she did, you should just quote her.

Occasionally the book got too bogged down in the day-to-day lives and petty in-fighting that happened. It's a fine line to walk, for sure - a lot of the details are important from a writing perspective to give us the flavor of the story, and important from a political/historical perspective to help us understand the movement. Still, sometimes there was just a little too much information about what the weather was like or who ate whose tofu without permission.

As a side note, what's up with the several random snarky digs at L7? They were a totally awesome and feminist band!

[Gosia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Długo zajęło mi skończenie tej książki, ale udało się. Historia jest gęsta, szczegółowa, ale myślę, że to co bardzo cenne to fakt, że autorce udało uchwycić się spektrum zjawiska Riot Grrrl z jej wieloma odcieniami - ogromny zapał, poczucie sprawczości, wiara w zmianę i samoorganizacja, a jednocześnie wiele wewnętrznych konfliktów, które nieuniknione są w działaniu jakiejkolwiek wspólnoty osób.

[gigi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"THERE ARE NO RULES EVERY GIRL IS A RIOT GRRRL"

I discovered Girls to the Front because of a zine I bought (Loud mouth by Maddy for anyone wondering) and as someone who had been getting into Riot Grrrl lately I had to buy it. Most of the other non-fiction (I've read moxie don't worry) books I could find about the movement weren't available for order so this book was my, basically, only choice. (If you know of any others let me know)

There are so many reasons that I enjoyed this book so this review may get a little long but I personally think it's worth it.

Girls to the Front is one of the rare nonfiction books I picked up out of my own curiosity and fully enjoyed. It might not be the only one, I can't really remember, but a lot of times I'm either forced to read them by school, choose to read them but have trouble reading them or find the subject boring and regret buying. None of those things are true for Girls to the Front and it has definitely taken away some of the dislike I had for this genre.

Another reason I loved this book, which might be a kind of obvious, is that well I love Riot Grrrl music and I always knew there was more to the movement than music, that music was just one part. This book taught me so much. I learned about so many zines, events and more.

I also loved this book cause I love history, maybe I'll try reading more history instead of theory, it's one of my favorite subjects (Anybody here have any tips for AP world history for next year? :)) and I genuinely enjoy learning about it outside of school. So learning all these little facts about some of my favorite bands or facts about the US at the time really interested me. (To give you an idea, I tagged this book with my little post-its over 70 times)

Finally, I thought the size of this book was perfect. It managed to talk about so much of the movement, from its roots to its end, while keeping it concise and not dragging on.

Thank you for reading :) I'll leave you with one last quote:

"Some girls started zines; some formed bands; some just dug in their closets and pulled out the little-girl barrettes they'd heard riot grrrls wore, and admired themselves in the mirror with a bright plastic butterflies poised on their temples,"

[Jessica Silk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would say that my experience of reading the book made me love it the most. It felt like reading one of those books about seminal punk and/or hardcore bands--except that I could actually identify with the key players! I had that "introduction to zines" feeling where I felt giddy reading about the similar experiences and processes of strangers.

While the beginning of the book seemed like mostly cheerleading Kathleen Hanna and the Riot Grrrl movement, Marcus covers many of the negative aspects of RG. Just as the book validated my own adolescent experiences, it was extremely validating to read about what went wrong with the Riot Grrrl conference in Omaha (as well as other sore spots) because my own finale with RG also involved walking away feeling defeated after putting so much energy into a big event.

While there were many issues with RG, which are not surprising because the movement largely involved young women who were still developing their consciousness--many (but not all) of whom came from relatively privileged backgrounds--I think it's important to have a text that stands to demonstrate the motivations, actions, successes, and challenges of RG. Sometimes I think that because so many former RGs look back on their own negative experiences with regret or shame and/or openly criticize some of the underlying issues (which is important and a necessary part of practicing feminism and social justice), it's opened up a space for people (well, mostly punk men) to make a blanket dismissal of RG and/or the need for it--past and present--without salvaging the positive pieces.

I especially enjoyed that Marcus provided historical context. I teared up when reading the epilogue in which she discussed the many ways in which there remains a dire need for feminist mobilization.

[Meagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was pretty much the right age for this when it was happening, but I was a weirdo in a small Southern town and my favorite bands in the early 90s were REM, the Indigo Girls, and Sly and the Family Stone. Never really got closer to riot grrl than my Sassy Magazine subscription, my Doc Martens, and my Hole tape playing on the white plastic boombox in the bathroom while I straightened my hair every morning before going to school until I finally got fed up and decided that if people didn't like my curly hair they could stick it where the monkey sticks the nuts. But anyway. I loved this book, and not just because I think it helped keep people from standing too close to me on the subway. It's beautifully written, a truly poetic account that captures the beauty of those brief-but-halcyon moments when the grrls were together in punk rock sisterhood, and doesn't look away when those same moments of sisterhood devolve into selfishness and self-immolation. (Metaphorically speaking.) If I had a daughter, this book would be her thirteenth birthday present. This, and a copy of "The Woods" by Sleater-Kinney.

(Incidentally, this book is great to read right after Michael Azerrad's "Our Band Could Be Your Life.")