An unblinking, purple bruise of a memoir ... It’s stoic and empathetic in equal measure, particularly in its accounting of Hanna’s girlhood ... Can sometimes feel like an unceasing parade of indignities and outrages.
Unfolds in raw, ragged segments. She has always explored difficult subjects, but without the music’s cathartic power and her commanding stage presence, the book can be dark ... Her story, along with Bikini Kill’s upcoming tour, couldn’t feel more necessary.
Packed with harrowing stories and illuminating revelations ... Utilizing a voice that’s often bitingly funny but never insincere, Hanna proves a captivating narrator.
A raucous, rousing tale about the power of music and activism ... A vivid, funny, and powerful memoir that will appeal to rock lovers and music historians.
...a timely refresher in resilience, the power of protest art and the tender humanity that we must not lose ... By illustrating how you grew, you can show others how to do the same. With Rebel Girl, Hanna intentionally busts open her feminist idol identity, liberating herself from our perceptions and serving some hard-won wisdom.
it’s a multiple-threat of a book: a stinging coming-of-age story, a memoir of male violence, a poignant history of how grunge and riot grrrl were propelled from punk houses and art-spaces into the treacherous mainstream ... The chapters about her family – her off-the-rails sister, a father who terrorised his daughter with both a shotgun and his unsettling sexual behaviour – are blistering, each one a fierce short story ... for all the ’90s music press set pieces, this book is as much about being a woman in the world as a girl in a band, Hanna writing vividly about bad sex, good sex, falling in love, abortion, miscarriage, adoption, her struggle with Lyme disease. In a zine made after Cobain died, she hailed 'the heroes that don’t die at the end of the movie.' Rebel Girl is the story of a survivor, but also an agitator, an instigator, a catalyst. 'Whatcha reading?' Here’s a hell of a reply.
At times, the text is more of a stream-of-consciousness rendering of chronological events than a structured narrative, a style that is mostly charming but occasionally confusing. An impressively perspicacious memoir from one of feminism’s most influential artists.
