Punk legend Kathleen Hanna reclaims her narrative in “Rebel Girl”

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Alanna McAuliffe: Hi there, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Alanna McAuliffe, and today I have the privilege of speaking with musician and artist Kathleen Hanna on her new memoir, Rebel Girl. Kathleen is perhaps best known for fronting Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and The Julie Ruin, and her work is celebrated as much for its iconic sound, wit, and creative vision as it is for its incisive, unabashedly feminist lens. Her memoir, certainly, is no different. Kathleen, thank you for joining me today.

KH: Thanks for having me.

AM: Of course. So, to get started, as you detail in Rebel Girl, you've experimented with a myriad of art forms throughout your career. From music to visual art to spoken word, and now to memoir and narration. I'm wondering in what ways do these crafts differ and/or remain the same?

KH: Wow, what a great question. I think one of the interesting things that I found about the connection to memoir and photography, which is kind of where I started—I had a photo teacher I really liked in high school and then ended up studying photography in college. And I haven't used that stuff I learned in the dark room that much, but I found myself when I was writing the memoir remembering this thing that a teacher told me once. I used to really like super black-and-white, stark, almost like xerox-style photography. And so I would shoot that way. I would shoot with a flash and I wouldn't get a lot of information on my actual film. So, it would just be, when I printed it, it would be really black and really white without a lot of gray. And then my teacher said, "Hey, you know, you can always print contrasty like that, but if you don't get all of the information onto the film, all of that gradation and all of that gray area, you have limited yourself to the material you're able to work with. So, if you decide you want this to not be super contrasty, you've kind of backed yourself into a corner."

And I thought about that in memoir writing when I was like, "Oh, I shouldn't write this down. I shouldn't..." I just wrote everything. I was like, “Get as much information onto that film or that page as you possibly can. And then when you print it later, which in my case was editing, you can decide and have the option to make it whatever you want. But if you don't get it all down and overwrite, you're not going to have the option.”

"I also don't really believe in the idea of an authentic self. I believe that there's an authentic self in moments, but I hope people don't stay the same."

AM: That's really fascinating. It's so interesting to hear how photography kind of offered you a lens, no pun intended, for memoir as well. I have to say, though, I was really struck initially by the structure of your memoir. It's crafted as a series of short, almost vignette-like glimpses of individual moments in your life that are kind of shot through with introspective commentary born from hindsight. How did you go about sort of curating stories or critical moments from your life for the audiobook?

KH: Well, originally, I made the mistake of writing it in single space instead of double space. And so I thought I had like a 325-page book, and it turned out I had an over 600-page book. So, I definitely had to seriously take a scalpel, I mean, actually, a butcher knife to the manuscript and like cut it in half. So, I had to be really strategic about what I kept in and what I didn't keep in, and luckily, I worked with my friend, editor Ada Calhoun, to do that part of the book. And I just gave her free rein to like chop out whatever she thought was redundant or didn't really lend itself to the story.

Having said that, I also used this technique of just reading what I was writing aloud, and anything that I felt like I had to act out, like a story that I felt wasn't making it across—basically I'd read it to my dog. If I felt like this would not be an understandable, interesting, funny story unless I was really gesturing a lot or like standing up and doing physical movements, I realized, "Oh, this is more of a visual story. This is one of those you-had-to-be-there kind of stories." And so I cut those out immediately, and luckily because I do work in a lot of different mediums, I was like, "Oh, I can use that for something else. I can use that as a story that I tell onstage that I am able to act out.” So, yeah, I kind of had to make the differentiation between what really is working on the page and what is more something that would be better in a TV show or acted out live.

AM: Well, nevertheless, what remained in your memoir is, I have to say, absolutely staggering in how vulnerable it is. You lay bare everything from the trauma of violence, illness, and grief, to the frenetic power of commanding a stage, to the more intimate wonders and joy of marriage and motherhood. And on the same hand, throughout your career, your voice has been among your primary instruments. So, I'm wondering after piecing together your story on paper, what was the process of giving voice to these experiences through your narration like?

KH: Oh, wow. My experience of making an audiobook, I'm so happy to be asked about it because it was very, very interesting. I did read the book aloud before I turned in the final draft and I'm so happy I did, because I picked up places where I was trying to sound too highfalutin or like somebody else. This is my first book, so it was like, "I'm trying to sound like a real author now." You know what I mean? Or that there was too much introspection where I really just needed to tell the story. And so when I read it out loud, those moments became apparent, and even turns of phrase I wouldn't actually use became really apparent. And so those were all cut before I ever went into the studio to record the audiobook.

I had no idea anything about recording an audiobook. I actually watched a video on YouTube like the day before. I was on tour in South America all the way up till like three days before I recorded it, so I didn't have a lot of time to learn. I listened to Barbra Streisand's book, and I was like, "Oh, I'll never be as good as her, you know, she's such a great actor.” I was immediately drawn into her voice and she immediately made me feel like, "Oh, she's just like a regular person and she's going through this stuff and I want to go on this ride with her."

And I kept that in mind, but I was still really nervous. But when I walked into the studio to record the audiobook, the producer, I told her, I was like, "You know, the last thing I listened to was this Barbra Streisand thing and I just feel like I'll never be able to achieve anything like that, and I really need your help. I really need your direction." And she said, "I produced that." And I was so floored that I was lucky enough to get the producer who worked on the last thing that I had listened to that really appealed to me.

AM: Wow. It feels like kismet.

KH: Yeah, that's what I said.

AM: I will say, I listened to the audio and I think you did a phenomenal job. And I really did enjoy listening to it in your own voice, because to hear your story told by you is just a unique use of power. And to that point, I'm drawn to something that you mentioned in Rebel Girl, which is that in the past you have felt like either what you call “feminist Barney” or “queen riot grrrl,” kind of nodding to how fame or invasive questioning about personal traumas or even how the media repackaged you as sort of this easily digestible symbol of female empowerment, and how dehumanizing that was, ultimately. Was writing and speaking your memoir aloud, especially writing it in a way that felt very objective and complex for a memoir, a sort of act of reclamation for you?

KH: Definitely. And I think there's a really fine line between setting the record straight and an act of reclamation. Anybody who's in the media, especially if you're a marginalized person who is told that they're not supposed to be there, is going to experience this kind of flattening of your character. And there's going to be lies told about you or mistruths, sometimes by mistake, sometimes on purpose. I've made it a policy in my life to not speak back to nonsense. If I need to speak back to something because it's frustrating me, I won't speak directly to a toxic person, I'll write a song about it, and then, you know, I get on stage and I'm able to perform that song and I feel like “thanks for the inspiration” as opposed to walking around angry for the rest of my life about it.

But I really don't like the idea that other people are allowed to craft a false narrative about me as a person or an artist, and then I bear the burden of taking up space in my life story to correct their lies. I don't want those people in my book. I don't want that toxicity in my book. And I don't really care about setting the record straight so people know the true story.

"I've made it a policy in my life to not speak back to nonsense. If I need to speak back to something because it's frustrating me, I won't speak directly to a toxic person, I'll write a song about it."

Reclaiming my own narrative, though, is different. Writing about what I actually saw and what I perceived, to leave as a document for other people who go through similar things in their lives, is really important and is really, you know, I hate this word kind of because it's been so overused, but really empowering. It is frustrating when you feel like you get turned into a “Girl's Kick Ass” bumper sticker and also, you know, I'm older now, and so younger people come up to me and they're like, "Oh, I wish I would have lived in the ’90s and been in the music scene then. It seemed so amazing." And I'm like, "Yeah. I had guys pulling me off the stage by my ankles and throwing chains at my head and spitting beer in my face. You really want to be in the ’90s?"

But I can't say that all the time, and it's also re-traumatizing, so I said it once in my book. And I'm like, I want to not correct people's misconceptions about the ’90s, in general, but just show a three-dimensional version of how I, as one person, experienced being a feminist artist in a scene that was really not ready for that.

AM: Absolutely. So much of your work as an artist has been directly tied to the sociopolitical. Do you view the act of creation itself as an inherently political act or do you feel there's a kind of responsibility for artists and public figures to either create work or use their platform to make statements that explicitly speak to given causes?

KH: I really dislike the idea that everybody is beholden to use their platform for a certain thing. I feel like there's a million different ways to be politically progressive, and I say politically progressive because I think a lot of people who put work into the world are actually supporting the status quo and they don't get called political. Because they're maybe supporting genocide and, you know, all kinds of different horrors in the world, and just saying, "Hey, that's okay." I think there's that kind of art that gets treated as neutral when actually it's just “I don't care.”

I also think that there's work that doesn't seem explicitly political that doesn't uphold the status quo, either because the tonality in it, the style in it, the formal experiments in it are things that are opening up pathways in people's brains in ways that you can't really use language to do. And I think that can be inherently expanding in terms of our political consciousness. So, I don't believe that you have to stand on a stage and sing things about, you know, feminism or do anti-racist work through your platform. If you're a person of color, you shouldn't have that onus of responsibility put on you. When people who are outside of the mainstream cis, white, male, able-bodied model make work, sometimes just making that work and making beauty exist in the world is enough and is a political statement. I think when straight white dudes who have all the privilege in the world make dumb songs about how much they hate their girlfriends for nagging them, that is retrogressive. It's not pushing anything forward and it's very status quo and supporting the way things already are.

But again, I do think that it doesn't have to be in a specific package. I don't think we should tell artists who work outside of the mainstream that in addition to the job of artists they also have to be politicians, and they also have to scour the internet for political information that they can share. Yes, it's wonderful in those times when we can amplify people's voices if we have a large following, but that's not always possible and there's better places to look to than specific individual artists a lot of times if you want to get political news.

AM: On the topic of creativity kind of acting as a form of rebellion, especially for folks from marginalized groups, that really reminded me of the conversation in your memoir about your work with Le Tigre. Throughout your memoir, you dissect this notion of punk purism that dominated so much of the discourse in the indie music scene, and your work with Le Tigre challenged that short-sighted idea of what a quote-unquote "real band" was. To that end, what does the idea of creative authenticity mean to you? And related, do you find the notion of selling out to be fundamentally flawed?

KH: Well, the idea of authenticity is so complicated, and as someone who is sometimes called literally “from the '90s,” a time that was pre-internet, part of it was pre-internet, and therefore a lot of people might think more authentic, I don't think because people have access to computers and everything's kind of mediated and meta, that it means that anybody is less authentic today than they were 20, 30 years ago. I also don't really believe in the idea of an authentic self. I believe that there's an authentic self in moments, but I hope people don't stay the same. I'm nervous about the idea of the authentic being tied to late-capitalist notions of branding. That really concerns me. So that to be an authentic feminist there are these rules and you must stay within these rules, and those rules become a part of your brand. I believe people need to make mistakes and have arguments and be challenged. I definitely think that feminists should do more arguing, productive arguing, as opposed to just saying, you know, “Let's believe all women unilaterally." I think that these are all really complicated discussions.

"When people who are outside of the mainstream cis, white, male, able-bodied model make work, sometimes just making that work and making beauty exist in the world is enough and is a political statement."

But the second part of your thing about, you know, in the ’90s, selling out was a really big conversation. And I did start to challenge it, especially when literally at shows my friends who are gay were getting beat up, and we're talking about who played a show that was sponsored by a company or who's allowing barcodes to be put on their records. That makes you not underground and authentic or punk anymore. And I just started being like, "This is not for me." These conversations actually seemed like privileged white people’s way of trying to claim some kind of oppressive space for themselves. Like we're the underground and they're the mainstream. And so we're the victims and they're the perpetrators or something like that. And I just don't want to be engaged in that kind of nonsense.

I also really do believe in DIY spaces and self-created collectives and all of those kinds of things, and people making up their own ideas of what's acceptable for their group and what's not. I have no problem with that. I just think when middle- and upper-middle-class people are defining what is selling out, it's typically a very classist idea that's being enacted on people who need to sometimes make compromises in order to survive financially.

AM: So, on that note, so many of the conversations that you and your peers were critiquing and writing about throughout the ’90s into the 2000s continue to remain frustratingly relevant topics today. How do you go about practicing self-care, avoiding cynicism—that's the big one—and maintaining hope for change when it feels like so much has either remained stagnant or regressed entirely?

KH: You know, I gotta say, I get cynical and I get depressed and I have days where I feel like I can barely get out of bed, because it is so bad. And I'm just not gonna lie and say it's not. It's really bad. It's not just Roe v. Wade being overturned, it's the fact that the majority of people in the United States aren't getting adequate health care anyway. And this is just making that situation way worse. Of course, I'm completely upset about people who can get pregnant dying because they're unable to get the medical care that they need, but I'm also upset about the fact that people are dying of curable illnesses because their insurance is refusing to pay for needed medical care.

And things like this and things like having no good option in terms of the president is really, the whole thing is just horrific. Having a Supreme Court that is stacked against democracy is an incredibly frustrating situation. I do get really depressed. Right now, I am really sad. I am really sad. I am really angry and I try to find ways that I can take action. And yesterday I wrote a letter to President Biden, and will he ever read it? Probably not. Did it make me feel better? Yes, it did. So, I try to find things that I can do to be active, vent with my friends, but also make sure that there's always an avenue to do some kind of work, whether that's the things I talk about onstage, whether it's the things I talk about in interviews, validating the work that other people are doing in various ways, or the work I do with Pink Sisters, which is a nonprofit I'm an ambassador for. I try to find ways to be doing something positive in the world that makes me feel less helpless.

AM: Well, it feels fitting then that the final chapter of your memoir is titled, "This Is Not the Happy Ending." It's a header that belies a relatively buoyant conclusion to this part of your story, and an optimistic glimpse at all the existence ahead. What was it like to chronicle a life still ongoing, and what do you hope that the next chapter holds for you?

KH: It was absolutely horrifying chronicling my life up until now. I had many bad days where I wanted to drive my car off a cliff and I didn't because I have love and support from my family and friends and I have a wonderful therapist. So I took time away to take care of myself. And I really had to start understanding how shutting down when bad things happen made me shut down when good things happen too. And so even though I went back and I had to relive some of the less lovely parts of my life, I also had to go back and re-experienced the joy. And I try to really focus on that and remember the helpers in my life, remember the people who inspired me, who told me I could keep going, who didn't have to be there, who didn't have to show up and put their hand out, but did.

And what it leads me to, the next part of my life is learning how to feel that joy in the moment, not 20 years later, but to be grateful and appreciative at the beautiful moments that we do have, in contrast to, you know, the horrible downward spiral that our country seems to be on, that these moments of great beauty. I live in California. I'm surrounded by flowers. I can't tell you how many times I've just felt like at the edge of my rope and I walked through a garden and taken some breaths and been like, "Okay. What next?" And I feel like I'm at the end of this book and I'm doing press for it and doing a book tour, and so a lot of it is still coming back to me, but I do feel much lighter, that I've let go of a lot of things. And I feel like I'm able to move back into my family life with a new sense of lightness that I've let stuff go. And that I'm not gonna be triggered by every little stupid thing that happens, because I've dealt with it and I've processed it.

AM: That's absolutely beautiful. And sometimes that's the only way to get through life—it sounds redundant, but through—and to understand and appreciate the world around you. So, as we start to wind down, I just wanted to, on a brighter note, tip off savvy listeners that if they pay close attention to all the needle drops in your memoir, they can build quite the playlist featuring everything from Donny and Marie to Fugazi. And to that end, I'm curious, what artists and bands are you listening to right now?

KH: Oh, I'm in love with this band Sweeping Promises. It's two people, but then they have I think a person who comes on tour with them and fills in, does a little drumming and stuff. But two people who make an enormous, amazing post-punk, new wave, I-don't-even-know-what-you-would-call-it sound. And people compare them to Pylon, but when I hear them, I just hear like instant-classic songs. Like, I can't recommend them enough.

"I really had to start understanding how shutting down when bad things happen made me shut down when good things happen too."

I also love the band Gustaf. Just, they're so weird. They sound so weird and so minimal and remind me a lot of great bands, you know, like Ut and Kleenex and the Mo-dettes. And I'm also listening to Lambrini Girls a lot, a group who I actually got into them because I stumbled upon a YouTube interview, and their interview was so fascinating because they're very well-rounded in terms of their politics and they're just like, "Trans people belong everywhere. What are you even talking about?" Like, you know what I mean? They don't feel like they need to explain themselves. They make fun of misogyny. They are very playful and humorous in their interviews and in their interview style, and they feel really like fun people to hang out with, and their music is just super wild. And so those are three of my top bands that I'm listening to now that I'm really, really loving.

AM: Awesome. Well, myself and our listeners will be sure to cue them up. And while we're on the topic of sonic storytelling, do you have any personal favorite audiobooks or podcasts that you'd recommend to our listeners?

KH: I really like this podcast called Turned Out a Punk. It's a little bit insider baseball, but that's why I like it. Because the host talks a lot about like really little-known bands and connections between bands. It feels like going to a weirdo family reunion when I listen to it, so I really recommend that.

AM: Nice. And we have one final question for you. Throughout your memoir, you recall so many moments of feedback and advice and encouragement that ultimately shifted the trajectory of your life. If you could share any last thoughts or words of wisdom for budding creatives out there, what would that be?

KH: Write in a journal. Write in a journal almost every day. If you have a question, ask your journal. Your journal will tell you the answer. It's like a magic eight-ball that will tell you the answer. The answers are inside of you. You can write down in your journal, “If my life was a movie and I was watching it, what would I yell at the screen right now?” And quite often when I write that down, I gain a wealth of information about what I should actually be doing versus what I am currently doing. So that's kind of my advice.

AM: All right. Well, I might just pick up journaling again. Kathleen, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

KH: Yeah. Thanks for supporting the book. I really appreciate your thoughtful questions. It's fun to talk about different stuff and not just, "What's it like being a woman in a band?"

AM: [laughs] I can imagine.

KH: If I ever hear that again, it's like I'm just going to start barfing or something.

AM: Well, you won't hear it from us. Listeners, you can hear Rebel Girl on Audible now.