'Am I the Hero of My Own Story?': Kathleen Hanna On Her New Memoir

Ahead of Le Tigre touring in the UK, here is what the riot grrrl musician had to say about her forthcoming book and current life as an ageing punk.

There’s this bit near the end of The Punk Singer, the 2013 documentary about Kathleen Hanna, that fucks me up. She’s on what looks like the balcony of her house in the sunshine giving a casually furious monologue littered with placeholder ‘like’s, the sort of low-key iconic sermon that made her a patron saint of feminism. “I just think there’s this certain assumption that when a man tells the truth it’s the truth. As a woman when I go to tell the truth, I feel like I have to negotiate the way I’ll be perceived,” she says, adding that there’s suspicion around that truth and when she might be talking about sexual abuse, how her dad treated her, all these negative experiences, it’s surely fake or at the very least exaggerated. “I wouldn’t want to tell anybody the whole entire story because it sounded crazy. It sounded like too big of a can of worms, like, who would believe me? And then I was like: other women will believe me.” 

If you thought you’d be called a liar for the litany of traumas that actually did happen to you, feminist punk might’ve been your gateway to understanding how commonplace you are. In that space, fucked-up shit is welcome and unpacking it involves extrapolating it away from you onto a fucked-up world.

Legendary women in music have spent the past decade or so attempting to write their own histories in an effort to establish a legacy that’s about their craft not their trauma. That’s what the trend of ~ women in music memoirs has been about; female critics writing dozens of books about riot grrrl or women in punk or x y z subgenre. It’s why we have documentaries about the female or minority mastermind behind this band or that scene you never heard about on every streamer available. It was the reason The Raincoats reformed, the reason Hanna’s band Bikini Kill reformed after watching The Raincoats reform and part of the reason Hanna’s other band Le Tigre have reformed. If you were misunderstood by the culture at the time, your best bet is to be understood later. 

A couple of months ago I interviewed feminist punk legends Le Tigre for the Guardian about their reunion and upcoming tour. Those shows start in the UK this week and my friends in Dream Wife are supporting them for their London date. I was excited to learn that Kathleen Hanna, one of my idols as a teenager, has spent the past few years writing a memoir. It struck me as weird that she wouldn’t have been one of the first women in rock to release one given the importance she places on self-narrativization and doing-it-yourself.

That news was announced in the feature but here’s the extended bit of Q&A with her if you’re also someone who will smash the pre-order as soon as it’s available later this year. I enjoyed her thoughts on being an ageing punk so included those: “You’re either a mom or a fuckable girl in the scene. Those are your two choices.” She knows how to offer a soundbite.

HE: What made you want to write a memoir? 

KH: [laughs] Because my life has been great. It just was time; it’s time for me to let go of a lot of stuff from the past and it was much more of a therapeutic endeavour of kind of organising the narrative of my life. You can really organise your life into any kind of narrative and I think how you choose to organise it, like, ‘Am I the hero of my own story?’ ‘Is there a happy ending?’ All those questions that come up really give you a roadmap for how you’re going to live the rest of your life. By no means is it going to be conclusive but I do feel like I need to wrap up some of my past activity to be able to be present in the now. 

Was it that you had left over feelings or memories that weren’t explored in the documentary, ‘The Punk Singer’?

Not really, that was filmed over a very specific period of time and I was still pretty sick [Kathleen had Lyme Disease] but it definitely inspired me because you see all the stuff that gets left on the floor and you realise how short a film is. It tells one specific story. And you realise how many things get left out and that actually was one of the impulses to write a memoir eventually and then even in writing the memoir I’ve started to think about other things that I wanted to do film-wise because there’s so many stories that don’t work within written language that are more visual stories. One project leads to another. 

These upcoming Le Tigre shows are at bigger venues than you played before as a band. And there will be teen and young fans who only just got into you there, via hearing ‘Deceptacon’ on TikTok etc. 

I like to think if I were a high school kid and I heard ‘Deceptacon’ and liked that song, I’d be like, ‘Oh, they’re coming to Manchester, I wanna go’, so went to the show but had no idea what the band was really about and then saw the visuals and the lyrics and maybe…because I definitely thought a lot of the bad things that happen to me in high school were my own personal fault. I didn’t realise they were connected to a wider system of oppression and I know there are a lot of kids who feel that way, even with the different messaging that’s going on, like ‘everything’s my fault’ and I think a lot of the messages in our songs is like: this is systematic oppression, it’s not a personal affliction. Also, the visuals we worked really hard on and we’re an art band. And I think if I was a fourteen year old kid and I saw these weirdo women getting up in these costumes making this music that’s part live and part recorded and is it fake, is it real, is it authentic and asking those sorts of questions and making art that’s also – I think – really good music, I’d be really inspired even if I hated it. I’d be like, ‘Woah, that was something that just happened that I didn’t expect’. And I just love thinking about me at fourteen walking into a Le Tigre show and having my mind blown and how it would’ve inspired me to start a band earlier than I did. 

I always have but increasingly find seeing older women making art inspiring. It’s really important when the creative industries are still obsessed with youth and the next big thing.

I’m 54 and I’m playing punk shows and fifteen year olds are coming. Ten year olds are coming. It’s pretty amazing to still have younger fans and also to create atmospheres where there are all these different generations in the room because there is so much division between generations right now and there’s so much pressure for us to all hate each other and be like, ‘I’m more educated than you’ or ‘I know this language and you don’t’ or older people being like, ‘MeToo: we dealt with it quietly so why are you making so much fuss?’ So many different divisions, and just to get off the internet and be in the same room and check out each other’s fashion and be like, ‘Woah, that’s my daughter’s professor at the Le Tigre show’ or see your therapist at the show with her girlfriend. A lot of community building has happened at our shows in the past and we’re really hopeful that more of that can happen. 

I hate the idea of being a role model in any way but when I saw The Raincoats…they’re a bit older than us, maybe ten years older and when I saw them play a few years back their music was so vital and strong and it didn’t feel old fashioned or like I was watching an oldies revival concert or nostalgic in any way, it felt very vital and present and they inspired me. I was like, ‘I’m not too old to do this. If I’m well I should do this.’ 

I’ve gotten a lot of messages from women who are around my same age or in their 40s saying, ‘I started to feel like I didn’t belong in the punk scene anymore and you made me feel like I can keep doing what I want to do.’ That feels like the ultimate goal for success. It’s hard to age as a punk, even a feminist electronic punk. It’s hard to age in public as a musician. You start to feel like… how do I dress now? I’m 54 but I’m still a punk. It sounds like a stupid question of how do I dress but how do you still signify to people that…I’ve gotten called Mom at shows, where people yell out ‘Mom’ to me and it’s funny but it’s also offensive because it’s like because I’m over a certain age I’m like their parent now or their riot grandma and that kind of ageism just reinforces the idea that you’re only valuable if you have children or you’re only valuable in so much as you’re fuckable. You’re either a mom or a fuckable girl in the scene. Those are your two choices. That’s just stupid and when Le Tigre come on stage none of those conversations make sense. None of the stereotypes make any sense anymore and that’s what we wanna be is something intense and artistic that makes stupid boring mediocre stuff dissolve. 

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Essential viewing & reading: The Punk Singer documentary (2013) on YouTube; Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus; The Julie Ruin – ‘Run Fast’ and the recent Le Tigre interview.