Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
A review of Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein.
“I didn’t know how to be so entwined with someone: in a band, in a relationship, in the same apartment. Selfishly, naively, I wanted nothing to change. I wanted to still be close to Corin, for there to be continued trust and joy and for the music to be an extension of those very things. In reality, it would be much more brutal and heartbreaking.”
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein (2015). Published by Riverhead Books.
I have the strangest habit when it comes to memoir. I’m going to be frank and say that before reading this, I had no idea who Carrie Brownstein was. I grew up in a family that was extremely alienated from culture. My parents didn’t know anything about the eras they had lived through; my father literally was a time capsule, surrounding himself in 1960s Iranian memorabilia and dressed like he was still a youth in the 1970s. He never moved on from the past, something you could always tell whenever you spoke to him.
Carrie Brownstein, according to my research, was active in the nineties music scene, specifically for punk and indie rock. She’s also known a bit for her writing and television career, but it seems most of her fanbase is from her rock n roll days.
I randomly came across this memoir in the biography section and added it to my teetering stack of books to check out. I thought the cover and the title was cool, which is why I ended up picking it out. I had zero attachment to Brownstein and, after reading, would say that I still don’t have one. I am a bit more informed about her, yes, but I won’t actively follow her.
Anyways, now that this preamble is getting a bit long, let’s jump straight into the review.
Book Blurb
From a leader of feminist punk music at the dawn of the riot-grrrl era, a candid and deeply personal look at life in rock and roll.
Before Carrie Brownstein codeveloped and starred in the wildly popular TV comedy Portlandia, she was already an icon to young women for her role as a musician in the feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney. The band was a key part of the early riot- grrrl and indie rock scenes in the Pacific Northwest, known for their prodigious guitar shredding and their leftist lyrics against war, traditionalism, and gender roles.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is the deeply personal and revealing narrative of Brownstein's life in music, from ardent fan to pioneering female guitarist to comedic performer and luminary in the independent rock world. Though Brownstein struggled against the music industry's sexist double standards, by 2006 she was the only woman to earn a spot on Rolling Stonereaders' list of the "25 Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time." This book intimately captures what it feels like to be a young woman in a rock-and-roll band, from her days at the dawn of the underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s through today.
Content / Writing
We really start in media res with this one, because Brownstein deliberately chooses to create suspense with her introduction by saying she’s kind of the reason her band broke up. For someone like me, who doesn’t know who she is outside of this memoir, it doesn’t really work. If you’re a diehard fan of the band though, then she might have just hooked you with that little piece of gossip right then and there. But then immediately after we pivot to her childhood, where she’s beginning to go to Madonna concerts in the fifth grade and then she’s learning how to play guitar at a young age.
We dig deep into how Brownstein’s love for performing started in her childhood and how she just loved music and the way it made her feel. That becomes obvious pretty quickly, and then we just get sucked into a blackhole as she starts the band and becomes bigger as a musician. She’s quite honest throughout, talking about how difficult things are and how she isn’t exactly the best person at times.
I found the writing to just be okay. She mentions that she once was considering getting an MFA in writing, but I guess this is a memoir that I wasn’t actually completely wowed by. It flowed decently, it had a basic structure, but I’m very picky when it comes to people’s writing and this just didn’t satisfy my itch. I kept reading though since I wanted to be able to finish this one up.
I do like how this book offers the perspective of a female guitarist and singer during the nineties, especially in rock and roll. We often imagine that genre to be a boy’s club, and so seeing the POV of a woman in it when it was all Nirvana and grunge-y men was absolutely refreshing. This memoir, with my limited knowledge, forced me to reflect upon the nineties rock bands I knew and I realized that every single one of them essentially were white men. I do wish, however, that there was a better rhythm to the narrative of this book and that she did a more general overview of her life rather than methodically focusing on this.
Overall Thoughts
I think my lower rating for this book comes from the fact I just didn’t care about the topic. Sure, it was interesting, but at the same time I had zero emotional investment to the author or the band she was in. And that’s just what this memoir is about, so it doesn’t appeal to me as much. If you like hearing about what it takes to be in a small band, or are interested in indie feminist punk during the nineties, then this is the book for you. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my cup of tea.
