Fresh Air - Kathleen Hanna's 'Rebel Girl' Life

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Kathleen Hanna's band Bikini Kill was the epicenter of the riot grrrl feminist punk movement of the '90s. Their song "Rebel Girl" was the anthem. Now Hanna has a memoir (also called Rebel Girl) about her time in the punk scene, her childhood, and finding joy in expressing anger in public. Also, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Claire Messud's new novel, This Strange Eventful History. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest is a co-founder of the feminist punk rock Riot Grrrl movement, musician, writer, and artist Kathleen Hanna. Her new memoir is called Rebel Grrrl,

which is also the name of one of the best-known songs by her band Bikini Kill. Kathleen Hanna spoke about her life and work with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenaro. We're Bikini Kill, and we want revolution! Girls don't know. No. Hey, girlfriend. I got a proposition, girl, something like this.

Tell you to do what you want. Tell you to be who you will. Tell you to cry right out loud. You got so on, baby. Kathleen Hanna has always been a force. She burst onto the music scene in the 90s as the frontwoman of Bikini Kill, a band that fearlessly confronted issues of sexism and sexual assault while encouraging female empowerment through their music. Her raw vocals and unapologetic lyrics helped challenge punk

rock norms and inspired others to do so as well. Bikini Kill, along with other feminist punk bands, encouraged their fans to come to shows, write zines, and form girl bands of their own as a way to fight the sexism that existed in punk and in wider society in general. Hannah created a space for young women to express themselves, fight against misogyny, and build community. Bikini Kill made an enormous impact in music and in the lives of their fans, but as Hannah writes about in her new memoir, Rebel Girl, it took a toll. Helping fans deal with their experiences of sexual violence

meant that she had to think about her own. In the book, she writes about all that, as well as her childhood, the building of her feminist art in college, starting and leaving bands, and becoming the face of a movement. She also writes about finding out that an undiagnosed case of Lyme disease was the reason she couldn't physically perform anymore. She's performing again with her band Bikini Kill and her other bands La Tigra and the Julie Ruin. Kathleen Hanna, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thanks for having me. I'd like for you to start by reading a passage from the beginning of your book, Rebel Girl. Sure, this is from the prologue. I want to tell you how I write songs

and produce music, how singing makes me feel connected to a million miracles at once, how being on stage is the one place I feel the most me, but I can't untangle all of that from the background that is male violence. I wish I could forget the guy who stalked me while I was making my solo record. How he sat on the roof of the building across from mine and looked into my windows with binoculars as I worked. How he told my neighbors he thought I was a prostitute who needed to be stopped.

I wish I could slice him out of my story as a musician, but I can't. I also don't want this book to be a list of traumas, so I'm leaving a lot of that on the cutting room floor. It's more important to remember that I've seen ugly basement rooms transform into warm campfires. Dank rock bro clubs become bright parties where girls and gay kids and misfits dance together in a sea of freedom and joy.

Art galleries that had only ever showcased white male mediocrity become sites of thrilling feminist collaborations. I also ate gelato on a street in Milan with my bandmates and cried because it tasted that good. But yeah, there were also rapes and run-ins with jerks who threw water on my shine. I keep trying to make my rapes funny, but I have to stop doing that because they aren't. I want them to be stories because stories are made up of words and words can't hurt me. But the things I'm writing about aren't stories, they're my blood. They're the things that shaped me. The things that keep me up at night rechecking the locks on the doors. The things that make me afraid and ashamed.

The things that inspire me to keep going. That passage, among other things, sets up how for you performing, being on the stage, which is your favorite thing, brings on conflicting feelings for you. The fact that the thing you love most is something that's connected to so much pain that must be difficult to deal with and to write about. I mean, yeah, but it's also like eating a whole family size thing of Cheetos is also like really bad for you. But sometimes you do it because you just love it and you want to do it in the moment and later it makes you feel bad. So I think we've all had this kind of conflicting thing of being attracted to the things that make us feel bad. The complicated issue for me is like, this isn't Cheetos. This isn't something that would normally hurt everybody's

stomach. This is something that only affects people who are marginalized in some way within the punk community who have to get up on stage and take abuse to do their jobs. And that's the part that's been really hard. One of the things that has been getting me by is this phrase, in punk rock, there is no HR. And I think about how many different clubs that we walked in, not only in Bikini Kill, but also in La Tigra, where literally in La Tigra we

had a sound man who was just mumbling the whole time and wouldn't look at us and then when I said hey is there some kind of problem going on he said I'm gonna stab you I laugh about it now but it was like at the time I went to people who I couldn't figure out who worked at the club and I was trying to be like can somebody do something can you call another sound person I couldn't figure out who worked at the club. And I was trying to be like, can somebody do something? Can you call another sound person? I can't work with someone who just starting to kill me. And they were like, yeah, he's harmless. He's kind of weird. He's this was our workplace. And every single night was a different set of threatened angry men, or I don't know what their problem was, who would treat us with such utter disrespect. And there was, we didn't have any recourse because you got to play the show.

You know what I mean? So that has actually been as traumatic for me to process as like the kind of like really big, you know, trauma with the T sexual violence moments in the book. So speaking of your memoir and the title of your memoir, Rebel Girl, I wanted to ask you about that song. It was released in 1993. It ended up being produced by Joan Jett, who heard about Bikini Kill and wanted to work with you all. And this song kind of became an anthem for the feminist punk movement of that time. Can you talk about writing that song? Yeah, we wrote that one in the basement of this house called the Embassy. It was a punk house, and punk houses a lot of times have names. And this one was called the Embassy because it was pretty close to Embassy Row in DC. And I'll always remember writing that song because it was one of those times where I was writing it as we were playing it.

So they started coming up with the music. And as it became more full formed, I started hearing the first couple lines in my head. And I just stepped to the mic and then they just kind of fell out. And I, I stepped back and started thinking, okay, what's the chorus going to be? Or, you know, I was like looking through poems and stuff I had in my notebook. And then I was just like, no, what are you feeling in this moment? I'm going to feel this moment. Because in that moment, Riot Grrrl meetings had just started in D.C. Our friends Bratmobile were playing shows and we were just gobbling up, like,

you know, manna from heaven. And Joan Jetta just called me on the phone and said, I like your band. And I was just like, I'm not going to look at my notebook. I'm going to feel this feeling. And then I walked back to the mic and I just sang. And, you know, Rebel Girl, Rebel Girl, You Are the Queen of My World came out. Well, let's hear my guest, Kathleen Hanna, on the song Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill. That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood

She got the hottest track in town That girl, she holds her head up so high I think I wanna be your best friend, yeah Rebel girl, rebel girl. Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world. Rebel girl, rebel girl. I think I want to take you home. I want to try on your clothes, boy.

That's the song Rebel Girl from 1993 by the band Bikini Kill. I think for a lot of people, that song is about you. You know, like you, a lot of girls, a lot of your fans wanted to be. But so you were thinking, who else were you thinking about when you wrote that song? I mean, I was thinking about my friend Juliana Looking, who's a spoken word artist who really kind of mentored me. I was thinking about Toby. I was thinking about Kathy. I was thinking about my Bikini were saying stuff like you know just crying because it was the first time they'd been in an all-female atmosphere and they were just like whoa this feels really weird i'm confused and then like wait why have i never made this a priority before um and just that feeling of you know a room changing like you know, a room changing. Like, you know, just sitting at a crappy plastic Office Max

table with a bunch of young women who have been relegated to the back of the room at punk shows for so long, finally saying, I've always wanted to start a band. Or, hey, does anybody know how to play guitar? I'd like to learn. That's an amazing feeling that really kind of changes the room into this beautiful place of possibilities. Now, you were born in Portland, Oregon, but you spent a lot of your childhood in Maryland. Can you describe where you grew up and your family at that point? We moved a lot all around Maryland. Like we moved every three years. So I changed schools every three years. You know, we lived in kind of suburbs where not much was going on typically. And then we moved back to the Pacific Northwest. And I changed schools even then in high school. I went to two different high schools. So I really started seeing the game. You know what I mean? Like what a game school was and how at every who were into this kind of music, the people who were into that kind of music, people who are into sports, like these kind of different groups.

And how a lot of the ways the interactions were so similar at every place that it just started to feel ridiculous to me. And I didn't have very many friends. I just sort of experimented with like, what would it be like if I was in this group of people what would it be like and I think it gave me a chameleon like quality that definitely served me later when I had to grin and bear it through a lot of nonsense in the punk scene um but yeah, I think the moving a lot made me really turn to singing as my home. Well, one of the first times you performed as a kid was in a musical. It was Annie. Can you talk about what you liked about performing at that point? I didn't think of myself as a good singer, but I sang all the time

by myself because it was a place that I felt safe and I knew no matter where we lived, I could walk in the woods and sing or I could sing along to records in my room. Like I didn't want anybody to know and I didn't think I was good or, you know, whatever. I just, it was something that was fun. And then a friend of mine in, I guess it was fourth grade, Maureen Gaines convinced me to go with her to an audition for Annie for the school play. And I got the part. And so in that moment, I was like, wait, other people think I can sing?

Like, it was this real shock. Like, I was like, I didn't realize that I actually had any kind of talent at it or that it sounded good to anybody beyond myself so there was that kind of eureka moment so I was like practicing practicing practicing practicing and then once it came time to be on stage I just felt like it was the first time where I really expressed mainly sadness in front of a bunch of people. You know, like, even though, you know, a whole auditorium full of kids and grownups. And that felt really like a relief. Well, you tell this story about what happened after the real performance, and that story is heartbreaking. Do you mind sharing it?

Yeah, I mean, I was feeling really proud of myself. And as we're getting to the car, my dad was saying, let's go get ice cream. And in my family, that really meant like, you did a great job. You know what I mean? Like, nobody said like, I love you or, you know, like, oh, I'm so proud of you kind of thing. It was more like, we'll get ice cream. And that is code for, we're proud of you. So I was like, they're proud of me. My parents thought I did great. Like, you know, I read all this stuff into it. Like they thought my singing was great. They, they thought, you know, blah, blah, blah in my head. And then as I sit down in the car, my dad says, um, anyone who can make such a fool of themselves in front of that many people deserves an ice cream. And I was just like, oh my God. Like, I just remember feeling

like going from the top of the world to just like crashing, you know, on like concrete. And that was something that on my dad's side of the family, I have to say, I got to give them credit. They were so good at giving a compliment and then ripping it away. Like it was almost a skill that they passed down from generation to generation. So while I think it's a hideous thing to say to a child, that moment also inspired me to keep going because the fact that that didn't stop me meant I really wanted it. And also, I didn't like my dad. I thought he was a jerk.

So, like, I learned really early, like, whose opinion matters to you? You know? I came out the other end kind of being, like like more determined to get more involved in music at my school because I was like, this is what I want. Despite you. Well, and there's this point in the book where you write about what your father went through. Like he had siblings that passed away and his father passed away and he sort of never recovered from that.

And he carried this darkness, you say, into your house and he drank a lot. But I felt like that was not, you gave that background not to give him an excuse, but to maybe try to explain why he was the way he was. Yeah, I mean, there's also great things about my dad. My dad always said, you need to go to college. And he wanted me to go to college

because he, I think, took like one or two semesters and had to drop out to get a job because, you know, my sister was born. And he wanted that for me. And that was something beautiful that he gave me. I think it's complicated. And I think it's important to acknowledge that we can get positive things out of really negative situations. And like the experience of being shot down by my dad and keeping going was something that I still hold in my heart to this day. You know, in a way that is fuel.

You write about your mom and how she had a really good sense of humor and kind of developed a feminist consciousness in secret. She would even get Ms. Magazines delivered to the house, but she would try to hide the issues from your dad. Did you get the beginnings of your feminist ideals from your mom, you think? I definitely think I did, but it wasn't so much through Ms. Magazine or we didn't ever have like feminist talks. Like she wasn't like kathleen i want you to know even though you're a girl you can do anything like we didn't we didn't have any of that kind of thing and and she wasn't you know she didn't tell me about domestic violence or you know what

i mean like it wasn't she wasn't like oh this book, you know, about the history of women. Like, there wasn't any kind of education like that. Kept the house spotless, you know, managed my father and still had a really wild sense of humor. And every time I just got to go to the grocery store with her, it was an event. You know what I mean? Like, it was really special to be in the car with my mom going anywhere. We're listening to the interview Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado recorded with Kathleen Hanna, co-founder of the bands Bikini Kill and La Tigra. Her new memoir is called Rebel Girl.

Coming up, they'll talk about how volunteering with victims of violence gave Hanna a way of talking to her fans and dealing with it in her own life. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. I'm Anne-Marie Baldonado from Fresh Air with a special promo for our latest Fresh Air Plus bonus episode. Every time I see a tall, beautiful woman, I just crash the ladies and I pray to her. I say, please, just give me a slap in the face, something.

In case you couldn't tell, that's EGOT Award-winning director, actor, and comedian Mel Brooks in the first of many interviews he's done on Fresh Air. We're listening back to his first one on Fresh Air Plus this week, and you can too by joining at plus.npr.org. When did you decide that you wanted to be a punk performer? You said that when you were a kid, you were always searching for a way to be heard? Was this that way? You know, I moved to Olympia, Washington to go to college and it had a really thriving music scene.

And they really defined punk in that town in a different way than I'd ever seen. I'd gone to punk shows in high school and it was like, you know, kind of B versions of the Sex Pistols, you know, straight of B versions of the sex pistols, you know, straight white guys who are like, I'm going to spit on you. And it just was like a lot of toxic masculinity disguised as, you know, radicalness. So it's kind of like the beginning of the edgelord. But yeah, when I moved to Olympia, there were all these kids who were making music and putting out records on small indie labels. And they sort of defined punk not as a genre or a sound, a loud, angry, aggressive sound, but as an idea, as the idea that we don't have to wait for corporations to tell us what is good music or

art or writing. We can make it ourselves. So it's like, hey, let's put on a spoken word event. Let's put on a punk show at the laundromat. Let's, you know, it really was the town that gave me permission to do stuff. And I'd always, you know, wanted to be in a band, but sort of thought it was off limits. And this was the place that I saw people in bands just like walking around on the street. And I was like, well, they can do it. I can do it. And at the same time, I was being really inspired by feminist performance artists like Karen Finley, who I saw live in Seattle and was just what this woman is doing on stage, going into from different voices, you know, getting naked and dumping chocolate and sprinkles on herself, you know,

making fun of herself while also being incredibly powerful. And so a lot of times when I first started being in Bikini Kill, I thought of myself as a feminist performance artist who was in a punk band. You went to college in Olympia, Washington at Evergreen State. And you started out as a visual artist doing photography. And you also worked in sewing like fashion. You also did a feminist fashion show. And you were working on this big project. You were at school late at night, so you weren't at your apartment. And your roommate, a close friend of yours, was attacked. She was assaulted in your apartment. It's a terrible story. And it's her assault that kind of propelled you to talk about violence against women even more in your work. And you also started volunteering with victims of violence.

It seemed like it gave you like a framework for your feminism or thinking about oppression. But it also gave you tools to help the people that you were going to be encountering like very soon. You know, you started playing in bands while you were in college and at your shows, you started to talk about sexism and sexual assault between songs or in your songs. And that's when girls in your audiences started to come up to you and talk to you after shows about their experiences with, you know, sexual violence and assault. Yeah, I mean, it was really pretty amazing because I was like, oh, you know, this actually is a great way to continue the work that I'm doing at Safe Place when I'm not able to volunteer. So I felt like it was just, I was still working.

I was still doing further work for Safe Place when I was doing, you know, counseling in an alleyway after a show. And that felt great to a certain extent. You know, after a while, it's a job that is a heavy burnout job where you can just get burnout to the point where you feel like, you know, you've been vampired and you have no blood in your body. So it is a lot to be in a band and to not. We had no crew. We had no management. We had no publicist. And we did everything ourselves.

On top of it, my friends and I started, you know, a venue, a knowledge is venue. And then on top of it, I'm doing social work for free. So that was like having a lot of jobs and then actually a real job and going to school. So at a certain point, and it wasn't until many, many, many, many, many years later, that I said, I need to pull back on on this like kind of one-one social work, which is what it was. Now, Bikini Hill tried to make your shows a safe place for women, a safe space. Can you describe how and why you did that? Like it's of a particular time.

You know, we did stuff like handed out lyric sheets that had the lyrics on them so that other girls and women would know these are the lyrics and what the subject matter was. Because a lot of times you couldn't understand what I was saying through the crappy PAs I was singing through. And sometimes even talking in between songs, you couldn't understand what I was saying. And so that was one way that give them a souvenir to take home, you know, to read through and think about and maybe disagree with so that they start their own bands or it encourages them to write their own poetry or write their own zines. We also had zines that talked about a lot of different political issues of the day that we sold at our shows. And I also, you know, we prioritized having girls and women come up to the front. Because a lot of the shows we were playing back then, it was, you know, straight cisgender white guys predominating and taking up all the space of the room. And

we really selfishly wanted to build community so we had more girl bands to play with. And how is that going to happen if they're all stuck in the back? And they can't see us play and they can't see, oh, you know, that's how you do a drum fill or, you know, that's how you play, you know, three notes on the bass and make them sound really interesting. And so I started saying, you know, inviting the girls to the front, hey, do you guys want to come to the front? And then it kind of became a thing. It's like something that's actually meant to be an experiment, you know, in punk. It was like, what if we just rearrange this room a little bit? What's going to happen? And what happened were, you know, a lot of men were really mad and hated us.

But it was also an interesting experiment. Well, let's take a short break, then we'll talk some more. My guest is singer, writer, musician and artist, Kathleen Hanna. She's the lead singer and songwriter for Bikini Kill, La Tigra, and The Julie Ruin. Her new book is called Rebel Girl. More after a break. This is Fresh Air. In your book, you write about Kurt Cobain, who was a friend of yours. How did you meet?

It was in the music scene in Olympia. Yeah, I think we met when I was running this club with my girlfriends called Reco Muse. And Nirvana played one of our first shows. We were supposed to be an art space, like a feminist art space. But no one was buying feminist art in Olympia Washington in uh the late 80s so we decided we were going to put on rock shows as well and um they played and let us keep the money and that kept us going and they did a couple things for us later um when he was dating my bandmate Toby Vale we had started just hanging out like I would walk up to his apartment and those in the back of the house and just, you know, drink beer and smoke pot and write lyrics and I don't know, watch TV. There was one night you spent with him and I think Dave Grohl, who was at that point the new drummer of Nirvana, and you were drinking a lot, and you inspired what would be the title

of Nirvana's first big hit. Can you talk about how that happened? You know, we were super drunk, and it's not the most pleasant memory of a night for me, but it started off pretty good, where we were, there was a new abortion clinic, which was not an abortion clinic, a pregnancy clinic, I guess it was called. It was like a Christian or, you know, some kind of religious based place where they try to get you in if they think you're pregnant and show you, you know, horrific, like, you know, pictures from the movie Halloween and tell you it's late-term abortions or whatever and trick you into not having an abortion, shame you, shame you into not having an abortion, or at least psychologically damage you. So it's not real counseling. It's like almost like one of those hell house horror rides. And when I found that out, you know, Kurt and I were just talking about it and we're like, we got to do something.

Like, how do we let people know that this is fake? And so we got spray paint and we went down there and I wrote fake abortion clinic on the outside. And he wrote God is gay on the side of it. And we went back and crashed at his house. And there was one point where we turned off the lights and just like smashed everything. And I took out a Sharpie marker and I just wrote like, Kurt smells like teen spirit because me and Toby had been at a grocery store and seen this new deodorant called smells like teen spirit. And we were like, that's hilarious. What does teen spirit smell like?

We were just like laughing at it. It was geared towards girls, too. It was like teen spirit. And we were like, that's hilarious. What does teen spirit smell like? Like, we were just, like, laughing at it. It was geared towards girls, too. It was, like, one of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a product geared towards girls that I guess smelled like bubble gum or something. I mean, no, it doesn't smell like bubble gum. It smells like teen spirit. Sorry.

So I guess it smells like locker room feet. Like, I was like, what is that supposed to smell? Like, it smells like streamers. What is that supposed to smell? Like it smells like streamers. What does that smell? It smells like poster Sharpie marker on poster board. Like what, what does it smell like? But so we were like just goofing on that. So it was in my head. And when I was wasted, it just came out and I wrote like 10 other things on his wall and he was a renter. So that was kind of a bad move on my part. Not, not very kind or thoughtful. And then he just, you know, asked me to use it. He called me on the phone, you know, many, many months later and was

like, can I use that in a song? I didn't even know it was going to be the title for a song. And I was like, yeah, sure. That's great. But I just wanted to get off the phone. I just that night was I got way too drunk and I ended up quitting drinking for many years. Yeah. After that night. Well, you did keep in touch with Kurt Cobain as Nirvana became, you know, the biggest band. And you almost saw each other a couple of times. And then you write about the last time you saw him at a show and it felt weird to you can you describe that show you you saw each other at um it was a show

at the paramount theater in seattle and um you know they had just signed to a major label and um it was really weird because there just seemed to be a lot of people around like usually it was just like you know the band the opening band maybe the other opening band and some friends backstage and this was like there were like business people and there were all these women like really attractive uh dancers who were dressed in these leotards and had like cat makeup on and wigs. And I guess they were supposed to come out during Smells Like Teen Spirit and dance. It was sad. I didn't even talk to him. He was just like in the back of a room and sitting there looking really not happy. And I didn't want to, you know, it's before a show. And you kind of need your privacy before a show. And it didn't seem like he was being given privacy. And I definitely wasn't going to walk up and be like, hey, how's it going? You know, because it didn't, he was putting off the, you know, force field vibe, like do not enter. When we left Seattle and went back to Olympia, it just really felt like we might not see him again.

Now, before your book, you'd never really talked publicly about being a parent. You're married to Adam Horowitz of BC Boys, and you have a son. And you've said you didn't want to talk about it because you didn't want to be asked those questions that people ask women artists about work-life balance and doing it all. And I totally get what you mean there. But I did want to ask why you decided to write about it now.

I asked my son, whose name is Julius. I said, Julius, you know, mommy's writing a book. Do you want to be in it? And he's like, yeah, I better be. And so he's in it. And it was, it felt really good to be able to write about being a parent because it's a huge part of my life. You know, you learn a lot about who you are in the

world by being a parent. And I think also with the current political situation, how do we talk to our kids about this stuff? How do we educate, you know, fun, awesome, wild, but good citizens? So these are conversations I'm looking forward to having and not dreading. I didn't want, while I was actively promoting albums, to have constantly like, you and Ad-Rock have a kid. That kid must be so cool. They must be so lucky. They must listen to Kraftwerk every day. You know, like I just didn't. Kraftwerk.

My kid did listen to Kraftwerk, actually, for a while. And he told me in the kitchen one time, he's like, Mom, I know more about craftwork than you. And you know what I replied? Go to your room. And it felt so good. I was like, don't child-splain craftwork to me, toddler. Now, recently you've been playing out again, the last couple years, you've had reunion tours with Bikini Kill and La Tigra, and you're touring with Bikini Kill again this year.

Your shows when you were young were so like visceral. Do they still feel that way to you? Oh, yeah. But I feel like, like, there's so much more joy like there's still the anger is still there but it's like a joyous anger because it's like you know a lot of us are sitting at home yelling at the tv and and to get outside and like yell into a microphone and to have that release of like you know it feels joyous to explore our anger in public it It feels joyous to be like, look, it's normal that we're all really upset and sad and all these different emotions, and they can all coexist together. And the songs really go from joy to sadness to rage very quickly. And I'm finding nuances in them that I didn't know were there.

In the lyrics. Yeah. And so I'm really enjoying the songs and they feel very fresh. Like it doesn't feel like, oh, God. I felt more that way about like playing Rebel Girl for the 800th time back in the 90s. And now I feel like so excited when it comes on. Because, I mean, the song really has legs because I can sing it about anybody in my head. We played a show in like 2019 and I got up on stage and I sang it and I thought about myself.

And I sang like proud, you know, that I kept going and that I didn't give up and that I was still making music and that I really love what I do and that I have such great friends. I felt grateful. I felt proud. And I sang that song directed at me. And I know that's probably really gross and embarrassing, but it felt amazing. Well, Kathleen, Hannah, it's been great talking with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. In a kiss, we're just another legend Let them go, let them go

Let them go, you are the queen of my world Let them go, let them go I know I wanna take you home I wanna try on your close arms Kathleen Hanna spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. Hanna's new memoir is called Rebel Girl, My Life as a Feminist Punk. Tomorrow night, she'll speak at King's Theater in New York. After we take a short break, Marie and Corrigan will review Claire Massoud's new novel,

inspired by a handwritten memoir of over 1,000 pages written by her paternal grandfather. This is Fresh Air. Claire Massoud is known for contemporary novels rich in psychological insight like The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says that the title of Massoud's latest novel signals something different. It's called This Strange Eventful History. Here's Maureen's review. Claire Massoud's new novel called This Strange Eventful History is a cosmopolitan multi-generational story that paradoxically sticks close to home. Massoud drew her novel from a handwritten memoir of over 1,000 pages written by her paternal grandfather. That side of Massoud's family were Pinoir, French Algerians

expelled from their home in 1962 when Algeria won its independence from France. Displacement, both political and personal, is Massoud's timely subject here. After being forced from their home, the fictional Kassar family moves from Algeria to Europe to South and North America, never quite feeling settled in these different locales or in themselves. The opening section of the novel focuses on June 14, 1940, the day the Germans conquered Paris. Gaston Cassar is a French naval attaché serving at the consulate in Greece. His wife Lucienne and their two children, along with a dependent aunt, have fled Greece, hoping to reach the safety of their home in Algeria. The perspective toggles back and forth

between their experiences and Gaston's, particularly his career-damaging decision not to heed General de Gaulle's call to his fellow Frenchmen to join him in exile in London. Gaston felt he needed to hear from Lucienne before he made a decision. She's his life, his anchor, and his rock. Throughout the story, we readers will frequently be told that Gaston's marriage to Lucienne seemed to be the masterpiece of both their lives. As she does throughout the novel, Massoud tucks in delayed reveals about the characters. So it is that deep into the story, we learn that Lucienne is 13 years older than Gaston. In the novel's final pages, this unusual age disparity becomes devastatingly meaningful. I'm a Herman Wouk fan, so I don't mean this as an insult when I say there's a bit of a winds-of-war feel to this panoramic opening section. The chaos of train stations crammed with terrified pushing

bodies, the international cast of characters temporarily marooned, the overall sense of a world in free fall. Massoud could have carried on in this fashion, tracing how the larger forces of history shaped the family's destiny. But something much more interesting begins to happen after we leave World War II behind. The narrative skips forward in time at jagged intervals, and the perspective shifts to different members of the Kassar clan. As years speed by, characters change, sometimes drastically, from the people we readers originally thought they were. Not only human events then, but human personality is unstable in Massoud's family saga. For instance, in 1940, Gaston and Lucienne's son, François, is a responsible kid, solicitous of his frail younger sister, Denise.

Leap ahead roughly a decade, and François is now a self-absorbed college student in America, the kind of dreamer who drives to Key West to find the end of the road and his existential self. Fair enough, after all, the beat movement is in the air. But when we next see Francois in part three of this thick novel, it's through the disappointed eyes of his waspy wife, Barbara. Perhaps, she reflects, she made a mistake marrying a man whose relationship to the known world would always be askew, at an uneasy angle. Still later, in middle age, Francois is given to eruptions of fury that drive Barbara and his daughters away. Who is this person? The more radical changes within characters' selves, of course, are wrought by time. François, once so alive in his anger, fades in old age into a version of his courtly father, Gaston. In what could well be the verdict of the novel, Barbara looks at the diminished Francois and

declares to herself, all life and the generations suddenly collapsing like an accordion. Massoud says in her acknowledgements that this strange, eventful history is one of those books that take a lifetime to write. The novel certainly has the stately sweep and weight of a magnum opus, but I don't think Massoud is simply praising her own accomplishment. As I've said, this is a novel about displacement, both political and personal. And you have to have lived a while to write, as Massoud does here, with such intimate melancholy about how time messes with us all, displacing us from earlier versions of ourselves. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed This Strange Eventful History by Claire Massoud. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be actor Tyler James Williams. He'll talk

about his role as a no-nonsense teacher on the hit series Abbott Elementary and how the show gave him back his confidence after years of fearing that he'd never have much of a career outside of having been a child actor and a young Chris Rock on the show Everybody Hates Chris. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salad,

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