In her memoir Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk (Ecco), Kathleen Hanna describes her singing as “the tiny tornado I most want to be in,” and that pretty much describes the book. In the ’90s, Hanna and her friends began and ended many punk bands (the most notable being Bikini Kill and Le Tigre), and the women’s group/zine (and later, publishing house) Riot Grrrl. Hanna’s love of singing started when she began belting out “Away in a Manger” as loud as she could in front of the bay window of her family’s house in suburban Maryland. From there she played around with musical theatre and then, when she left home for college, she entered the exciting, scary and sometimes dangerous world of punk rock. Hanna and her fellow punk rockers drove back and forth across the US in piece-of-shit cars, wrote their own songs, slept on people’s floors, made their own posters, and played through shitty PAs in tiny, dingy venues for almost no money. The audiences were mostly violent and misogynistic men who yelled insults at the musicians and harassed any women in the audience, but Hanna did not walk away. She loved the music too much. Between songs she talked about rape and domestic violence while the men yelled “Shut up and play!” and after her shows, she talked with the women who lined up to share their experiences of rape and abuse. In her spare time, Hanna volunteered at a rape relief and domestic violence centre. This sounds bleak, but Hanna manages to convey the joy she got from being a scrappy, outspoken woman fighting for stuff she believes in. The ability of Hanna to pick herself up and carry on is inspiring, as is her ability to recognize her own issues and try to do something about them. She writes that as a white woman she could be “ignored, belittled and told I wasn’t a ‘real musician,’ but I was also a privileged monster, holding onto stupid grudges while ignoring how much leeway I was given as a pretty white girl.” The audio book is read with irreverence and gusto by Hanna herself, but the ebook offers photographs of Hanna and her band members—snapshots that will make you realize how young these trailblazers were. Try them both! —Patty Osborne