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girlglitch's review against another edition
4.0
Girls To The Front is an introspective and personal take on riot grrrl history - or at least, it's as introspective a take as you can get from someone who wasn't actually a part of it. As social history, it's something of a jigsaw: different grrrls' perspectives pieced together to make one cohesive narrative.
This approach is at once the book's greatest asset and greatest weakness. We hear directly from those at the forefront of the movement (and not just those with more 'mainstream fame' like Kathleen Hanna), which allows for some incredible insight and brutal honesty. There's no attempt to mythologise a riot grrrl ideology: instead, we hear what riot grrrl (and feminism) meant to these girls as individuals. In that respect, GTTF gets to the heart of what riot grrrl was all about.
But this approach falls short as Marcus starts to track the spread of riot grrrl. There's simply not the space to explore the diversification of the movement, and when it comes to conflicts (which Marcus does not shy away from reporting), I sometimes got the sense I was only hearing one side of the story. There's a thin line between intimacy and over-exposure, and sometimes that line is crossed. At times, I was desperate for Marcus to step back and take in the wider-picture.
That said, GTTF does capture the spirit of the movement, which was, in many respects, centred around the dichotomy of privacy and making the personal political. GTTF makes a refreshingly read, and its honesty made these grrrls' voices all the more powerful.
This approach is at once the book's greatest asset and greatest weakness. We hear directly from those at the forefront of the movement (and not just those with more 'mainstream fame' like Kathleen Hanna), which allows for some incredible insight and brutal honesty. There's no attempt to mythologise a riot grrrl ideology: instead, we hear what riot grrrl (and feminism) meant to these girls as individuals. In that respect, GTTF gets to the heart of what riot grrrl was all about.
But this approach falls short as Marcus starts to track the spread of riot grrrl. There's simply not the space to explore the diversification of the movement, and when it comes to conflicts (which Marcus does not shy away from reporting), I sometimes got the sense I was only hearing one side of the story. There's a thin line between intimacy and over-exposure, and sometimes that line is crossed. At times, I was desperate for Marcus to step back and take in the wider-picture.
That said, GTTF does capture the spirit of the movement, which was, in many respects, centred around the dichotomy of privacy and making the personal political. GTTF makes a refreshingly read, and its honesty made these grrrls' voices all the more powerful.
callofthelibrary's review against another edition
2.5
incredibly difficult to rate this. sara marcus was perhaps the wrong person to write this history i find her pretty unprofessional for much of the book and most of my issues stem exclusively from her analysis (from her paltry understanding of broader feminist movements of the late 80s/early 90s, which i was willing to forgive at the beginning since that wouldve been the exposure younger teen girls wouldve had at that particular point in history, to her weird comments about non-riot grrl girl bands, to her dismal attitude and factual incorrectness around women in dc, to the kathleen hanna heroworship, to the issues with race in the final sections, to the repeated vilification of jessica hopper with little grace for the fact she was like sixteen, to the biphobia?? and on and on and on there's simply too much to say). the passion is there in the interviews and zines and its hard not to be swept up in it at points. i have a lot of respect for riot grrl as a youth movement but i feel like the retrospective analysis of it is so flawed and dismissive. i imagine this book was a source of a lot of that, unfortunately.
dandelion323's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
sarcasmandscifi's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
riotsquirrrl's review against another edition
3.0
How much of a revolution can it really have been when women of color were and continue to be sidelined within it?
I do recommend reading the book, "The Spitboy Rule" and reading about punk artists like Poly Styrene and thinking about how this book mainly focuses on middle class white women.
I do recommend reading the book, "The Spitboy Rule" and reading about punk artists like Poly Styrene and thinking about how this book mainly focuses on middle class white women.
lckrgr's review against another edition
3.0
While I think this book provided a good overview of the phenomenon that was Riot Grrrl, specifically by not shying away from the schisms within the group, I found the author's writing style not terribly to my liking.
There were several points where the author wrote about important moments in the girls lives but from a weird almost fictional perspective. These sections provided, in my opinion, to much of the author's own judgment and speculation.
An example:
Mary Fondriest didn't go to any meetings in the summer and fall of 1991. What was she doing then? It's hard for her to remember. Things that happen at seventeen have a habit of turning blurry and bleeding together when looked back on a dozen years later.
Something about this rubbed me wrong. It's almost as if she took the voices away from the girls she was actually writing about so that she could tell us how she saw it all. I don't know, while I am definitely more knowledgeable about Riot Grrrl and it was a quick and easy read, I am not sure I would recommend it to anyone. I feel like I would have appreciated a more scholarly or objective approach to the movement, something more akin to Jon Savage's England's Dreaming or Marcus Gray's The Last Gang in Town.
There were several points where the author wrote about important moments in the girls lives but from a weird almost fictional perspective. These sections provided, in my opinion, to much of the author's own judgment and speculation.
An example:
Mary Fondriest didn't go to any meetings in the summer and fall of 1991. What was she doing then? It's hard for her to remember. Things that happen at seventeen have a habit of turning blurry and bleeding together when looked back on a dozen years later.
Something about this rubbed me wrong. It's almost as if she took the voices away from the girls she was actually writing about so that she could tell us how she saw it all. I don't know, while I am definitely more knowledgeable about Riot Grrrl and it was a quick and easy read, I am not sure I would recommend it to anyone. I feel like I would have appreciated a more scholarly or objective approach to the movement, something more akin to Jon Savage's England's Dreaming or Marcus Gray's The Last Gang in Town.