You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.39 AVERAGE
4.39 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
dark
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book, like its author Niko, is both authentic to itself and sincerely expressed—(which means it is also brave enough to not be liked by everyone) in order to be truly genuine. I personally put off marking this book as read for almost two weeks, because I didn’t feel like I had the words yet, to unpack it. Niko shares her a narrative that on it’s face feels like slice-of-life storytelling paired with music that creates the setting and the era. But it’s more than that, beneath the moments of her life is a subtle, often devastating, but at the end of the day vulnerable and undeniable ribbon of hope that there is something more, over the next horizon.
For a lot of folks who may read this, it might seem like a lot of stories about familiar songs and some tough years in a harsh part of the country. For the average-Joe/Joesephine self-insert crowd, this one may be a harder book to relate to immediately—Niko had a pretty niche experience for a number of these stories. That alone makes them interesting, if you’re open to learning about experiences different than your own, and can appreciate the value in that (even if it isn’t written to be gratuitous or shocking to someone with that very different life, as a lot of queer memoirs end up being, even unintentionally.) This one gives anyone willing and opportunity to connect to her, through music and the same self-reflection so many of us have been forced into after others start to label us as “different,” should it should be easy—provided there is no other reason to not come to this with an open hand any of these stories can stand on that metric alone.
But—there will also be people like me—(and not like me) but who are in the same category as me, meaning, like Niko in some way, for whom these stories will slip into like a thief. This book is really for the people who are us, but hopefully, while they are still 20, and don’t know yet, that being this kind of different is actually another kind of same.
I was a queer person in a small bigoted town of 1200 people—working in the service industry most of my teens and there were times when I felt like some kind of time rift had opened. Coupled with a soundtrack to place me back on the floor with some radio or my awful beat up car with the tape deck, and the cassettes we bought from gas stations, to bookend the barbed way that my bosses would ask if my friends were gay, or if I would make out with my friend for $5, since they heard I liked girls anyways… and I wondered if we had been extras in the same shitty movie and just not known. Only 2 years apart in age, but across the country, it was hard to not wish there had been a way to retroactively scoop us, and everyone else who had tears hit the pages of this book, all into one single town and let us do it all over again, but together, in one high-school…
Niko doesn’t shy away from giving us her darkness when it’s time. Or her regrets. And while reading these stories about a young woman, who was asking the world over and over for a place where she could put her heels down, you can’t help but root for her. There are so many crossroads where she could have chosen to become cruel, or given up, and instead, as the title suggests, she found a place to take refuge when necessary, in music, in counter cultures, and in herself. She uses the songs as vignette around pivotal and and anti-pivotal moments (like deciding if or if not to dream big, or instead, dream home, and stay and work the family business, even if there is a creeping longing in the decision) so we come to understand her fears, attempts to almost compromise/negotiate with her own gender, sexuality and happiness, but we also become aquatinted with her inextinguishable hope, along the path, traversed by the mobile home that is Niko herself and all her musical step-dads.
It becomes almost a spoiler to know that just by virtue of the fact that she is who she is now, and wrote the book, that the Niko of these stories, makes it. She is firmly into the life that was the footnote through all these essays. The end of the book, is almost, the cover of the book—the existence of the book, as the start of what will hopefully be many more in this future for the young Niko of The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman, now a published author, in living as genuinely and as authentically as ever, and giving us this book to say “and then, sometimes it can be a long time coming—but you still arrive at yourself” and Niko, I will say, I am so thankful that you did.
Your visibility and vulnerability will make the world feel less lonely for so many people. It will make someone safer. It already has for me.
For a lot of folks who may read this, it might seem like a lot of stories about familiar songs and some tough years in a harsh part of the country. For the average-Joe/Joesephine self-insert crowd, this one may be a harder book to relate to immediately—Niko had a pretty niche experience for a number of these stories. That alone makes them interesting, if you’re open to learning about experiences different than your own, and can appreciate the value in that (even if it isn’t written to be gratuitous or shocking to someone with that very different life, as a lot of queer memoirs end up being, even unintentionally.) This one gives anyone willing and opportunity to connect to her, through music and the same self-reflection so many of us have been forced into after others start to label us as “different,” should it should be easy—provided there is no other reason to not come to this with an open hand any of these stories can stand on that metric alone.
But—there will also be people like me—(and not like me) but who are in the same category as me, meaning, like Niko in some way, for whom these stories will slip into like a thief. This book is really for the people who are us, but hopefully, while they are still 20, and don’t know yet, that being this kind of different is actually another kind of same.
I was a queer person in a small bigoted town of 1200 people—working in the service industry most of my teens and there were times when I felt like some kind of time rift had opened. Coupled with a soundtrack to place me back on the floor with some radio or my awful beat up car with the tape deck, and the cassettes we bought from gas stations, to bookend the barbed way that my bosses would ask if my friends were gay, or if I would make out with my friend for $5, since they heard I liked girls anyways… and I wondered if we had been extras in the same shitty movie and just not known. Only 2 years apart in age, but across the country, it was hard to not wish there had been a way to retroactively scoop us, and everyone else who had tears hit the pages of this book, all into one single town and let us do it all over again, but together, in one high-school…
Niko doesn’t shy away from giving us her darkness when it’s time. Or her regrets. And while reading these stories about a young woman, who was asking the world over and over for a place where she could put her heels down, you can’t help but root for her. There are so many crossroads where she could have chosen to become cruel, or given up, and instead, as the title suggests, she found a place to take refuge when necessary, in music, in counter cultures, and in herself. She uses the songs as vignette around pivotal and and anti-pivotal moments (like deciding if or if not to dream big, or instead, dream home, and stay and work the family business, even if there is a creeping longing in the decision) so we come to understand her fears, attempts to almost compromise/negotiate with her own gender, sexuality and happiness, but we also become aquatinted with her inextinguishable hope, along the path, traversed by the mobile home that is Niko herself and all her musical step-dads.
It becomes almost a spoiler to know that just by virtue of the fact that she is who she is now, and wrote the book, that the Niko of these stories, makes it. She is firmly into the life that was the footnote through all these essays. The end of the book, is almost, the cover of the book—the existence of the book, as the start of what will hopefully be many more in this future for the young Niko of The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman, now a published author, in living as genuinely and as authentically as ever, and giving us this book to say “and then, sometimes it can be a long time coming—but you still arrive at yourself” and Niko, I will say, I am so thankful that you did.
Your visibility and vulnerability will make the world feel less lonely for so many people. It will make someone safer. It already has for me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Transphobia, Alcohol, Dysphoria
Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Violence, Grief, Alcohol, Sexual harassment
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Absolutely loved this book and the mixtape the author created to highlight their journey. Strongly recommended for any massive music fans.
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced