cover image Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

Carrie Brownstein. Riverhead, $27.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-59448-663-0

This strikingly expressive memoir from Brownstein, a writer, actress, and guitarist who created the critically acclaimed television show Portlandia, gambols over the sometimes steep hills of the quest for self-definition. Brownstein attended her first rock concert in fifth grade; she went to see Madonna, and was enough of fan to even try dressing like the star. Her mother nixed her outfit, but Madonna's show was still a "moment I'll never forget," she writes, "a total elation that momentarily erased any outline of darkness." Struggling though a chaotic family life, she finds herself through music, eventually co-founding the group Sleater-Kinney with her friend and then-lover, Corin Tucker. In the beginning, music mimics the turbulence in her life, as the band searches for ways to practice, write songs, cohere as a group, get along with one another, and establish themselves in the Seattle music scene as well as outside the US. As their reputation builds and they take their place at the forefront of the Riot Grrrls movement, Brownstein writes, "the unlit firecracker I carried around inside me in my youth... found a home in music." Brownstein is unafraid to reveal her emotional vulnerability, making this one of the smartest and most articulate music memoirs in recent years. (Oct.)