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The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic is the best example of a book title that squashes the pre-emptive load of its subject (well, there’s that and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but that’s another post entirely).

Jessica Hopper’s anthology of music musing is sharp, righteous, and a bit sad—but sad in the way that she makes you realize that we (as women and as writers) experience male-dominated communities in so many different sectors. Between jockish editorial rooms and backstage boys’ clubs, it’s a wonder that a female writer can be as objective and searing as Hopper is about musicians—make and female alike.

It’s a rewarding read; Hopper genuinely loves writing about music, and it shows in her crisp, diverse prose and questioning of not only creative “genius”, but of artistic legacy, and sometimes the infamy therein. It also really makes you want to visit Chicago.

Bits of Note (I couldn’t call it Best Bits this time, knowing how angry/sad these moments in particular made me feel):

The opening essay, “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t” provides a stellar intro to the writer’s personal qualms with covering an industry that seems to purposely alienate women.

The heartbreaking conversation between Hopper and journalist Jim DeRogatis on R. Kelly’s skirting of punishment when it came to his sexual predation of young girls. “The saddest fact I’ve learned,” he says, “is nobody matters less to our society than young black women. Nobody.” It’s a gut-wrenching re-telling of many, many women who survived him, only to have the legal system sweep their trauma under a rug.

Hopper’s review of MIA’s 2010 album, an article titled “Making Pop for Capitalist Pigs: MIA’s MAYA”, which gently prods at the widely acclaimed singer’s balancing act between mainstream starlet and pop terrorist: “She’s an enemy of America even as she makes music for Americans.”

 

Gloria Steinem has spent her adult life jumping from place to place, from activist to journalist and back again countless times. Her name is synonymous with Second Wave feminism, and her journeys across America for the past 60 years (she’s still go-getting at 81) have kept her from getting too comfortable with any one idea about women’s place in the world.

My Life on the Road is surprising in that there’s little detail about Steinem’s personal life—it spans six decades where she’s all about organizing and moving on to the next big event or conference or speech. She has collaborators that she travels with frequently, but even the closest ones (like the whip-smart and outspoken Flo Kennedy) aren’t given quite the breadth of personality in text that you’d assume they warrant. Actually, the glimpses of meaning in the book come in snippets of memories grouped under chapter themes, coming together like a tableau album at the end of each. The lengthiest is a listing of her most interesting conversations with taxi drivers in the chapter “Why I Don’t Drive” (which was a great reminder that the best chats come out of the most unexpected circumstances—never close yourself from that possibility and remember to talk to your cab drivers, folks).

Really, it’s a salute to a style of living that doesn’t take time for self-reflection in between historic events and hotel rooms, squished in vans with other social plotters, and sometimes between famous writers (see below). If you are a woman and have been scared to travel alone, this book may inspire you to kick fear in the shins and get out there. If you are a woman who loves to travel alone, you’ll probably wonder just how the hell she gets so much done.

Best Bits:
In one cab ride, Steinem is stuck in the backseat between journalist Gay Talese and novelist Saul Bellow, having been assigned to write a profile on the latter. Talese makes a sexist comment about her being a “pretty girl” and not a writer, but Steinem says nothing and silently fumes.

The famed head-butting between Steinem and Betty Friedan (author of The Feminine Mystique) over the leadership of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) is not as bloodthirsty as one might expect, but go into Friedan’s tendency for shouting at other feminists.

The kinship she feels for female flight attendants, particularly in her early travel days when air travel was really just taking off.

And:  “Wherever I go, bookstores are the closest thing to a town square.” Enough said.