Closed hands saetia tv#

It feels trite to say, but Alanis changed my life. Joan Jett tells us: “ I don’t give a damn about my reputation.a girl can do what she wants to do.” And I agree. The sexism of these 90s-era manic pixie dreamgirls (manic pixie nightmares?) is now very apparent to me, but at the time, I was in awe of what looked like power.

I became enamoured with actresses like Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder, and anyone else who played some version of a crazy, broken, seductress.

Closed hands saetia tv#

Part of my working-class upbringing was a general lack of censorship - that’s not true for all poor folks, but in our house, I wasn’t really shielded from sex or violence on TV (economic scarcity is, after all, it’s own version of violence). This song speaks to that and is definitely apt to the first part of the book.Īnother aspect of my book is about how geography and class shaped my own gender and sexual identity. I never felt community love as thick as that which held me in that poor white trash town. The first time I heard Dolly Parton sing, “ have a look around/ at rich folks livin’ in a poor folks town/we ain’t got money but we’re rich in love/that’s one thing we got a penny of,” I cried. Growing up poor gave me complex-post traumatic stress disorder, but it also gave me a lot of happy memories. The expected markers of poor, white rural life - men who worked on cars, overgrown lawns, a general lack of decorum - that I grew up with were also a source of deep joy. But my early life felt decidedly “white trash” (a problematic term that I’ve come to reclaim). After my dad was hit by a drunk driver, my mom and I experienced periods of poverty (food stamps, unpaid utility bills, moving around a lot to find affordable rent), as well as periods of relative comfort. “Poor Folks Town” Dolly Parton & Porter WagonerĪ lot of my book is about coping with economic precarity. I cannot think of a better way to setup my story. His music, and this song in particular, are defiant, even if a little worn down. In this song, Molina states: “ Come on let's try will try and know whatever we try/We will be gone, but not forever.” There is persistence.

But amidst his pain, there is deep hope in his lyrics. In his own life, Molina suffered from addiction and depression, something we hear in his music. Jason Molina - who grew up about twenty minutes from where I did - moans his songs, guttural and raw. I begin the book with an epigraph from this truly perfect Songs:Ohia song because, affectively, there is no song that better feels like my experience with the Rust Belt. Writing about this era of my life would have been impossible without writing about music. That period was a time of post-9/11 politicization through punk music, punk houses, and punk record stores. My book extends into my teenage years, at which point I spent less time in the woods and more time in the subcultural haven of Coventry Road, a known spot for artists, punks, and bohemians on the outskirts of Cleveland. As I was writing about coming-of-age in rural-ish, working-class Northeast Ohio I remembered music that propelled me through adventures in the woods and in our creek, the soundtrack of racecar tracks and childhood dreams. My memoir Rust Belt Femme is deeply anchored in music from my early life - nearly ever chapter title is taken from song lyrics. In her own words, here is Raechel Anne Jolie's Book Notes music playlist for her memoir Rust Belt Femme: Raechel Anne Jolie's Rust Belt Femme is a lyrical and powerful coming-of-age memoir. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Roxane Gay, and many others. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.