Articles

We Were There: Individual, Social, and Cultural Memory in Punk Memoirs by Women

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.13.41045

Keywords:

memory, punk, women, memoirs

Abstract

This article analyzes how three of the different types of memory proposed by Aleida Assmann (individual, social, and cultural) are intertwined in the memoirs written by female punk musicians. In these works, there is a strong emphasis on the fact that the narrative persona belongs to a social group, thereby inscribing herself in the culture of the times. The individual memories of the authors, and the shared experiences of the generation to which they belong, thus become a part of the creation of the cultural memory of punk. This article seeks to provide new knowledge of the participation of women in punk via the study of the representation of memory in three memoirs: Alice Bag’s Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage. A Chicana Punk Story (2011), Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys (2014), and Chrissie Hynde’s Reckless: My Life as a Pretender (2016). These memoirs demonstrate that the authors contribute to writing the history of punk by inscribing themselves into it. Aware that the presence of women has not previously been sufficiently acknowledged, they do so by interweaving their individual memories with social ones, in order to attest to the birth of punk as culture.

Author Biography

Cristina Garrigós, National University of Distance Education (UNED)

Cristina Garrigós is Professor of American Literature at UNED (National University of Distance Education) in Spain. She earned her PhD in English literature at the University of Sevilla (1999) and has a master’s degree in Comparative literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1993). Her research interests include US contemporary literature, film, music, punk, memory, and gender studies. She has taught at several universities both in Spain and the US: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad de León, University of Mississippi, Texas A&M International University, and UNED. She has published on authors such as Kathy Acker, Gloria Anzaldúa, Giannina Braschi, Helena María Viramontes, Don DeLillo, and Ruth Ozeki, among others. Her publications include the book John Barth: un autor en busca de cuatro personajes. (Universidad de León, 2000); the Spanish edition of Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (La mujer quijote. Cátedra, 2004) and most recently, her book Alzheimer's Disease in Contemporary US Fiction: Memory Lost (Routledge 2021). As part of her interest in music, she is co-author of the book of interviews God Save the Queens: Pioneras del Punk (66rpm 2019) with Paula Guerra and Nuria Triana, and the editor of Punk Connections: A Transcultural Perspective, (U. of Barcelona 2017) with Nuria Triana-Toribio); Her latest book is Women in Rock Memoirs: Music, History, and Life-Writing (Oxford UP, 2023). She is the President of the Spanish Association for American Studies, SAAS (2023- ).

Published

2024-12-13

Issue

Section

Articles