Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

From the guitarist of the pioneering band Sleater-Kinney, a candid, funny, and deeply personal look at making a life-and finding yourself-in music.

'Carrie tells her story with mesmerizing, often hilarious, honesty, reminding us that life is just a million bad outfits, nervous phone calls, sleepless nights, and clumsy kisses, and yet all of this adds up to something tremendous - staggering, actually. I wept' Miranda July

'So many times while reading this book I screamed "Yes!" inside. You can feel Carrie's visceral guitar-swirling energy on every page. An amazing writer' Kim Gordon

'She can play, but man, can Carrie Brownstein write . . . Her blazing memoir is lit by the same flair for adventure, fearless inquiry, and honesty that mark her gritty licks and trenchant vocals' Elle

'Heartfelt and disarmingly honest, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is far from a regular tale of rock'n'roll dissolution. It is, instead, a tale of a young woman with a complex interior life struggling to grow up and find her identity . . . It is the story of her struggle to belong' Independent on Sunday

'[A] glorious, grungy paean to losing yourself in music' Sarra Manning, Red

Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one of the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as "America's best rock band" by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock.

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era's flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later.

With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one's true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.