It is the fate of any underground movement: to emerge from the subsoil and be absorbed by the mainstream in a superficial and distorted way. It also happened to riot grrrl that germinated in the Northwest of the United States, led by bands like Bikini Kill, Bramobile or Heavens To Betsy, and spread from Olympia to Washington DC, to New York, Nebraska or Toronto. There were many conventional media that gave it a voice, but very few did so rigorously. Beneath the music, which was no less essential, was a feminist movement that was nourished by readings, activities, meetings and cultural exchanges, with the fanzine as the main vehicle of communication. Many adolescent girls and young women felt that for the first time they had a mirror in which to look at themselves. Someone with whom to share his concern for behaviors that seemed normal, frequent, but were not.
Kurt Cobain, Calvin Johnson or Ian MacKaye could do their bit to make all that visible, but this is the story of each and every one of the women who swam against the current in a time very different from the one we live in today: feminism seemed exhausted as a cultural tool to promote changes in society, at least in the US. The journalist and university professor Sara Marcus lived it up close, and the great merit of her book is to make you feel that you are right in the thick of it. of that widespread revolt that spread between 1991 and 1994. It is like an oral history but without its corseted format, turned into a very complete and magnetic story that helps to understand, without complacency or idealized visions, the contradictions inherent in a movement condemned to to go out in a short time, but also to end up planting a seed whose fruits are more than visible today.