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A review by jang
Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon
4.0
"The biggest challenge as I saw it was to pretend I had some superhuman ability to withstand pain." This quote from Kim Gordon as written in the early chapters of her memoir, in more ways than one, set up the tone or the mood throughout my entire reading experience.
It's hard to comment on a memoir as it's obviously too subjective and authentic. Everything that the writer felt like sharing to the readers was all laid out for them to read, to understand, to criticize and to live. As we all know, Kim Gordon is an amazingly empowered artist and musician who cofounded the post-punk band Sonic Youth. She has always been the big woman in the band, she helped establish and harbored her band, she made decisions, she had a voice--she let it be heard. That was my impression of Kim Gordon. So it was unsettling to me how some issues were tackled in the book because they were raw and farrr too personal. I know it's almost a given because the life of a famous person can easily be Googled these days but there were still bits in the book that made me uncomfortable.
The beginning instantly got me hooked because she quickly established that she's wounded. She's still in pain because of how tumultuous her marriage with Thurston had become and she's still searching for her place. And then she started discussing her almost equally-tumultuous relationship with her eldest brother Keller, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia later on.
Kim's story about Keller was my favorite because like her, I think, I have the same relationship with my brother (only I didn't know there's an actual label for my brother's unusualness, a mental disease even). Like her, I was also hurt tons of times when I was a kid and I would happily go home with new words and pop culture terms I learned from school only to be mocked and criticized by my eldest brother because I was too mainstream and cliche. In a way I was like Kim because I grew up craving for my older brother's approval. I grew so little then because I felt that I was too much of a bandwagoner and ordinary and so unlike my eldest brother who grew up listening to cooler music, watching deeper critically-acclaimed films and had better ideas about life. I settled for all his mocks and judgments because I thought he knew better, which tremendously affected how I conduct myself now. Today I constantly look for something different and continuously driving myself to like different, unusual things and repeatedly question authority because I felt that mentality would reward me a better shingle at life. It didn't. It's okay to be different, but you shouldn't try to be different only for the approval of someone who's on the same level as you.
Back to Kim's story, I was so insanely drawn to her relationship with her brother Keller because it helped mold her into this blaring, rock icon who juggled family life, music and arts successfully while being in a man's world. Her brother was the figure who drove her to overcome her shyness and express the pain she felt when she's onstage. Their dynamic helped her survive a testosterone-filled environment.
The memoir provided a great narrative that treated us to the colorful, ambitious, and drug-fueled life in LA and New York. It was similar to Patti Smith's Just Kids because this was also a story of a struggling woman who wanted to break into a male-dominated field and HAVE A SAY. It's important because during that time, women were always seen as domesticated figures who should be cowering at the male gaze and making sandwiches at the kitchen. To have someone as driven and smart and powerful as Kim Gordon pioneer the change in the male-dominated industry was EVERYTHING.
I loved those tiny glimpses that I had of Kim's life with her daughter because it's natural and not entirely revealing, she was still protecting someone so important to her. When she started talking about Thurston's dirty laundry, particularly his rendezvous with his other woman, that's when I started cringing because it's just too personal. I felt that some details should have stayed within the confines of their marriage no matter how big that marriage failed. It felt like a disservice to Thurston (who I'm never fond of anyway but still) because he did his part in shaping her maternal and professional life. I just felt that some things were better off blank in cases like this especially because she said she didn't want her daughter knowledgeable regarding these things. Idk, she probably resigned herself in thinking that her daughter would have found out about this via Google anyway. Idk.
I also loved the emphasis on the songs in each chapter because it proved how intellectual and relatable they were when they're writing the songs. They weren't just writing about songs people want to hear, they were writing actual stories. Whether the inspiration came from the notorious Charles Manson or a diseased friend, it was legit sonic and gut-wrenching.
All in all this memoir was a good recollection of the life of a staggering female artist, musician, wife and mother. Like what Kim said about herself, she served as "the lighthouse keeper" not only to her band and family, but also to the millions of girls who want to make it huge in a man's world.
It's hard to comment on a memoir as it's obviously too subjective and authentic. Everything that the writer felt like sharing to the readers was all laid out for them to read, to understand, to criticize and to live. As we all know, Kim Gordon is an amazingly empowered artist and musician who cofounded the post-punk band Sonic Youth. She has always been the big woman in the band, she helped establish and harbored her band, she made decisions, she had a voice--she let it be heard. That was my impression of Kim Gordon. So it was unsettling to me how some issues were tackled in the book because they were raw and farrr too personal. I know it's almost a given because the life of a famous person can easily be Googled these days but there were still bits in the book that made me uncomfortable.
The beginning instantly got me hooked because she quickly established that she's wounded. She's still in pain because of how tumultuous her marriage with Thurston had become and she's still searching for her place. And then she started discussing her almost equally-tumultuous relationship with her eldest brother Keller, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia later on.
Kim's story about Keller was my favorite because like her, I think, I have the same relationship with my brother (only I didn't know there's an actual label for my brother's unusualness, a mental disease even). Like her, I was also hurt tons of times when I was a kid and I would happily go home with new words and pop culture terms I learned from school only to be mocked and criticized by my eldest brother because I was too mainstream and cliche. In a way I was like Kim because I grew up craving for my older brother's approval. I grew so little then because I felt that I was too much of a bandwagoner and ordinary and so unlike my eldest brother who grew up listening to cooler music, watching deeper critically-acclaimed films and had better ideas about life. I settled for all his mocks and judgments because I thought he knew better, which tremendously affected how I conduct myself now. Today I constantly look for something different and continuously driving myself to like different, unusual things and repeatedly question authority because I felt that mentality would reward me a better shingle at life. It didn't. It's okay to be different, but you shouldn't try to be different only for the approval of someone who's on the same level as you.
Back to Kim's story, I was so insanely drawn to her relationship with her brother Keller because it helped mold her into this blaring, rock icon who juggled family life, music and arts successfully while being in a man's world. Her brother was the figure who drove her to overcome her shyness and express the pain she felt when she's onstage. Their dynamic helped her survive a testosterone-filled environment.
The memoir provided a great narrative that treated us to the colorful, ambitious, and drug-fueled life in LA and New York. It was similar to Patti Smith's Just Kids because this was also a story of a struggling woman who wanted to break into a male-dominated field and HAVE A SAY. It's important because during that time, women were always seen as domesticated figures who should be cowering at the male gaze and making sandwiches at the kitchen. To have someone as driven and smart and powerful as Kim Gordon pioneer the change in the male-dominated industry was EVERYTHING.
I loved those tiny glimpses that I had of Kim's life with her daughter because it's natural and not entirely revealing, she was still protecting someone so important to her. When she started talking about Thurston's dirty laundry, particularly his rendezvous with his other woman, that's when I started cringing because it's just too personal. I felt that some details should have stayed within the confines of their marriage no matter how big that marriage failed. It felt like a disservice to Thurston (who I'm never fond of anyway but still) because he did his part in shaping her maternal and professional life. I just felt that some things were better off blank in cases like this especially because she said she didn't want her daughter knowledgeable regarding these things. Idk, she probably resigned herself in thinking that her daughter would have found out about this via Google anyway. Idk.
I also loved the emphasis on the songs in each chapter because it proved how intellectual and relatable they were when they're writing the songs. They weren't just writing about songs people want to hear, they were writing actual stories. Whether the inspiration came from the notorious Charles Manson or a diseased friend, it was legit sonic and gut-wrenching.
All in all this memoir was a good recollection of the life of a staggering female artist, musician, wife and mother. Like what Kim said about herself, she served as "the lighthouse keeper" not only to her band and family, but also to the millions of girls who want to make it huge in a man's world.