The Patti Smith Band, The Slits, The Pretenders, Sonic Youth, The Fall, Throbbing Gristle, Sleater-Kinney set the bar for women in Punk. Their memoirs show us why.

Poets, Guitarists, Songwriters, TV Stars, Provocateurs, Riot Grrrl founders: the authors in this study challenge perceptions of punk music and politics. Viv Albertine, Alice Bag, Pauline Black, Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon, Nina Hagen, Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith, Brix Smith Start, and Cosey Fanni Tutti have been breaking new ground in writing about their lives. They fill gaps in the historical record, back catalogues and perceptions of how music works as politics. They provide fans and music scholars with a corrective to androcentric studies of punk as a DIY politics of resistance to the mainstream. M.I. Franklin shows how they do this, along with ways to hear the personal and world politics inherent in their musical output.