« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
March 25, 2020
Raechel Anne Jolie's Playlist for Her Memoir "Rust Belt Femme"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Raechel Anne Jolie's Rust Belt Femme is a lyrical and powerful coming-of-age memoir.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"A sharp coming-of-age portrait."
In her own words, here is Raechel Anne Jolie's Book Notes music playlist for her memoir Rust Belt Femme:
My memoir Rust Belt Femme is deeply anchored in music from my early life - nearly ever chapter title is taken from song lyrics. As I was writing about coming-of-age in rural-ish, working-class Northeast Ohio I remembered music that propelled me through adventures in the woods and in our creek, the soundtrack of racecar tracks and childhood dreams. My book extends into my teenage years, at which point I spent less time in the woods and more time in the subcultural haven of Coventry Road, a known spot for artists, punks, and bohemians on the outskirts of Cleveland. That period was a time of post-9/11 politicization through punk music, punk houses, and punk record stores. Writing about this era of my life would have been impossible without writing about music.
“Farewell Transmission” Songs: Ohia
I begin the book with an epigraph from this truly perfect Songs:Ohia song because, affectively, there is no song that better feels like my experience with the Rust Belt. Jason Molina - who grew up about twenty minutes from where I did - moans his songs, guttural and raw. In his own life, Molina suffered from addiction and depression, something we hear in his music. But amidst his pain, there is deep hope in his lyrics. In this song, Molina states: “Come on let's try will try and know whatever we try/We will be gone, but not forever.” There is persistence. Insistence. His music, and this song in particular, are defiant, even if a little worn down. I cannot think of a better way to setup my story.
“Poor Folks Town” Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner
A lot of my book is about coping with economic precarity. After my dad was hit by a drunk driver, my mom and I experienced periods of poverty (food stamps, unpaid utility bills, moving around a lot to find affordable rent), as well as periods of relative comfort. But my early life felt decidedly “white trash” (a problematic term that I’ve come to reclaim). The expected markers of poor, white rural life -- men who worked on cars, overgrown lawns, a general lack of decorum -- that I grew up with were also a source of deep joy. Growing up poor gave me complex-post traumatic stress disorder, but it also gave me a lot of happy memories. The first time I heard Dolly Parton sing, “have a look around/ at rich folks livin’ in a poor folks town/we ain’t got money but we’re rich in love/that’s one thing we got a penny of,” I cried. I never felt community love as thick as that which held me in that poor white trash town. This song speaks to that and is definitely apt to the first part of the book.
“Bad Reputation” Joan Jett
Another aspect of my book is about how geography and class shaped my own gender and sexual identity. Part of my working-class upbringing was a general lack of censorship - that’s not true for all poor folks, but in our house, I wasn’t really shielded from sex or violence on TV (economic scarcity is, after all, it’s own version of violence). I became enamoured with actresses like Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder, and anyone else who played some version of a crazy, broken, seductress. The sexism of these 90s-era manic pixie dreamgirls (manic pixie nightmares?) is now very apparent to me, but at the time, I was in awe of what looked like power. Joan Jett tells us: “I don’t give a damn about my reputation...a girl can do what she wants to do.” And I agree.
“All I Really Want” Alanis Morissette
It feels trite to say, but Alanis changed my life. She (along with Ani DiFranco) was my introduction to alternative music made by women and her music felt like a diary that I was starting to relate to. I was only eleven years old when Jagged Little Pill was released, but I could already make sense of wanting, as she sings, “comfort...a way to get my hands untied...justice.” I was learning emotions, and Alanis was there to guide me - through middle school crushes, through my first sexual assault, through an identification with the non-mainstream, and through being a different kind of girl.
“No Love” The Get Up Kids
During the period before I drove and after my best friend's older sister got her license, we would get rides to school with her. Every morning she and my best friend (Kat) would come get me in a rusty maroon Oldsmobile where we’d sleepily drive to school. Kat’s sister worked at a ~really cool~ local coffee shop where she met college students who introduced her to music that never got played on the radio. One of the songs was “No Love,” which has this instantly captivating guitar riff in the beginning, followed by perfect drums, then suddenly Matt Pryor’s screechy voice asking pleadingly, “If I gave everything/would you still listen to me?” Followed by a chorus where he insists, “I don’t want you to love me anymore.” And then, the best part: “As much as I would like to, I can’t put my hands all over you.” I hadn’t been through a real breakup yet, but I had a feeling I was gonna get this. But more importantly, this was my introduction to “emo” music, which, when this song was released in 1999, was much grittier than what emo would become in the early 2000s. But it was a foray into a world of music-they-didn’t-play-on-radio. That song was my gateway, ultimately, into punk and Left activism, which are two things that are as deeply a part of me as any other part of my identity.
“Confessions of a Futon-Revolutionist” The Weakerthans
The Weakerthans were one of the many bands I discovered after being introduced to the punk/indie/emo scene. This song was the most political thing I’d heard and in the very early stages of developing political consciousness, I loved the line “swear I way more than half believe it when I say, somewhere love and justice shine.” After 9/11 that developing consciousness was concretized: I was against the war, and was not for any Republicans or Democrats who stood for it. I went to Food Not Bombs - an anarchist group that serves reclaimed food to hungry folks - for the first time, and learned about anticapitalism. I went to my first protest, and I played this song, very loudly, on the way there.
“Closed Hands” Saetia
The music scene in which I was newly immersed also included hardcore bands. I learned - from my first punk boyfriend - about the nuances of this genre: there was metal, straight-edge hardcore, and ‘screamy hardcore’ bands, which also had roots in early emo. Like my boyfriend at the time, I liked the screamy stuff the best, Saetia prime among them. There was a time when we would listen exclusively to screamy hardcore when we fooled around and, reader, to this day I find this (admittedly not easy-listening) music to be...kind of a turn-on? (I’d like to give a shoutout here also to Pageninetynine, Orchid, and City of Caterpillar who were also soundtrack to many-a-sexytime.)
“We Laugh at Danger (And Break All The Rules)” Against Me!
This is another example of a band that, during this era, solidified my taste in music, my subcultural proclivities, and my politics. I also get punk-points for loving Against Me! since their first full-length album back in 2001. I also saw them play in the basement of a punk house in Cleveland called Fort Totally Awesome!. This song, in particular, has one of the best handclap breakdowns of any song in history. It brings me tons of joy that Laura Jane Grace (the lead singer) is still making music with the band and that she’s an out-trans woman; since I would later come out as bi, I feel a lot of queer punk kinship with their music.
“Jason’s Basement” Gossip
Finally, some queer feminist punk! It took me a roundabout way to get into the more riot grrrl/riot grrl-inspired scene: first I loved the dude bands, then I found Le Tigre, Gossip, Bikini Kill (etc). When I heard Gossip (on a mixtape the aforementioned boyfriend made me), I was moved. Beth Ditto, the lead singer, is a force, and you can’t listen to a Gossip song without realizing that. Partly because I was into this band, I would go on in college to score some hot gay girlfriends, for which I am grateful. The main lyric of this song is, “I get by with the people I know.” That sums up how I feel about my working-class community, the punk scene, and my queer family.
“Farewell Transmission” (cover) Waxahatchee & Kevin Morby
Yes, I’m bringing this song back. I very intentionally chose a line from this song to both open and close the book, and I like thinking about the latter passage as taken from this version by Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and Kevin Morby, two contemporary musicians I count among my favorites. Like the original version, this song is both sad and hopeful. This version is a little more airy, a little more dreamy, a bit more reverent. It’s an homage to the spirit of Jason Molina, who sadly died by alcohol-related organ failure in 2013; it’s an homage, I think, to everyone - and every place - we’ve lost. Whether lost from death, or the inevitable impact of capitalism, this song feels like both a eulogy and a gospel. “If you don't want us to be a secret out of the past,” Crutchfield and Morby sing Molina’s words, “I will resurrect it, I'll have a good go at it.” My book is trying to resurrect secrets of the Rust Belt, and a hidden history of femme identity that is rooted in working-class lives. “Listen,” the song repeats at the end, “Listen.” There is beauty there.
Raechel Anne Jolie is a writer, educator, and media-maker currently living in Minneapolis. She holds a PhD in Critical Media Studies, with a minor in Feminist & Critical Sexuality Studies from the University of Minnesota. Her writing has been featured in outlets such as Teen Vogue, In These Times, Bitch Magazine, and more. Rust Belt Femme is her first book.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Support the Largehearted Boy website
Book Notes (2015 - ) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2012 - 2014) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2005 - 2011) (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlist essays
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
Flash Dancers (authors pair original flash fiction with a song
guest book reviews
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Books of the Week (recommended new books, magazines, and comics)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Short Cuts (writers pair a song with their short story or essay)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
weekly music release lists
