Alice Bag, Violence Girl
Reading assignment for Monday, October 22. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class.
Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
Discuss the uses of violence in Alice Bag’s text — how does it form her identity and inform her music / creativity? How would you connect it with our discussion last week of the the language of violence?
Alice Bag is a prolific blogger at Diary of a Bad Housewife. Check out her blog and discuss how do you see blogging as influencing the text and structure of Violence Girl?
Do a search for Alice Bag on YouTube / the web. Did you find anything surprising?
After reading Alice Bag, now would you describe Chicano Punk? How does she come of age in the course of her autobiography?
Thank you for selecting my book for your course! I hope your students are enjoying it. I will be speaking at USC and Occidental College next week when I’m out in LA. Please let me know if I can do anything for you.
Best regards,
Alice Bag
I think it’s so wonderful that you found our class blog and wrote to use. We’ll be discussing your book at LMU on Monday, October 22 from 4:30 – 7. I’d love to have you come and talk with us, but understand it’s probably a little late to arrange something. But I’ll definitely let the class know your LA dates.
There should be some chatter about your book on Twitter under the hashtag #chst302 over the weekend if you want to keep track or participate. You’d of course be welcome.
Annemarie,
Unfortunately, I won’t be in California until the 23rd, but thank you for the invitation. I will be checking my twitter feed in case your students have any questions about Violence Girl. They can tweet me @alicebag and use #chst302 so others can follow the conversation.
Thanks again,
Alice
In Alice Bag’s “Violence Girl,” we see a victim of violence turn the abuse she experienced and witnessed into fuel for her own art and personal expression. Unlike Josie Mendez-Negrete, who remained non-violent for the rest of her life following her absuive childhood, Alice Bag embodied violence in her own unique way. She channeled her anger through her punk lifestyle; whether it be in her erratic onstage performances or in her social life. By becoming “violence girl,” she takes the language of violence out of the male sphere and demonstrates that women can be tough, strong, and feared as well. In the book she describes others’ reactions to her violent and physical behavior: “I was often accused of being too masculine in my performances. It wasn’t that I was too sexual; rather it was that I was too aggressive, too violent, too in your face for a girl” (221). In this passage we see the association that people make between violence and “masculinity.” In the early punk era, it as acceptable for girls to be over the top in a sexual manner, for that is commonly associated with femininity. But by being violent and aggressive, Alice Bag was acting in the way that patriarchal societies only accepted men to behave. Alice became known for her violence as a performer, but it wasn’t just an act. Her childhood experiences left her with a sense of anger and a refusal to be the weak, defenseless, FEMALE victim. She describes several experiences where she is put in a situation of potential danger, and how she psychs herself up, ready to strike and defend herself: “The frightened Alice faded as my shadow self began to grow immense, casting a looming, terrifying figure against the brick wall in the dim light of the alley…I knew that someone could hurt me, but I didn’t care because I would hurt them worse and I would hurt them first” 273). After witnessing the victimization of her mother for so many years and being helpless to do anything about it, Alice grew up refusing to be a victim, even if that meant that she was the one doling out the abuse. Although some may argue that responding to violence with more violence isn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, I think Alice Bag reclaimed the patriarchal nature of violence, and just as she refused for men to control her physically, she also refused to let her abusive childhood to determine the success and happiness of the rest of her life.
Violence and coming to terms with the legacy of domestic abuse is a major theme in my book. Channeling my rage through punk music wasn’t a conscious decision and I didn’t realize I was doing that at the time. I often say that if it hadn’t been for punk, I might have become a serial killer. That’s only partly a joke. Punk is the poor man’s psychotherapy.
It’s interesting to see how books read differently from each different time you read them. This reading of Alice Bag’s Violence Girl was completely different than other times that I had read the book. Maybe I was looking from something different during other readings, or maybe after having Josie Méndez-Negrete speak last week I am looking at violence in a different manner. To be honest, even though the book is entitled Violence Girl the first times I read the book I was looking for a definition of punk. This time around I can’t believe that I wasn’t paying closer attention to the violence in the book because it had a direct connection to Alice Bag as a punk. The violence that she witnessed in her home growing up seems to have directly affected the rest of Bag’s life. Once she understood that she could harness her anger into something productive she was able to tackle the punk scene, which was completely dominated by white males. She made such an impact that punk that even thirty years later people are still going to her performances and readings. Neither Bag nor Méndez-Negrete accepted their position in the cycle of violence. Bag writes “I would never be a beaten woman” and Méndez-Negrete had the same sentiment. Both women talked about breaking the cycle of violence and channeling that into something productive beyond themselves. It’s awesome seeing people, especially women, not play the victim card but actually go out and change the world positively.
After seeing her blog I see its influence in the structure of the book violence girl because the book itself appears to be made up of blogs. It does not have the typical structure of chapters that most books have. She uses the book as an outlet of writing her experiences and her realizations from them.
After noticing the type of girls on the cheer leading team she quit. “Alice, we don’t want to win championships or perfectly synchronized. We just want to make the guys feel good and appreciated so that they can do their best.”(118) Here Alice was not going to put up with something that was not true to herself. Here is one of her earlier coming of age moments. Another coming of age moment is when Alice found out about Darby’s death. “ I’d seen too much poverty, misery and wasted opportunities as a kid, and I want to extract as much knowledge, adventure, excitement and love from this life as I can, for as long as I can.” (344) The complex emotion of anger sadness and guilt gave Alice a new perspective. Another crucial coming of age moment is when Alice discusses reading the book Beyond God The Father by Mary Daly. She had felt as if she had been cheated of the opportunity to know God because she had been giving the image of a Caucasian male and this is very limiting. “I learned not to be so afraid of loosing myself. My concept of self, like my concept of God, was so limited that had I not been willing to let it go, I would never have been able to understand what the universe was showing me.” (351) Also, another coming of age moment is when she forgave her father.
By reading Violence Girl, I noticed that Alicia was producing music that released her from deep seated emotions. She may have not realized that her music was part of her expression as a child in an abusive home, but her book was the total release. It was a tool she used to find closure with her childhood violence.