Glory Guitars: Memoir of a 90s Teenage Punk Rock Grrrl

by Gogo Germaine

Overview

Ensconced in the black hole between childhood and adulthood, a glorious degenerate-grade freedom endures. A rebellion from respectability. An anathema to normalcy. It is the type of defiance that’s hopeful—hurt by the world but looking to reconcile it.

Enter Gogo Germaine and her girl gang of delinquents.

As manic teens in the ’90s punk scene, they engage in a vivid spectrum of misbehavior—from truancy to tattoos to trespassing. Here, in the underbelly of adolescence, music is God and the rest is a rush of nihilism. Gogo and her friends stumble through sound and fury into questionable firsts at varying degrees of sobriety.

Many of us blunder through that black hole. It is a point of universal convergence, manifested by divergent experiences. Gogo’s rebellion may look different from yours, but the soaring highs and visceral lows will be familiar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938753459
Publisher:	University of Hell Press
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	298
Sales rank:	509,086
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

A neurodiverse girl in a ’90s suburban world, Gogo Germaine was born with a lollipop-swirl brain, goth-kitty heart, and lightning-bolt soul. She won the Spelling Bee and the D.A.R.E. essay contest in the 6th grade. She was voted “Most Unique” in the 7th grade.

It was all downhill from there.

The rest was the stuff of hysterical after-school specials: stealing cigs, shotgunning PBRs, snorting cocaine, sneaking punk boys into her pink bedroom, and listening to tinny car stereo tunes while glaring into the sun like a muscle-shirt dad.

Editorial Reviews

A synesthetic fireball of beauty, a gut punch in every line, this is the kind of memoir full of gorgeously drawn characters and the wild passion of youthful misdeed that spawns a thousand attempts to live halfway up to the thrill of the original. Germaine has recreated the world of young, alternative women of the ’90s and their bonds with a grace and fury that it’s never had until now. If you grew up young and female-identified in the ’90s, you’ll recognize every word of it—and if you didn’t, you might find yourself wishing you did.” —Alex DiFrancesco, author of All City (Ohioana Awards finalist) and Transmutation

“With grit, heart, and punk spark, Glory Guitars is a seething anthem of teenage sex and explosive youth. Gogo Germaine is a voice of her generation, a shriek of darkness and life you never knew you needed … but won’t ever forget.” —Jason Heller, author of Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded

“Glory Guitars is a vulnerability manifesto that refuses to be ignored. Whether we’re witnessing an adolescent, spontaneous hand job or experiencing the high of breaking boundaries in Teenageland, the visceral realness of kids bordering on adulthood will hit you square between the eyes. Heartbreaking and hilarious, all with the perfect soundtrack of sorrow and rage to boot, Germaine is brilliant at masterminding the art of storytelling from each endearing character’s point of view, telling us, it’s not going to be okay, everything isn’t alright, but somehow we’ll make it through.” —Hillary Leftwich, author of Aura, a Memoir and Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock

“So good it hurts. Gogo Germaine’s voice is witty, gritty, and flat-out addictive.” —Emily France, author of Zen and Gone, a Washington Post Best Book for Young Readers and Signs of You, an Apple iBooks Best Book of the Month

“Glory Guitars is a multi-sensory, tilt-a-whirl fun house adventure of guiltless teenage rebellion that formerly puritanical readers can live vicariously through, retroactively experiencing every school-ditch drunken escapade with the memoir’s cast of blighted yet self-renewing characters who you end up convinced were responsible for your coming-of-age as well as Gogo’s.” —Amanda E.K., author of The Risk it Takes to Bloom

From the Publisher