What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman's Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal

by Laina Dawes, Skin (Introduction)

Overview

What Are You Doing Here? investigates how black women musicians and fans navigate the metal, hardcore, and punk music genres that are regularly thought of as inclusive spaces and centered on a community spirit, but fail to block out the race and gender issues that exist in the outside world.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940015938654
Publisher:	Bazillion Points
Publication date:	11/09/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	721 KB

About the Author

Laina Dawes is a journalist, cultural critic and photographer. She has contributed to CBC Radio, Metal Edge, The Wire, Afrotoronto.com, and Blogher.com. An active public speaker, she has appeared at SXSW and the EMP Pop Music Conference. She lives in Toronto, and her personal blog lives at Writingisfighting.com

Editorial Reviews

Laina Dawes’ What Are You Doing Here? is a strikingly more powerful, penetrating, and passionate look at metal than the one written by the guy [Tony Iommi] who arguably invented the genre…brave, engaging, and unique.

The Onion A/V Club - Book Editor

She presents metal as a source of joy, an outlet for negative emotions, a physical release and catharsis. It is also an opportunity to embrace something that Dawes, and the women she interviews, love intensely, and therefore is also the narrative of the triumph of truth and happiness over the pressure of public perception.

Toronto Standard - Book Reviewer

How exciting is this? The book tackles the good, the bad and the ugly sides of being a black woman in the metal and punk scenes.

Afropunk.com - A Journalist

The women presented in What Are You Doing Here? are courageous, honest and without pretense—just like the best metal that ultimately unites them.

Decibel - Albert Mudrian

This is a thoughtful and inspiring study on a topic few outside the scene might have considered.

Publishers Weekly - Staff Reviewer