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2008
2007
Posts: 8
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Signing and reading in Beloit
03.Jul.08, 16:33 IST
I'll be hitting my old hometown, Beloit, Wisconsin, July 12 for a signing and reading at the Turtle Creek Bookstore from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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At the Fair
08.Feb.08, 22:41 GMT
Here's myself, Erika Schickel, and Neal Pollack at the Miami Book Fair. Alt-parents unite!
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Paperback writer
08.Feb.08, 22:35 GMT
I just got a copy of the paperback version of Mamarama -- sweet! It should be coming to a bookstore near you in the next couple of weeks. If not, special order it! From Da Capo Lifelong Books. Perfect for book clubs!
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Miami Book Fair time!
07.Nov.07, 20:07 GMT
I will be reading at the Miami Book Fair International Sunday, Nov. 11, at noon, with fellow alt-parenting memoirists Erika Schickel (author of You're Not the Boss of Me) and Neal Pollack (author of Alternadad). And the whole View crew will be doing a fair takeover. MOLI will have a booth, which the editors will be taking turns manning (see the MOLI View and MOLI Book Club profiles for the exact schedules). Buy discounted copies of books by MOLI authors Donnell Alexander, Cathay Che, Jana Martin, and myself, and have them signed. Also, check out Jana's reading at 3:30 Sunday at the Book Fair. If a book fair sounds square, then you obviously haven't been to the Miami one -- or its attendant parties. Come see us!
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DJ LeSpam and me!
12.Sep.07, 19:13 IST
Miami's best DJ, Mr. LeSpam, will be spinning at a back-to-school party for parents at the amazing Skipping Stones Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. I will also be reading from Mamarama. 7120 Biscayne Blvd., Miami.
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I'm a "mum"!
15.Aug.07, 19:42 IST
The Guardian published an essay I wrote Aug. 10. You can see it here, or read it below:
Who knew a bad girl could be a good mum?<p></p>
A rock critic who once got married in a gorilla mask, Evelyn McDonnell worried that having a child would curb her spirit. In fact, it made her more radical than ever
Friday August 10, 2007
The Guardian<p></p>The other morning, I had an argument with the chauvinist pig with whom I frequently share a bed. <p></p>
"What Power Ranger do you want to be?" Cole asked. <p></p>
"The red one," I said. (If there's one thing I've learned in the past few years, it's that the red Power Ranger gets the most action.) <p></p>
"Girls can't be red ones!" <p></p>
"Girls can do whatever boys do, honey," I said, rising into a sleepy battle pose to prove it.<p></p>
"No way. You're the pink Power Ranger." <p></p>
"Do you really think pink is my colour?" I asked, flexing the <place st="on"><placename st="on">Chrysler</placename><placetype st="on">Building</placetype></place> tattoo that rises out of an aquamarine sky on my left bicep. "Transform, Power Ranger, power of the <city st="on"><place st="on">Phoenix</place></city>!" I shouted. <p></p>
Then I began tickling my opponent until he sobbed with laughter: "Mummy, stop it!" <p></p>
At four years old, my son is something I thought I would never say, unless I was describing, in appreciative terms, the fierce guitarist of some all-dyke punk band. Cole is "all boy". He is forever running around our Miami Beach bungalow saying, "Whoo-yah!" and when I try to get him to play something nice - like letting his little dinosaurs relax and enjoy a tea party - the toy tableau inevitably winds up in a massacre. Cole, the only genetic offspring of a punk-loving pacifist, likes war. <p></p>
If there had been a caption in my high-school yearbook that read, "Least likely to parent," it would have been under my picture. Suzi Quatro, not Suzy Homemaker, was my 1970s tomboy-childhood role model. In high school I stared endlessly at a Patti Smith poster on my bedroom wall and sang along with her: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." I eventually followed my poetess muse, leaving the American midwest for the urban east and becoming not a rock star, but a rock critic (one of Patti's sometime pursuits). <p></p>
My passions were literature, music, travel and sex; I was a bohemian adventurer-cum-career woman. When "riot grrrl" bands such as Bikini Kill and Tribe 8 led a merging of punk and feminist rebellion in the early 1990s, I marched down <state st="on"><place st="on">New York</place></state>'s <street st="on"><address st="on">Fifth Avenue</address></street> under their pirate banners, topless and smeared, Slits-like, in mud. I revolted against femininity with purple hair, rapacious lust, a zine called Resister, and an anarcho-feminist wedding in which I strode out playing the wedding march on an electric guitar and wearing a gorilla mask. (The image endures; the marriage doesn't.) <p></p>
It's not that I didn't want to have kids. Family was just low on my to-do list. And as it took me longer and longer to scratch out the higher-priority items - become a famous author, write a great song, find my true love - I began to wonder if I would ever get to it. I was also scared. Of the responsibility. Of how parenting would change me. Of being a lousy mum. <p></p>
Finally, in my 38th year, I found the husband who stuck, and became pregnant. My body went through a transformation that I surprised myself by loving - I had breasts! I offended matronly types at gigs by showing off my potbelly (which, as my son jostled inside, I dubbed "the mosh pit"). <p></p>
The commercial cliche decrees "a baby changes everything" and Cole's birth was certainly the single most transformative experience of my life. He became my anchor, the substantive connection to life and the world that I had sought, maybe too desperately, in romance. He was my daily reminder to savour the moment, and the reason why I needed to create hope for a future. Cole takes and hurls back all the love I had been wantonly tossing at life, without diminution or qualification. He has given me a faith in myself that I spent years fruitlessly trying to drag out of the male hierarchy at the rock magazines I worked at. Who knew a bad girl could be a good mum? <p></p>
But "everything" is a big word. Eventually I emerged out of the sleepless, hormonal tunnel of love that is parenting during a baby's first couple of years and realised the things that hadn't changed. Confronted with the realities of a country that claims to be leader of the free world but doesn't provide universal health care, parental leave, or child care, I found that I was more of a feminist than ever. <p></p>
Having already been a stepmother to my husband's two daughters had certainly taught me a little about the sometimes ego-effacing demands of parenting. Nothing can burst a hipster's bubble like two beautiful, stylish teenage girls. Karlie and Kenda taught me that it was OK to not always be the centre of attention; they showed me a new meaning of the old riot-grrrl phrase: "Support girl love." <p></p>
Our non-traditional cut-and-paste job is typical of a "new generation" of families. Raised on alternative lifestyles, newspapers and rock, my peers and I are now alterna-mums and alterna-dads. We tend to be in our 30s and 40s when we have kids; we are families with two mums, adoptive parents, or unwed partners. "Conscious parenting," as one member of a kid rock-group, the Sippycups, has called our approach to child-rearing, runs deeper than dressing our offspring in romper suits bearing the logo for now-defunct punk venue, CBGB. It is about raising our kids to share our beliefs and our value system. Punk isn't just a style, it's a way of taking on the world, a protest, a voice and a mission. <p></p>
The single woman's fear is that a child will steal her independence. Granted, post-Cole I can't stay out late at night as much as I used to, but rather than "settling down" and having kids, I've realised I have to up the ante. After all, I now have a vital, personal stake in the future, for whom I have to work all the harder to make the world an egalitarian, green, free and safe place - with really fierce music. <p></p>
In my case, that means reminding Cole that there are female Power Rangers too, and that they don't all wear pink. I worry that my son is growing up, post-backlash, in a more sexist culture than the one I enjoyed in the relatively liberated 1970s. These are pugilistic, feudal times; every girl has a princess party, all the boys are warriors. <p></p>
My children have taught me what should have been obvious: that mothering is as important a part of the feminist fight as being a successful career woman or a punk artist. I'm a warrior, too - now more than ever. I may pick my battles a little more wisely - but watch out for my Megazord move. <p></p>
· Evelyn McDonnell is the author of Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, and Rock'n'Roll (Da Capo). To order a copy for £8.99 with free <country-region st="on"><place st="on">UK</place></country-region> p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.<p></p>
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Reading and radio July 23
17.Jul.07, 14:52 IST
Hear me on the air and in person July 23. In the a.m., from about 8 to 9, I'll be on 97.3 the Coast, filling in for Julie Guy and talking about Mamarama and MOLI on the Those 2 Girls in the Morning show with Tamara G. At 7 that night, I'll be reading at the public library in North Miami, 835 NE 132nd St. Refreshments will be served and books signed.
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Articles-Miami Herald
09.Mar.07, 01:21 GMT
SEX, KIDS AND ROCK 'N' ROLL
Lessons of momhood really rock - Miami Herald
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