Liam Warfield is a writer, editor, and educator living in Chicago.
Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution: An Oral History
SKU: 9781629637969
Editors: Liam Warfield, Walter Crasshole, and Yony Leyser • Introduction: Anna Joy Springer and Lynn Breedlove
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629637969
Published: 8/1/2020
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9
Page count: 224
Subjects: Punk Music/Queer Studies
Praise
“Finally, a book that centers on the wild, innovative, and fearless
contributions queers made to punk rock, creating a punker-than-punk
subculture beneath the subculture, Queercore. Gossipy and
inspiring, a historical document and a call to arms during a time when
the entire planet could use a dose of queer, creative rage.”
—Michelle Tea, author of Valencia
“I knew at an early age I didn’t want to be part of a church, I
wanted to be part of a circus. It’s documents such as this book that
give hope for our future. Anarchists, the queer community, the roots of
punk, the Situationists, and all the other influential artistic guts
eventually had to intersect. Queercore is completely logical, relevant, and badass.”
—Justin Pearson
“This is a sensational set of oral histories of queer punk that
includes everyone from Jayne County to Eileen Myles, from Vaginal Davis
to Lynn Breedlove. The whole book works like a giant jigsaw puzzle that
never offers a final or complete picture but at least scatters the
pieces around to allow the reader to assemble some truly exciting
scenarios. This is very possibly the best and only way that subcultural
histories should emerge—namely as incomplete and incoherent, as a
magnificent poly vocal roar, as sound, fury, rebel yells and screams.
This does not just capture queer punk, it is queer punk.”
—Jack Halberstam, author of The Queer Art of Failure and In A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives
“Queercore: How To Punk a Revolution delivers a deeply
invested history of the forgotten roots of queercore. While to some,
punk was inherently gay as fuck—the actual queer revolution came few and
far between bands, scenes, and eras whose intersections were small, yet
wildly significant. With voices ranging from Penny Arcade to Brontez
Purnell, we hear a vast history from around the globe; echoing
everything queer, dirty, and true.”
—Cristy C. Road, frontwoman of Choked Up and author of Spit and Passion and Next World Tarot
“Queercore is the unrelenting polyrhythm of a culture,
chanted in varied waves of sensation, by some of its most essential
voices. Zigzagging through generations of nostalgia and controversy
faster than their own power chords, this is not just a record of
queercore (the movement), but a theoretical discussion about the
intersectional ideology of ‘Queer,’ as well as ‘Punk’ itself.
Reading—not watching or listening to—this book gave me the absolutely
necessary opportunity to reinvigorate my own punk, both as performance
art and radical protest. This unflinching oral history of how a
subculture begins and survives, tenaciously layered in the present, is a
bridge over the gap, that I for one, have been waiting for.”
—JD Samson, musician, producer, songwriter and DJ (Le Tigre/MEN)
Book Events
april, 2024
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Reviews
Interviews
- A kaleidoscopic history of the queercore scene in the ‘90s
- A middle finger for the mainstream— Queercore in Berliner Zeitung