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"A memoir as fierce, freewheeling, and passionate as her music."
—O, the Oprah magazine
A memoir by the celebrated singer-songwriter and social activist Ani DiFranco
In her new memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani DiFranco recounts her early life from a place of hard-won wisdom, combining personal expression, the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more into an inspiring whole. In these frank, honest, passionate, and often funny pages is the tale of one woman's eventful and radical journey to the age of thirty. Ani's coming of age story is defined by her ethos of fierce independence—from being an emancipated minor sleeping in a Buffalo bus station, to unwaveringly building a career through appearances at small clubs and festivals, to releasing her first album at the age of 18, to consciously rejecting the mainstream recording industry and creating her own label, Righteous Babe Records. In these pages, as in life, she never hesitates to question established rules and expectations, maintaining a level of artistic integrity that has inspired and challenged more than a few. Ani continues to be a major touring and recording artist as well as a celebrated activist and feminist, standing as living proof that you can overcome all personal and societal obstacles to be who you are and to follow your dreams.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 7, 2019 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781984843074
- File size: 329396 KB
- Duration: 11:26:14
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Musician Ani DiFranco narrates her honest, self-deprecating, and often funny memoir. (Touring Italy, for example, she learns why her first name prompts smirking.) Appealing to fans and non-fans alike, she speaks with a poet's cadence, using her voice as she does her guitar--as a percussive instrument. DiFranco is as well known for her songwriting and performing as she is for pioneering a modern business model for musicians. Both achievements, listeners learn, are based on DiFranco's direct approach to life: saying no to anything that gets between her and her passions. On a separate note, the audiobook documents three decades of evolution in the music business as DiFranco progresses from analog to digital recording and from selling cassettes to downloads. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine -
February 11, 2019
DiFranco, a Grammy Award–winning musician and political activist, makes her literary debut in this powerful reflection on her life and career. Born in 1970, DiFranco grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., the daughter of an aeronautical engineer father and an architect mother, who designed their wall-less, “donut-shaped” house. DiFranco credits her father with forming her “musical subconscious” by introducing her to the music of composer Aaron Copland, guitarist John Fahey, and folk musician Pete Seeger; her mother, meanwhile, instilled in her a sense of social activism. DiFranco began her musical career as a preteen, learning the piano and the guitar while writing her own songs. After her parents separated, she moved out of her mother’s house at age 15, finding spare rooms with friends and even sleeping in the bus station. DiFranco immersed herself in music (“I began my musical journey at the intersection of Suzanne Vega and John Martyn”), and moved to New York City in 1989, where she studied poetry and feminism at the New School. In 1990, she cofounded Righteous Babe Records and released her self-titled debut record. Throughout, DiFranco writes of her self-doubts and romantic hardships, including her 2003 divorce from husband Andrew Gilchrist; she also discusses her advocacy for women’s reproductive rights (she herself had two abortions; she now has two children). Honest and passionate, DiFranco’s memoir will resonate with her many fans.
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