Kathleen Hanna

The punk icon on her memoir, Lyme disease, and Kurt Cobain

- ELISABETH GARBER-PAUL

When did you decide to write a memoir?

I started five or six years ago. I was at this transitional point in my life — it was before Bikini Kill and Le Tigre started playing again — and I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do next. I felt like I had to just write everything down that had happened, for myself, so I could move on to the next step. I needed to leave the Nineties behind.

You’re so vulnerable and open in the book, particularly about the times you were sexually assaulted. Are you nervous about all that being out there?

Not really. It’s not my problem. The people who did those things to me, they can have it now. I’m not going to hold their secrets for them anymore. I’m 55, and up until last year, I was taking responsibility for many of the sexual assaults I’ve experienced. It was my way to say I had agency. It wasn’t about me feeling shitty about myself, it was more “Well, if I did this or that or this or that different, then this or that wouldn’t have happened.”

In the book, you write about your struggle with Lyme disease, and how you discovered that you had it since you were a kid.