Violence Girl: Alice Bag’s Punk Memoir as a Multicultural Innovation

Alice Bag: Punk as a Multicultural Innovation

Reviewed by Sam Behrens

Violence Girl: East LA Rage to Hollywood Stage a Chicana Punk Story written by Alice Bag (also known as Alicia Armendariz) is a memoir recounting Alice Bag’s early life growing up in East LA and also as the lead singer of the 70s punk band, The Bags. Alice Bag is one of the few women and Latinas in punk and The Bags are one of the earliest L.A. punk bands and have had a heavy influence in modern hardcore punk. Through these short chronological vignettes, Alice Bag allows the reader to become immersed in her various worlds that intersect. Her home although loving is fraught with violence, poverty, and is solidly based in Mexican culture. Her school is saturated in systemic racism, verbal harassment, violence, and assimilation. Finally, Alice Bag shows us her musical world, which provides her relief and inspiration in her tumultuous life. It is in the intersection of these worlds that punk materializes and Alice Bag creates a haven for herself that is seemingly free from judgment based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and aesthetics. Although, the term Chicana is given importance through the placement on the book’s cover, Bags narrative is centered on music and aesthetics and it does not critically engage issues of her identity as a bisexual woman of color in punk even though this critical lens might help readers further understand her narrative. This lack of critical political analysis, both of punk and of US culture, points to a purposeful focus on the music, relationships, and the shows that she experienced rather than the racial politics of punk.

Alice Bag begins her story in the 1960s East LA, a conception of Anzaldua’s borderlands, in which life is securely based in Mexican culture. She is born to a Mexican American mother and a Mexican father where only Spanish is allowed in the home. The music played at home includes Banda, Rancheros, and Mariachi. She often recalls listening Enrique Guzmán, Lucha Villa, Pedro Infante, and José Alfredo Jimenez in addition to Soul and Motown. Her family often takes trips to Mexico to visit relatives and also goes to LA’s Broadway, which is lined with theaters that play golden-era Mexican cinema. Bag also recounts the racism and forced assimilation that exists in LA at this time, for example, pools had Mexican and white hours, she had to speak solely English at school, and she had to Americanize her name. These scenes are laden with the violence that she experiences in the home. Her father, however loving and kind to her, is a hulk of man who is physically and emotionally abusive to her mother. It is through this violence that her personality becomes combative. These early experiences clearly affect her music.

Alice Bag’s retellings of childhood memories have a lot of instances in which Alice Bag casts the facts as perplexing but does not further question and analyze the deeper roots of these situations. From her childhood experiences she often states that she had channeled the energy of her father and felt an electric adrenaline rush in confrontation and fights. Although Bag did have a good relationship with her mother, it pales in comparison in the detail and warmth in which she describes her father. This relationship is further complicated when she uses her body and her relationship with her father to protect her mother from abuse. Additionally, she resents her mother for not leaving the relationship and even goes as far as subtly blaming her for her own beatings saying, “I couldn’t help but feel that [my mother] was somehow contributing to her own victimization by staying around and pushing my dad’s buttons” (72). However perplexing their marriage is, she doesn’t question this relationship by taking into consideration Mexican patriarchal structures. Although Cherrie Moraga and Octavio Paz use the term, “La Chingada” to refer to lesbianism and mestizaje, this term is apt to describe Alice Bag’s idea of her parent’s relationship (GM, Henderson 21). She identifies with the power and freedom of her father bestowed onto him by the patriarchy and she resents and blames her mother for being victim to this structure. She wants to take the role as the “chignon.” In her relationships with white men she takes a masculine role in which she has multiple partners, never cooks, and is the breadwinner. When her male partner hits her she immediately leaves him because she refuses to be her mother or “La Chingada”. By using other Chicana writers as a guide, the perplexing relationship with her father can be explained through a different lens. However, throughout the book Bag tells her narrative as independent events and does not try to explain her relationships through any critical analysis nor does she point the reader towards any deeper explanation either.

As a student of East LA Stevenson Junior High school and later James A. Garfield High, Alice Bag went two famously violent schools that were influential to her formation as performer. Like any young adult, this time was extremely uncomfortable in the way she related to her body and her place in the education system. She recounts how she was incredibly tall, had crooked teeth, and was very unpopular in school. However, this unpopularity and exposure to inescapable gang violence at school gave her an edge. Through this first-hand exposure to gang culture she appreciates the power that the Cholas hold. Chola violence and dominant behavior introduce her to Latinas that fall outside of the typical image of the demure and desexualized Latina mother. To Bag, “They had so much style, they were so fierce looking, and they didn’t take shit from anyone” and is in line with her affiliation with “el chingon” (68). This association with Latina power and its influence on her punk identity is a brief mention in book. Nor does she talk about the historical role of Pachucas and Cholas in LA culture or how they truly affected her stage presence. The Pachuca and Chola are the female counterparts to the Zoot Suiter and the Cholo respectively. It is through their style and behavior that they subvert masculine culture and also challenge the dominant white conceptions of beauty through their "urban toughness and coolness usually associated with masculine behavior" (McMahon 265). Although, Alice Bag does not reference this exposure as an influence to her music, she exhibits the same cool urban hardness and interest in a hard feminine look.

Like many artists, for Alice Bag, music became a creative outlet from the violence of her home, school, and her outsider status. By having such a strong affiliation to the music, she was able to connect to other “weirdos” outside of her school and also curate a new daring look. The music was a way to channel fashion and creativity that was not centered on racial politics. The majority of the book is focused on the relationships that she fostered with other musicians and fans. The only time that she focuses on her intersection as Latina and a punk is when she draws on Mexican music for inspiration and also when she mentions the inherited rage that fueled her stage presence and lyrical content. The absence of race in her vignettes reinforces the idea that to her Punk was an alternative world that was free from prejudice based on class, sex, and race (Habell-Pallán 158). Since Punk in the 70s was still new and blossoming, those who participated in it could shape its course. This is especially true because this group of early punks was still really small and intimate. Alice Bag describes this early group as diverse in interest and open to innovation.

Since Punk Culture does not clearly align with Mexican Culture and Bag does not elaborate on why Chicana would become part of this scene, it is hard to understand the appeal of Punk to Chicanas. Habell-Pallán in Soy Punkera, y Que describes the appeal of punk to Chicana’s especially in the LA scene. The punk aesthetic is all about Do-It–Yourself culture, making the barriers to access very low. DIY aligns with the Latino practice of resquachi, an artistic phenomenon in which actors and other performers make due with very little, a practice that Alice Bag references often. Additionally, the barriers to playing an instrument or singing were non-existent and this low barrier gave women a space to voice private anger and frustrations. This early scene was truly multicultural and accessible. As a result of all of these factors, punk became a perfect avenue for Chicanas to voice their private frustrations in a venue was open to new sounds and people.

Alice Bag speaks about the positivity of the early punk scenes but these vignettes do not explain why as the scene grew it became heterogeneous, male dominated, and exclusive to women. In the punk documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization, The Bags are featured as one of the primer East LA punk bands. The performance clip reveals that the majority of the audience is white. What is shocking about this crowd is the clear violence and heterogeneity but also that a Chicana punk rocker is singing at them and pushing them back in highly feminine attire. This is especially shocking because L.A. in the 70s continued to be unbelievably racist and many clubs refused to book Latino bands. Alice Bag does not recognize the subversive power of her presence in the book in which she rejects victimization and passivity (Habell-Pallán 161). Alice Bag’s punk contemporary, Teresa Covarrubias of The Brat does speak to what this later punk scene looked like. For Covarrubias being a woman in the punk scene meant that her band mates and fellow punks critiqued her skills, ideas, and presence. Additionally, she felt that she was told she did not belong in the punk scene because of her race and look. Covarrubias was creating punk music addressing feminism and her Chicana identity during a time when punk was increasingly anti-Mexican and feminism was very white (Habell-Pallán 163). Although these issues began to affect the punk scene starting in the mid 70s, Alice Bag focused on her personal narrative of going to college and leaving the band rather than engaging in the changing dynamics of punk and how it became more exclusive and later on. This narrow focus on her own life leaves the reader in the dark as to how her narrative as a Chicana and her place in the scene was changing.

Alice Bag creates this narrative in which race in punk is off-limits to reinforce the idea that this early punk scene was free of prejudice and was open to all types of people. This approach does not take into consideration how punk has changed and how a critical lens of her Chicana background also the heavy Latino influence of LA could help further understand what forces brought Bag to punk and why punk has changed. Despite this focus, this book continues to be important because it counteracts the historic erasure of Latinos from different music scenes in LA and it shows how Bag used it as an empowering creative outlet. By providing a first-person account she reconstructs how the punk scene was a multicultural innovation and she places the spotlight on those who helped shape that scene. This antithetical existence of a Latina punk illustrates that the punk scene has been and could continue to be a place accessible to all, and also how diversity in punk has always benefited the music. This book is an important memoir because it disrupts the idea that Punk is and has always been an exclusively white arena.

Works Cited

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