If you haven’t yet checked out What Are You Doing Here? A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal, what are you waiting for? The book, written by by Toronto-based writer/journalist (and author of Broken Pencil’s upcoming POC Zines cover story for our Canzine issue) Laina Dawes, is an engaging, honest and highly readable part memoir/part investigation on how gender, race, and sexuality converge within the heavy metal and punk scenes. Dawes engaged with a wide array of black women involved in punk and heavy metal scenes, and also culled from her own experiences, and in doing so, she produced a hugely important work within the milieu of music journalism/cultural criticism.
Now Dawes is looking to take her show on the road, and she’s looking for a bit of funding to help her launch a cross-country U.S. book tour.
As outlined in Dawes’ Indiegogo page, there are a couple of reasons she’s planning this tour. Firstly, she wants to raise awareness not only about the book itself, but about the fact that yes, sometimes black people like heavy/rock/punk music, so why not bring ’em all out of the woodwork? And in doing so, Dawes is hoping that these book events will also help likeminded folks meet each other, and hopefully foster a bit more of a community amongst POC rock/metal fans in a number of cities.
Dawes is aiming to hit the West Coast in November/December 2013 and move onto Atlanta, Washington, and down to Detroit in the winter and spring of next year. Proposed events include book discussions and mini concerts from local, unsigned punk and metal bands.
The perks include signed copies of the book, digital downloads featuring music from black female punk, rock and metal artists, t-shirts, social media shoutouts, and dinner with Dawes in the city of your choosing (provided its on her tour list.)
The campaign ends on October 21. Take a look at Dawes’ Indiegogo page and considering tossing her some $$$ for this excellent and highly worthy project.