This Woman’s Work

★★★★ Sinéad Gleeson & Kim Gordon (Ed.) WHITE RABBIT. £20

Powerful collection of music writing that combines poetry, prose and polemic. Women’s words have traditionally been sidelined in the male canon of music writing, but with this volume, 16 female writers focus on music with fierce eloquence, exploring what it means to them in wildly different ways. Margo Jefferson, for instance, meditates on Ella Fitzgerald – the sweat and dedication that it took for her to become a bebop scat diva, while Kim Gordon profiles no wave pioneer and co-collaborator Yoshimi, and Liz Pelly tells the story of Sis Cunningham, unsung heroine of the Broadside folk scene. There’s Leslie Jamison’s captivating chapter on mixtapes that shaped her life, Megan Jasper recalling with earthy humour the early days of Sub Pop, and Fatima Bhutto writing on music under dictatorship and in exile. Most astonishing is poet Simone White immersing herself in trap and drill and creating her own hybrid literary form.