A MISFIT'S MANIFESTO: The Spiritual Journey of a Rock & Roll Heart by Donna Gaines (Villard, $24.95, 400 pp)
Sociologist and unabashed rock 'n' roll fanatic Donna Gaines has written a defining baby boomer's memoir. Beginning with Hebrew school in Rockaway Beach, Queens, Gaines' story careens through Brooklyn, Long Island, the 1970s bar scene in New York City and graduate school, frequently in a substance-induced haze resonating with background music by the Ramones. It's a wonder Gaines remembers enough to write it all down.
Gaines, author of Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids, juxtaposes her angst-ridden adolescence and young adulthood with the rise and fall of the American myth of suburban utopia and marks the phases of her life with the music that captivated her at the time. A professor of sociology at Barnard College in New York, Gaines examines the role of pop culture and class in American identity and the healing effect of rock 'n' roll music on her life and psyche. Unflinchingly honest, A Misfit's Manifesto is a study of alienation, the search for belonging and identity and the comfort that can sometimes be found in a really good guitar riff.
- Lorrie P. Lykins is a writer who lives in Seminole.