Abstract
Abstract This essay explores authenticity in/and the rock music autobiography by analyzing punk/new wave singer Debbie Harry’s memoir Face It (2019). The chapter aims to see if there is a homology between punk’s version of authenticity and the authenticity encoded (or not) in her autobiography. Considering that this is a woman musician’s autobiography emphasizes the salience and the complexity of the nexus between music, text, and authenticity. A textual analysis of Harry’s punk memoirs allows one to trace the ways in which a white American woman renegotiates gender identity, the music industry, and punk authenticity in the closing decades of the twentieth century, with Harry’s locus in New York punk culture and its “authentic inauthenticity” meaning alternative sources of authenticity. Harry delineates the potential of punk culture for women at that time, as she profits from and transcends her self-appointed persona to become a serious cultural worker.
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