Breanne Fahs

Presents the life and philosophies of Valerie Solanas, a feminist extremist who outlined in her "SCUM Manifesto" her vision for a radical gender dystopia and who shot Andy Warhol in 1968.

The Defiant Life of the Woman who Wrote Scum (and Shot Andy Warhol)

Valerie Solanas

Lindy

I have to appreciate Fahs' ambition in even attempting to write a biography of someone as elusive and controversial as Valerie Solanas. Fahs contextualizes Solanas thoroughly, and is hesitant to extrapolate claims based on the small amount of available information. While this may be off-putting to some, I thought it was almost refreshingly honest, and since this is the first comprehensive biography of Solanas, one has to start from somewhere. 

However, I didn't like the author's tendency to repeat herself and very dry narrative style. It felt like there was a lot of padding, both in the aforementioned repetition and in various biographical tangents about individual feminists, Warhol superstars, etc. Perhaps instead of a stand-alone biography, this would have worked better as a chapter in a book profiling multiple radical feminists.

Valerie Solanas The Defiant Life of the Woman who Wrote Scum (and Shot Andy Warhol)

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