Ani DiFranco Opens Up About Occasional Stranglehold Of Devoted Fandom

Since the 1990s, musician, poet and activist Ani DiFranco has attracted a fierce following of devoted fans through her righteous anger and clear-eyed feminism.

But sometimes the fan embrace was too tight, and she was often punished for perceived missteps, DiFranco (@Righteous_Babes) says.

She opens up about her career — from playing in Buffalo, New York, bars at age 9 to becoming an emancipated minor at 15 to founding her own independent record company — in her new book, “No Walls and the Recurring Dream: A Memoir.”

The daughter of a Canadian mother and an Italian immigrant father, DiFranco’s childhood quickly grew dark, she tells Here & Now’s Robin Young. Both her father and brother attempted suicide when she was a child.

“I think that this anger that I was so known for or reduced to or thought of as being this angry chick — I really think that it was my mother’s anger moving through me,” she says. “And anger is not as precise as feminist outrage. But then her energy also was so vibrant. She gave me a lot