Green Day's American Idiot is arguably my favorite album. And it details the story of a young man named Jimmy. It goes like this: leaving town to falling in love with a girl and drugs to working in corporate America to making it back home, all whilst dealing with the horrendous political climate of 2004 and its effects on all his friends.
What I always wondered about was Whatsername's story. Who was she? What did she want? How did she feel about love and the political climate? But I also wondered: how does this girl, this woman, relate to me?
Quarantine was (and is) difficult for everyone, myself included, and I grew up in a religiously conservative household with no ability to speak for myself. I spent much of time during quarantine ruminating and forgiving my past. Read: I worked through a load of mental trauma.
I decided that the best way to work through the dregs of the painful things I was holding onto was to combine myself and Whatsername, speak through her lens, so to speak. So American Bitch: Green Day's Whatsername's Response to American Idiot was born.
Filled with completely original poetry dating back from 2008 until now and many original collages and photos, American Bitch took the concept behind the American Idiot promo book filled with photography, polaroids, and lyrics, and transformed it into an equal opposite. It stands on its own. And so do I.
The cover idea was simple: pull the font Green Day used and the concept of the hand holding a hand grenade. (James N. Grey is a pseudonym that will hopefully become my legal name). The bullet vibrator was chosen to call back to the ideas of rage and love (rage in the forced sexual abstinence of religious conservatism and love in the same way we all want love, including self-love). Yes, that's my hand.
Most of the handwriting is entirely my own, with little to no alternation, and the poems are the original drafts/scans.
I won't stop at all. And yes, that widow was purposeful.
