How the author and actress turned a book tour into a political campaign trail.
by Kaylen Ralph
Emma Winsor Wood contributed reporting to this piece
The personal is to the political as Lena Dunham’s book of essays is to Lena Dunham’s book tour.
The 28-year-old media mogul’s first book, Not That Kind of Girl, was released on Sept. 30 by Random House Press. As is the industry standard, Lena Dunham kicked off her “Not That Kind of Tour” that evening in New York City. But the digital tour had begun nearly a month before thanks to the Random House Events app, available for free via the app store.
There are only 11 stops on the actual book tour, and Minneapolis (where I live) is not one of them. I downloaded the app and Riveter contributor Emma Winsor Wood provided coverage from the tour’s October 7 stop in Iowa City at the Englert Theater, which was co-presented by Prairie Lights Bookstore.
Not That Kind of Girl is a book of personal essays, but the Not That Kind of Tour is where the politics of Dunham’s personal life converge. By following the tour’s progression both on Dunham’s personal Instagram and via the Random House app, its political bent is clear. She partnered with Emily’s List for the tour, an organization with the mission to “elect pro-choice Democratic women to office.”
In addition to personal ‘grams promoting Emily’s List (“Emily’s List is a Girl’s Best Friend”), she’s also posted photos of herself and her fans (most notably one with Wendy Davis’s daughter Amber) wearing “Wendy Davis for Texas” T-shirts.
At the tour’s stop in Iowa City, Dunham plugged the organization as well as region-specific Emily’s List candidates, including Staci Appel, who is running for Congress in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District and touts her background as a “businesswoman and mother” as beneficial in bringing “common sense to Washington.” The tour was produced in part by Planned Parenthood, and attendees were given bags of condoms upon their arrival. Each of Dunham’s tour stops features a different opener; Iowa City’s opener was Jenny Zhang, a poet/essayist who performed two pieces, both with political messages, including an essay inspired by Davis’s filibuster.
What’s striking about the political aspect of Dunham’s tour programming is its contemporary relevance and the immediacy of the political issues she addresses. It’s a midterm election year and the span of Dunham’s tour (September 30 to October 21) coincides with many states’ deadlines for registering to vote in the November 4 elections. As part of the Rock the Vote’s “Turn Out for What” campaign, Dunham released a video mid-tour in which she states, “My name is Lil Lena, and I’m turning out for reproductive rights.” The tour’s relevance, combined with access to a watered down version of the tour via smartphone or tablet, elevates the relevance of Dunham’s book of personal essays beyond the strictly literary.
In a recent New York Times profile on Dunham and the (then) upcoming release of her book, Dunham’s sister Grace Dunham is credited with planning much of the tour’s political programming.
“Sleek, composed and passionately focused on social activism, (Grace) is currently helping to bring a political component to Dunham’s book tour, by combining their shared interest in women’s health and reproductive rights with the publisher’s interest in selling lots of books.”
Dunham was criticized in 2012 after the premier season of Girls was received as “narcissistic, lack(ing) racial diversity and showcase(ing) whiny, privileged millennials complaining about topics only relevant to whiny, privileged millennials.” I considered these valid concerns/criticisms while religiously logging on to my HBO Go account every Sunday evening to watch the next episode.
As Dunham writes in her book, “In 2010 I got the opportunity to make a television show. The network told me they wanted to see my age group, the concerns of my friends and enemies, in graphic detail—and they didn’t seem to be bluffing.” None of the girls of Girls are non-white, and in that respect, Dunham’s show is just like the multitude of other sitcoms and dramedies. This can strike a nerve when presented as fiction, but memoir is a different ballgame, one that Dunham knocks out of the park.
This can strike a nerve when presented as fiction, but memoir is a different ballgame, one that Dunham knocks out of the park.
Not That Kind of Girl is well written and engaging. It’s framed (and designed) as an homage to Helen Gurley Brown’s book from 1982, Having it All, but at no point does Dunham prescribe or pontificate. She writes about her own experiences, often riffing quite blatantly from the greats (her essays in list format made me mourn Nora Ephron’s death all over again, “10 Reasons I <3 NY” and “What’s in My Bag”). Also, despite the memoir being inspired by Gurley Brown’s outdated book, it is dedicated to Ephron, and the result is authentic. It’s impossible to hold Dunham’s oversharing against her because she’s not presenting her experiences as mirrors for your own “millennial” thoughts and feelings; they are hers alone to interpret and grapple with. If I ever come across a Buzzfeed “Which Lena Dunham Essay Are You?” quiz I will weep, because none of them apply to anyone but herself.
Dunham’s book doesn’t overtly address political issues with a particular agenda in place. It is far too nuanced and artistic and it really is all about her; discussion of contemporary political issues would only date the book and shorten its shelf life. However, that the personal is political clearly applies to Dunham’s experiences, and arguably all women’s. The book, despite its lack of policy discussion, covers the subject matter that makes politics so divisive in the first place for women: STIs, contraception, workplace harassment, the glass ceiling, pregnancy, rape, higher education…the list goes on.
During her stop in Iowa City, Dunham pointed out that though a change in reproductive rights/policy might not directly affect everyone in the audience, it would have an affect on low-income women, and that’s something everyone should care about.
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Kaylen Ralph is The Riveter’s co-founder and co-Editor in Chief. You can find her on Twitter at @kaylenralph.
