Donna Gaines
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Donna Gaines is a sociologist, journalist, and social worker. A prolific writer and acclaimed scholar, she is best known for her work on youth suicide, and popular culture. A music writer for Rolling Stone, MS, the Village Voice, Spin, Newsday and Salon, Gaines is also acknowledged as a high-powered academic, an international expert on youth suicide and culture. According to her website bio, [1], Gaines taught sociology Barnard College of Columbia University and also at the Graduate Faculty of New School University, in New York City. Her first book, Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids (1991) is widely considered a classic in sociology, described as a "landmark empathetic look at adolescent anomie." Gaines' second book, A Misfit’s Manifesto: The Sociological Memoir of a Rock & Roll Heart, published by Rutgers University Press in 2007 has been described as "an exploration of relationships between identity formation, popular culture, addiction, and spirituality,” hailed by scholars as "a new way to do sociology.”
Gaines grew up in Rockaway Beach, Queens during the 1960’s, the only child of band vocalist Betty Bradley. Gaines had three fathers, and has described her childhood as depressed, lonely and alienated. Fat, and addicted to diet pills at age seven, Gaines found refuge in do wop music and later, classic rock, metal, punk and hardcore music. Labeled a truant and an “underachiever” Gaines began drinking alcohol at fourteen, hung out with local street gangs, sniffed glue, got arrested, and eventually discovered sociology at a community college. Gaines earned a doctorate in sociology in 1990 at State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied with eminent social theorist Lewis Coser, who became her mentor and dissertation advisor. Throughout her scholarly career, Gaines remained a New York punk scene habitué, living a double life after-hours as Tessa CorpseGrinder. In 1984, with purple hair, silver amulets and sporting a black leather motorcycle jacket, Gaines founded the American Sociological Association’s Section on Culture. A close friend of Joey Ramone, Gaines became a music writer in 1987 after meeting journalist Ellen Willis—who Gaines also considered a mentor.
Deeply committed to youth subculture as form of redemption and community, in 2005, working with celebrities, musicians, community activists and fans, Gaines spearheaded the fight to save NYC’s punk Mecca CBGB’s. A self-described “workaholic-alcoholic,” Gaines got sober in 1997 and embraced a faith-based life she calls “Buddheo-Christian.” Nurturing a lifelong interest in metaphysics and the sociology of religion, Gaines also works as an intuitive arts healer, a Usui Reiki Master Healer/Teacher, with addicts, women and young people.
