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Review 'Donna Kaz's book is more than a wildly entertaining snapshot of 80s art culture. More than an answer to the question of, 'Who were those crazy feminist activists behind the gorilla masks?' It is a generous, fearless, often hilarious coming of age tale that takes Kaz from being a victim of domestic abuse in Hollywood to becoming an artist and part of one of the most unforgettable art protest groups of our�time.' - Elissa Schappell, author of 'Use Me' and 'Blueprints for BuildingBetter Girls'� UN/MASKED is a memoir of a time, not so long ago, when feminism was aspirational. Young artists like Kaz identified as feminists to take the power to improve their own circumstances; an understanding of the broader, more insidious structures of female constraint and how those can be unconsciously accepted and played out, followed later. These young feminists, and would-be feminists, thought--dreamed--that if you just brought the problems to public attention through protest, media attention, shame, and inquiry, the circumstances would change.�If only.Kaz's optimism went along with being young and white and living in New York City. She describes the push-pull of wanting at the same time to overturn hierarchies of power and to be granted a seat at power's table. She admits not really knowing what she was doing in her chosen profession--there's a funny scene in the book in which she realizes that she shouldn't play every audition as if she were trying out for Medea--but at the same time she was simply pissed off that she was not getting the jobs she was convinced she deserved. Her life ran on volunteerism and chutzpah. She wasn't exactly locked out of the systems of privilege--her memoir is structured around the various awards, residencies, grants, midlevel jobs, and professional visibility she attained--but she wasn't one of the clear winners either. She wasted a lot of time waiting for 'real' producers and directors to affirm her skills. It was a precarious place to be, and one she looks back on with rueful maturity. -Debra Cash, Women's Review of Books, Sept/Oct 2017 Donna Kaz's�Un/Masked: Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl on Tour�chronicles the birth of a feminist. -Ms. Magazine�Through a narrative spanning�abuse, activism and her urgent struggle to solidify her place in theater, Kaz provides her readers with a dynamic storyline that keeps us turning the pages in search of empowerment--hers and ours.Applying humor, candor, and in some places, the form that playwrights use when constructing scenes and dialogue, we see how the artistic mind finds solace and empowerment while navigating the trenches of love and abuse.Kaz is in her early twenties when she meets Bill Hurt. Older than her, and much more experienced in the nuances of relationships, in Bill we encounter a narcissist entrenched in his own self-worth. For the next three years, Kaz becomes the target of his unfettered rage when he feels insecure with his acting or his work.Eventually, we're propelled forward twenty years--the late 90's--during which she becomes involved with the Guerrilla Girls, an activist group of feminists who wear gorilla masks and protest the male-dominated arena of the arts. Along with the gorilla masks, the women's anonymity is further established when they each assume the moniker of a dead artist in a poetic attempt to represent and give voice to artists, poets, musicians and writers the male industry of the arts renders invisible. Kaz assumes the name of Aphra Behn, the first English female known to have made her living as a writer during the 1600's.�Concealed behind the gorilla mask and Aphra Behn's name, Kaz finds a voice that refutes the secondary and silenced inferiority meant for female artists in an industry that produces plays, music, art and theater only created by men and only honoring men. The Guerrilla Girls spent their free time advocating for their rights to be artists, to produce their own work, to share with the world creative outlets that rest on female power and volition and to open doors for the next generation of female artists entering this very patriarchal and male-run platform of the arts.Being a Guerrilla Girl and advocating for other women inevitably guarantees Kaz the courage she needed to also express the abuse she suffered at the hands of her intimate partner twenty years earlier. She not only named the abuse, but she also, finally, named her abuser, which cut him off entirely from her life, allowing her to move on, fall in love and marry.�Most importantly, however, this articulation of abuse gives Donna Kaz permission to assert herself as a writer, a playwright and an actor. These identities that position her in the face of power, independence, and confidence over her work, evaded her while she lived with the secret of her abuse--for he was the actor, the artist, not her.� At the heart of this narrative, we find a woman who locates in her art and her feminism the authority to finally see herself as an artist.In her memoir, Kaz unmasks not only herself but also the way women are silenced in the arts and in intimate relationships that function to subordinate both women and their potential simultaneously. At a pivotal time when young women are finding their voice-as writers and artists as well as individuals-we see how abuse can counter this budding promise. It isn't until Kaz is in her forties that she does find her voice as an artist and as a woman, refusing to be silenced by an abusive man who believed that his career as an actor was more important than hers.In the end, Donna Kaz's memoir reinforces the need for more female artists to put their voices out there through their writing, singing, acting, creating, producing and composing, for it's our time to let the world know that our voices, our art, matters. No one has the right to silence us, and our art gives us the courage to take back our power. �- Marina DelvecchioBOOK REVIEW�- UN/MASKED:� Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour, by Donna Kaz (a/k/a Aphra�Behn)BY Sarah Downs -�Jan 10, 2017The Front Row Center -�thefrontrowcenter.com/2017/01/book-review-unmasked-memoirs-guerrilla-girl-tour/New York City, 1977.� Emerging from its lowest point, New York City is quiet.� Its streets are grubby, parks empty, subways operating on a wing and a prayer.� Enter Donna Kaz, aspiring actress, playwright in the making, future feminist activist.� Eager to join the world of theater, she embraces a busy schedule of classes, auditions and more classes, with the actress's classic day job -- waiting on tables.� Just as she is gaining some traction in her career, in walks a handsome stranger and out go her dreams.So begins Ms. Kaz's autobiography.� In a fresh, easy style she leads us on her journey of discovery, loss and redemption.� With humor and a distinct lack of self-pity, she retells the history of a life on the verge, a career derailed, and ultimately one of success.� She is no weak sister.� Alternating scenes from her recent life as a writer with the story of her early years and her time in Hollywood, Kaz evokes the past and present at once, meeting herself in the middle.� �We meet her as she is today - successful playwright and Guerrilla Girl, but also as she was as a na�ve young woman searching for her unique identity.� When she turns from her own career to follow her man to Hollywood, Kaz loses herself, overshadowed by her glamorous, imposing lover with his outsize ego and outsize capacity for violence.� She sacrifices her own career as she is drawn into a life of domestic abuse, with its revolving door of beatings and passionate rapprochements.� It is only after she 'escapes' the prison of this destructive love affair that she rediscovers her love of writing and so reclaims her life.Kaz returns to New York City where she rediscovers her talent for writing, becoming an award-winning playwright. A naturally outspoken woman (horror!), when she discovers� the Guerrilla Girls she finds a sweet spot.� These feminist crusaders protest against the sexism rife in the arts and theater, honoring the past by adopting the names of dead female artists as pseudonyms. Emboldened by the anonymity of the gorilla mask, they blanket the city with leaflets and stage various public events in an effort to heighten awareness of the paucity of opportunities for women artists, to unmask the unspoken presumption that works by and about women are by definition minor; uninteresting and unworthy.� It echoes the denigration of women everywhere, in a form of artistic 'abuse' imposed by a prevailing culture that wants to shut women down.� It's always a turf war.� Theater is mine; this woman is mine.� Adopting Aphra Behn*, as her 'nom de Guerrilla,' Kaz joins in the serious fun, creating 'Guerrilla Girls on Tour!' which uses theater and humor to highlight the disparity between opportunities for men and for women in the arts.Throughout this memoir, Kaz collapses the various layers of her life - thwarted actress, budding writer, latent activist, undiscovered feminist - to step out from behind the mask of her personal history.� She declares: I'm still here and I like it.� And I'm not going away.*� Aphra Behn, 17th century British playwright, poet, translator and author.JANUARY 2017 BITCH MEDIA CHAOS ISSUE �Winter 17 | issue no. 73UN/MASKED: MEMOIRS OF A GUERRILLA GIRL ON TOUR by Donna Kaz{Skyhorse Publishing}�As a freshman in college, I saw a performance of the Guerrilla Girls on campus.�I remember the charge in the air among women's studies undergrads sitting toe-to-toe�in the amphitheater as we listened to the impassioned language of these women--in�an effort to preserve anonymity, they all wore furry gorilla masks and used pseudonyms�drawn from female artists such as Eva Hesse, Frida Kahlo, and Hannah H�ch--�speaking on discrimination in the art world and their efforts to combat the lack of representation through direct action.�UN/MASKED: Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour brought me back to the excitement and sense of possibility created that night, all through writer Donna Kaz's vivid, unsparing recollections of her years (1995-2012) with the feminist activist and artist collective. Kaz applies in 1995 and learns the Guerrilla Girls are seeking 'new and energetic members... who can bounce the Girls into a future where when people talk about art they also talk about gender parity for playwrights.' As a playwright in New York City, Kaz had learned about the group when a friend shared a copy of the book Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls. After several enthusiastic re-readings, Kaz imagines a new direction for the group that has taken the art world by storm with their statistics on the absurdly low representation of women and people of color in the Museum of Modern Art: 'I�envision an attack on sexism in the theatre world....What a coup it would be to name�the theatres that do not produce women playwrights or plays by writers of color.�How cool to prove bus companies are more inclusive in their hiring practices thantheatres are.'But not all elements of Kaz's personal life intersected with her passionate feminist politics. During the early 1980s, she'd endured an abusive relationship with Bill Hurt, a charismatic actor who promised trips to Paris and instead delivered verbal blows. Her reflections on the dynamics of their emotionally volatile relationship are painful, but Kaz's�writing always brings her experiences back to the realm of feminist theory with probing�subtext on issues of sexual consent and the warning signs of abuse.�If you've ever been curious about group organizing, Kaz provides plenty of details�on the structure of meetings and how activists can discuss differences of identity�and perspective while still striving to meet collective goals. Un/Masked exposes in�thoughtful nuance what it's like to be an artist, a feminist, and a person recovering�from abuse--and where artists today can expand on the work of the activists who�came before. --Allison McCarthyAs an aspiring playwright and actress arriving in N.Y.C. with stars in her eyes, Donna Kaz immediately experienced the industry sexism keeping women's stories and meaningful roles off the stage. While working as a waitress, she met Bill Hurt, a successful stage and film actor. They began a seemingly fairytale romance, but it soon turned abusive. At this point, the memoir shifts to its real focus -Kaz's involvement with the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous, renegade feminist group that formed to protest sexism in the arts in 1985. The tale of Kaz's life as a feminist activist becomes interwoven with her tale of being in an abusive long-term relationship - her political enlightenment happens as she opens her eyes to the realities of her damaging home life. Her story is a compelling page-turner, packed with inspiring stories about the Guerrilla Girls' plans and protests. But it's also an inside look at a woman who allows herself to betrapped in a violent partnership. Kaz's journey to find herself, both as an artist and as a woman, is an inspiring and enthralling one that also gives necessary credit and attention to the Guerrilla Girls. �- Adrienne Urbanski, BUST Magazine, March/April 2017��� Read more From the Author 'A vivid memoir of an eager, energetic woman of the theatre confronting sexism in love and art. It's also a rare first-hand account of life inside the famed Guerrilla Girls, those gorilla-masked artists and performers who made feminist protest daring, original and fun.' - Katha Pollitt, The Nation Columnist, poet, essayist and author Read more See all Editorial Reviews

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