A wide-ranging reassessment of Holiday’s work, best suited for Lady Day admirers.
An erudite fan attempts to reconstruct the life of singer Billie Holiday in a more positive light, by deconstructing her previous biographies.
Lady Day, who died more than 30 years ago, remains a romantic, tragic icon to jazz buffs. A Holiday devotee since childhood, Griffin (Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends, 1999) offers an analysis that seeks to revise the singer’s image as victimized drug addict. Against the critics who contend that it was merely natural-born talent that led to Holiday’s success, Griffin argues that she was a disciplined, insightful musician who worked hard at her art. Holiday’s hapless public image has been shaped largely by her drug arrests and her autobiography (Lady Sings the Blues, later made into a film starring Diana Ross). Although Holiday collaborated in creating that myth, Griffin calls her “too complex to be contained by the tragic victim narrative.” Instead, she is depicted here as a worthy foremother for black women, compelling not only for her “musical genius” but also for her public dignity, courage, and determination. Moreover, she did not represent “maid, mammy or mother,” as black women usually did in the 1940s and ’50s. The author revisits familiar as well as more obscure biographies, magazine articles, documentaries, and recordings for evidence to shore up her arguments. She covers Holiday’s European experiences and reviews her appeal to both poets (the book title is taken from a poem by Rita Dove) and marketers of upscale products. A lengthy chapter is also devoted to actress/singer/poet Abbey Lincoln, seen admiringly as one of Holiday’s beneficiaries (as were Peggy Lee, Lena Horne, and such contemporary performers as Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige). Classic photographs of Holiday—including the memorable Lady with the gardenia portrait—lead each chapter. There are also extensive endnotes, plus a list of recommended reading and listening.
A wide-ranging reassessment of Holiday’s work, best suited for Lady Day admirers.Pub Date: May 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-86808-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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