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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
