I'M GONNA MAKE YOU LOVE ME: The Story of Diana Ross

Is Diana Ross all packaging? That's what critics have said of her act, and Haskins' uncritical but not gushy biography may inadvertently confirm the suspicion. With a little time off to return to charm school for further polishing, Ross spent the militant Sixties under Motown's Berry Gordy's total direction, working hard on success as lead Supreme. In the early Seventies she married and had three unplanned children in rapid succession, but finally gave up the marriage and her sporadic attempts to stay home with the kids. She threw a temper tantrum over the tacky clothes she had to wear in Lady Sings the Blues, insisted on designing her own for Mahogany, which was less favorably received, and had to sit home pregnant through the premiere of Lady. . . , thus missing ""the biggest moment of her life."" Now in her thirties, Diana Ross is attempting to project a more natural image, but seems largely reduced to looking back with understandable pride on her early and rapid rise from the Detroit projects. That dream of course still lives; and where Diana Ross still embodies it, Haskins' biography will satisfy at a level a few steps up from fan fodder.