by Willie Nelson & Bobbie Nelson with David Ritz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2020
A shift in perspective makes a familiar story seem fresh all over again.
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Rolling Stone & Kirkus' Best Music Books of 2020
A brother-and-sister memoir celebrates more than eight decades of love, family, and music.
Willie and his older sister, Bobbie, are clearly grateful for each other, and readers will be almost as grateful that they decided to share their story together. Most of the details are already familiar for fans of Willie and country music in general, and some are legend. Far less is known about Bobbie, the keyboard player who says little onstage but who has long provided the backbone of Willie’s band, which he has dubbed the Family ever since she joined. The chapters attributed to “Brother” and “Sister” alternate, showing how their lives and destinies have intertwined, even during the extended stretches when they weren’t playing music together. Willie builds a strong case that Bobbie is the musical virtuoso in the family, that her range has allowed him to extend and expand his own, and that she was the “missing piece of my musical puzzle” that made him a beloved institution as a recording and touring artist rather than just a songwriter. Bobbie testifies to how Willie’s innate poetic sensibility and irrepressible likability were present from childhood and how his determination to follow his own instincts eventually paid dividends. Their split narrative covers their many marriages (four for Willie, three for Bobbie) as well as the challenges and heartbreak that Bobbie has faced, information that will be new to most readers. For example, she discusses how she lost custody of her children because of the belief that women shouldn’t be playing music where alcohol was sold; how she was abused by husbands and lovers; and how racism, sexism, and depression would have tragic consequences for her. She also shows how forgiveness, faith, and personal resilience carried her through. Early on, Willie calls her a “heroine,” and readers will agree with that assessment. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
A shift in perspective makes a familiar story seem fresh all over again.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984854-13-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
by Jennette McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2022
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
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New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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21
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Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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