Reviews

Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall

kbuchanan's review against another edition

3.0

This book was beautifully done on every level, painting a vivid picture of a vanished world of Black joy in Detroit. Randall's show-biz portraits make this world come alive, and the whole work is suffused with a profound longing for this place and moment in time. Ziggy's "saints" run the gamut from larger-than-life to humble "breadwinners," but each miniature is crafted in lingering love. I appreciated the art of this novel on a deep level, but its structure was challenging for me. Without a discern-able through-line I often felt myself missing details in the fast, often very brief sections on each person. This, I acknowledge, is my own failing. Black Bottom Detroit is the true star of this work, and watching it unfurl from Ziggy's hospital bed is achingly wistful and nostalgic.

temickey's review against another edition

5.0

Special thanks to @amistadbooks for sending me a copy of this new book!

Black Bottom Saints was a great experience. Black folks been persevering and excelling no matter what for a LONG time. This book highlights a lot of the ancestors that you may have never heard of but did great things in their own right. It also highlights the Black Bottom (historic area in Detroit) and Idlewild (historic resort area in West Michigan).

Pick this up if you need a reminder of who came before you and what they went through so you’d have a better (not perfect) experience.

heyalisa's review against another edition

5.0

What a beautiful history.

amysbrittain's review against another edition

3.0

“...I’ve known women who could argue the paint off a wall and didn’t dream of law. I’ve seen girls who got raped, blamed themselves, not the man, then got talked into thinking sex was evil and they were dirty. And I have also seen women driving Cadillac cars wearing furs who have never voted.
That’s what I set out to change at the Ziggy Johnson School of the Theatre. Autonomy, ambition, renewal, pride, and creativity are the five basic positions we teach.”

Through the somewhat fictionalized voice of Ziggy, a real-life key player in the storied Detroit neighborhood of Black Bottom, Randall offers short sections about fifty-two mostly real-life characters who influenced the area over a period of decades. The structure and tributes are based on Catholic Saints Day books, and Randall is setting each scene with rich detail.

I appreciated the book's highlighting of various key players in Black Bottom life, and I adored the details Randall offered about place, dress, food, and everyday life during different eras.

I found this Ziggy take on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the brief summary of his own life's mission particularly interesting:

“King doesn’t preach as I would like to hear him on how we treat each other and ourselves. His mind is focused on how the ofays treat us. He works one side of the street; I work the other. King doesn’t let himself get tired. Me, I’m tired of thinking about how white folks treat us, and that is why all year I work to create performances for an all-Black world.”

But the pace of the book felt distractingly rambling to me. The book is structured as many sections of Ziggy's storytelling, so some of the meandering felt appropriate (if sometimes jarring). The book is made up of fifty-two relatively short chapters, which necessitates hustling along from story to story, but even within each section, it seemed like Ziggy the narrator was jumping from thought to thought in a way that left me feeling unmoored. The frequency of pithy remarks, zingers, and succinct rules of life added to the zigzagging, shifting tone.

The book also includes a recipe for a cocktail inspired by each person featured in Ziggy's account. That's fifty-two cocktails, if you're counting. And I can vouch for the bourbon-based Natchez Belle cocktail listed in the book; my amazing book club friend Sally made them for our last meeting, and they were great!

To see my full review on The Bossy Bookworm, or to find out about Bossy reviews and Greedy Reading Lists as soon as they're posted, please see Black Bottom Saints.

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chi_hoosier's review against another edition

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

One where I really struggled to finish. Not because it wasn't good, but because the audiobook narration really worked against everything Alice Randall achieved. The male narrator was great, but wow. The woman who was narrating her portion sounded like a broken Alexa. Mispronunciations and bad sentence phrasing on top of the robotic cadence. So unfortunate

smd's review against another edition

4.0

I devoured this book in less than 12 hours. I loved it! Different and beautiful.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free read in exchange for an honest review.

melanie_reads's review against another edition

4.0

What a lovely read unlike any book I’ve read of late. Alice Randall offers up a fictional autobiography of real-life Detroit celebrity Ziggy Johnson in the form of a Catholic-inspired saints book, complete with, get this, cocktails recipes.

This is the work of talent, imagination, and a true love for a lost or at least under-told history of Black Detroit. She had me Googling people left and right.

Bonus for those with short attention spans, this book is highly readable. You can read 5 or 10 minutes and get a good story about one of the saints, then pick it up later.

These are the stories that need to be told. I’ll definitely be checking out Randall’s backlist.

thoughtsfromapage's review against another edition

4.0

This literary gem pays homage to Detroit’s iconic neighborhood, Black Bottom, and the individuals who contributed to its prominence and reputation as a hub for fashion, jazz, sports and politics from the 1920s through the mid-20th century. At the end of his life, Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson, former gossip columnist and emcee at one of the area’s fabled night clubs, narrates this creative and stunning tale recounting the story of his life, the community, and the 52 “saints” that helped shape Black Bottom. From well-known names like Joe Louis to locals lost to history, Johnson relates the lives of these storied men and women while pairing a cocktail recipe that he feels evokes the character of each saint. With glittering prose and a unique voice, Randall highlights an important time period in this country’s history.

Listen to my author interviews here: https://www.thoughtsfromapage.com, and for more of my reviews, check out my Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/thoughtsfromapage/.

fredthemoose's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

melwisz's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5