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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Billie Holiday has always been one of my favourite Jazz singers of all time, I was introduced to her by an ex partner and have fallen in love with her ever since, owning her records. I never realised she had a memoir and it was the wonderful Dakota Warren on youtube who recommended the book and I went and bought it the same day. I don't normally read memoirs but loved this one as I was already aware of what happened to Billie Holiday, this novel also helped with my school work when looking at African American Rights, obviously with how her father dies and her song Strange Fruit which I had been my favourite for many years. I would highly recommend it to any Jazz fan, Billie Holiday fan or just someone who loves the era of the 1930s to the late 1940s.
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs
Moderate: Drug abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Forced institutionalization
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I feel rude saying it’s funny. The content wasn’t necessarily funny. I think her tone was mostly the funny part. The end was sad.
I like that you don’t know exactly what’s true and what’s not, but not because she is trying to hide things. I think she just tells what she thinks is interesting to her. You don’t get a traditional autobiography, but I like that.
I like that you don’t know exactly what’s true and what’s not, but not because she is trying to hide things. I think she just tells what she thinks is interesting to her. You don’t get a traditional autobiography, but I like that.
I received this in a Goodreads giveaway a few years ago and just got around to reading it. It was an interesting and fairly quick read.
emotional
informative
sad
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Child abuse, Death, Rape, Sexual harassment
dark
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced
dark
emotional
medium-paced
It reads like a 1940s hip cat talks, like a Raymond Chandler character, like I imagine Billie spoke.
It's harrowing start to finish. She is tossed about, a ship in a storm. She doesn't help herself at times, with her temper, but you could not blame her. Anyone would be angry.
The book is a mess, it laid forward and backwards, often sounding unreliable and possibly untrue. But no one would be any different, I only remember my version of what I have experienced. And that's without a lifetime of prejudice, poverty and addiction.
The opening lines are terribly sad, "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three.
Cue a litany of misadventure and being taken for a ride, addiction and anger. Then the book ends on what she must have imagined at the time was a hopeful note, "tired? You bet. But all that, I'll sub forget with my man..."
That man, Louis McKay was a mob enforcer who was stealing her money even as she wrote this.
Holiday died less than 3 years after the book.
It's all awful. And fascinating.
It's harrowing start to finish. She is tossed about, a ship in a storm. She doesn't help herself at times, with her temper, but you could not blame her. Anyone would be angry.
The book is a mess, it laid forward and backwards, often sounding unreliable and possibly untrue. But no one would be any different, I only remember my version of what I have experienced. And that's without a lifetime of prejudice, poverty and addiction.
Cue a litany of misadventure and being taken for a ride, addiction and anger. Then the book ends on what she must have imagined at the time was a hopeful note, "tired? You bet. But all that, I'll sub forget with my man..."
That man, Louis McKay was a mob enforcer who was stealing her money even as she wrote this.
Holiday died less than 3 years after the book.
It's all awful. And fascinating.