Author: Iris Killens Cheeks
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1491720646
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 140
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Book Description
Many of us go through life feeling isolated and alone in a world full of family, friends, and gods. In I Sing the Blues and Cry, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse expresses through both poetry and prose the shared fear, confusion, anger, hope, and faith needed to accomplish joy in a world infused with pain. One out of every four little girls is sexually abused, and the majority of the abusers are family members or close friends of the family in America today. They are trapped in a cage of shame, guilt, and secrecy. Bodies grow, minds mature, yet there still remains a broken little girl within each victim. Author Iris Killens Cheeks shares conversations, verse, and vital resources to open a door into the thoughts, perceptions, and soul of a survivor of sexual, mental, and emotional abuse. This little girl found a way to survive, mature, and conquer many of the battles she faced due to traumatic experiences that no child should have to endure. Hers is a story that is poignant, revealing, and upliftinga story of light, acceptance, forgiveness, and growth. I Sing the Blues and Cry is an inspiring look beyond the surface into the eyes of a child, a woman, and a survivor.
Author: Iris Killens Cheeks
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 149172062X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 143
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Book Description
Many of us go through life feeling isolated and alone in a world full of family, friends, and gods. In I Sing the Blues and Cry, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse expresses through both poetry and prose the shared fear, confusion, anger, hope, and faith needed to accomplish joy in a world infused with pain. One out of every four little girls is sexually abused, and the majority of the abusers are family members or close friends of the family in America today. They are trapped in a cage of shame, guilt, and secrecy. Bodies grow, minds mature, yet there still remains a broken little girl within each victim. Author Iris Killens Cheeks shares conversations, verse, and vital resources to open a door into the thoughts, perceptions, and soul of a survivor of sexual, mental, and emotional abuse. This little girl found a way to survive, mature, and conquer many of the battles she faced due to traumatic experiences that no child should have to endure. Hers is a story that is poignant, revealing, and uplifting--a story of light, acceptance, forgiveness, and growth. I Sing the Blues and Cry is an inspiring look beyond the surface into the eyes of a child, a woman, and a survivor.
Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
A novel about Black life.
Author: Billie Holiday
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767923863
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Perfect for fans of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, this is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred memoir of the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation—a fiftieth-anniversary edition updated with stunning new photos, a revised discography, and an insightful foreword by music writer David Ritz Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Billie Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith albums), to her emergence on Harlem’s club scene, to sold-out performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with Artie Shaw and his band, this revelatory memoir is notable for its trenchant observations on the racism that darkened Billie’s life and the heroin addiction that ended it too soon. We are with her during the mesmerizing debut of “Strange Fruit”; with her as she rubs shoulders with the biggest movie stars and musicians of the day (Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and more); and with her through the scrapes with Jim Crow, spats with Sarah Vaughan, ignominious jailings, and tragic decline. All of this is told in Holiday’s tart, streetwise style and hip patois that makes it read as if it were written yesterday.
Author: Patricia G. Lespinasse
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496836049
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 97
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Book Description
In 1957, Duke Ellington released the influential album A Drum Is a Woman. This musical allegory revealed the implicit truth about the role of women in jazz discourse—jilted by the musician and replaced by the drum. Further, the album’s cover displays an image of a woman sitting atop a drum, depicting the way in which the drum literally obscures the female body, turning the subject into an object. This objectification of women leads to a critical reading of the role of women in jazz music: If the drum can take the place of a woman, then a woman can also take the place of a drum. The Drum Is a Wild Woman: Jazz and Gender in African Diaspora Literature challenges that image but also defines a counter-tradition within women’s writing that involves the reinvention and reclamation of a modern jazz discourse. Despite their alienation from bebop, women have found jazz music empowering and have demonstrated this power in various ways. The Drum Is a Wild Woman explores the complex relationship between women and jazz music in recent African diasporic literature. The book examines how women writers from the African diaspora have challenged and revised major tropes and concerns of jazz literature since the bebop era in the mid-1940s. Black women writers create dissonant sounds that broaden our understanding of jazz literature. By underscoring the extent to which gender is already embedded in jazz discourse, author Patricia G. Lespinasse responds to and corrects narratives that tell the story of jazz through a male-centered lens. She concentrates on how the Wild Woman, the female vocalist in classic blues, used blues and jazz to push the boundaries of Black womanhood outside of the confines of respectability. In texts that refer to jazz in form or content, the Wild Woman constitutes a figure of resistance who uses language, image, and improvisation to refashion herself from object to subject. This book breaks new ground by comparing the politics of resistance alongside moments of improvisation by examining recurring literary motifs—cry-and-response, the Wild Woman, and the jazz moment—in jazz novels, short stories, and poetry, comparing works by Ann Petry, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Edwidge Danticat, and Maya Angelou with pieces by Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Ellington. Within an interdisciplinary and transnational context, Lespinasse foregrounds the vexed negotiations around gender and jazz discourse.
Author: Jerome Irving Rodale
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN: 9780878572366
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1376
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Book Description
Contains more than one million alphabetically-arranged synonyms grouped in related clusters.
Author: Bobby Rush
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0306874792
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
Experience music history with this memoir by one of the last of the genuine old school Blues and R&B legends, the Grammy-winning dynamic showman Bobby Rush. This memoir charts the extraordinary rise to fame of living blues legend, Bobby Rush. Born Emmett Ellis, Jr. in Homer, Louisiana, he adopted the stage name Bobby Rush out of respect for his father, a pastor. As a teenager, Rush acquired his first real guitar and started playing in juke joints in Little Rock, Arkansas, donning a fake mustache to trick club owners into thinking he was old enough to gain entry. He led his first band in Arkansas between Little Rock and Pine Bluff in the 1950s. It was there he first had Elmore James play in his band. Rush later relocated to Chicago to pursue his musical career and started to work with Earl Hooker, Luther Allison, and Freddie King, and sat in with many of his musical heroes, such as Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Little Walter. Rush eventually began leading his own band in the 1960s, crafting his own distinct style of funky blues, and recording a succession of singles for various labels. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Rush finally scored a hit with "Chicken Heads." More recordings followed, including an album which went on to be listed in the Top 10 blues albums of the 1970s by Rolling Stone and a handful of regional jukebox favorites including "Sue" and "I Ain't Studdin' Ya." And Rush's career shows no signs of slowing down now. The man once beloved for performing in local jukejoints is now headlining major music/blues festivals, clubs, and theaters across the U.S. and as far as Japan and Australia. At age eighty-six, he is still on the road for over 200 days a year. His lifelong hectic tour schedule has earned him the affectionate title "King of the Chitlin' Circuit," from Rolling Stone. In 2007, he earned the distinction of being the first blues artist to play at the Great Wall of China. His renowned stage act features his famed shake dancers, who personify his funky blues and his ribald sense of humor. He was featured in Martin Scorcese's The Blues docuseries on PBS, a documentary film called Take Me to the River, performed with Dan Aykroyd on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and most recently had a cameo in the Golden Globe nominated Netflix film, Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy. He was recently given the highest Blues Music Award honor of B.B. King Entertainer of the Year. His songs have also been featured in TV shows and films including HBO's Ballers and major motion pictures like Black Snake Moan, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Considered by many to be the greatest bluesman currently performing, this book will give readers unparalleled access into the man, the myth, the legend: Bobby Rush.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 157
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Book Description
In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.
Author: James M. Wilce
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781444306255
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Building on ethnographic fieldwork and extensive historical evidence, Crying Shame analyzes lament across thousands of years and nearly every continent. Explores the enduring power of lament: expressing grief through crying songs, often in a collective ritual context Draws on the author’s extensive ethnographic fieldwork, and unique long-term engagement and participation in the phenomenon Offers a startling new perspective on the nature of modernity and postmodernity An important addition to growing literature on cultural globalization
Author: Mark Bego
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510745084
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 595
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Book Description
A frank examination of Aretha Franklin, Mark Bego's definitive biography traces her career accomplishments from her beginnings as a twelve-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, to recording her first album at the age of fourteen and signing a major recording contract at eighteen, right up through untimely passing in 2018. Originally positioned to become a gospel star in her father's Detroit church, Aretha had a privileged urban upbringing; ;stars such as Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, and Sam Cooke regularly visited her father, Rev. C. L. Franklin. It wasn't long before she was creating a string of hits, from "Respect" to "Freeway of Love"; and becoming one of the most beloved singers of the twentieth century. This New York Times bestselling author's detailed research includes in-person interviews with record producers Jerry Wexler, Clyde Otis, and Clive Davis, Aretha's first husband, several of her singing star contemporaries, and a rare one-on-one session with Aretha herself. Every album, every accolade, and every heart-breaking personal drama is examined with clarity and neutrality, allowing Franklin's colorful story to unfold on its own. With two teenage pregnancies and an abusive first marriage, drinking problems, battles with her weight, the murder of her father, and tabloid wars, Aretha's life was a roller coaster. This freshly updated and expanded biography will give readers a clear understanding of what made Aretha Franklin the "Queen of Soul."
