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Poppin’, rockin’ reads for the music lovers in your life

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STARRED REVIEW

December 9, 2023

Poppin’, rockin’ reads for the music lovers in your life

Get cozy with Bob Dylan, Thurston Moore, Madonna and George Harrison in biographies that reveal the men and women behind the music.

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Book jacket image for Sonic Life by Thurston Moore
Memoir

Sonic Life

Thurston Moore’s long-awaited memoir offers a prismatic view on the sonic democracy that was Sonic Youth.

Read More »
Book jacket image for Madonna by
Biography

Madonna

Mary Gabriel’s vivid, memorable biography of Madonna takes a fresh look at a true icon of our time.

Read More »
Book jacket image for George Harrison by Philip Norman
Biography

George Harrison

Philip Norman’s new biography George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle only adds to the case that George was lowkey the best Beatle.

Read More »

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Get cozy with Bob Dylan, Thurston Moore, Madonna and George Harrison in biographies that reveal the men and women behind the music.
NonfictionMusic

Listen

Review by Priscilla Kipp

The word “listen” can function both as a noun —“Give a listen”—and as a verb: “Are you listening?” In Michel Faber’s first work of nonfiction, Listen: On Music, Sound and Us, he gives both uses a workout. Known for category-resistant fiction like 2002’s The Crimson Petal and the White and 2014’s The Book of Strange New Things, Faber promises that this book, which was decades in the making and exhaustively examines genres, their artists and their respective audiences, “will change the way you listen.” True enough. In doing so, it also broadens the act of listening in directions that are surprising, sometimes unsettling and ultimately endearing.

Faber has his opinions, and he doesn’t hold back. He thinks composing and playing classical music is often more a test of musical skill than true creative work. Rock is still too Anglocentric, its audiences unreceptive to listening to songs sung in languages other than English; the loss is ours, he notes. Today’s multimedia-infused performances are a “synergy of illusions.” He weighs in on the vinyl versus digital debate and the practice of lip-syncing. His thoughts on The Beatles and their albums are included, along with those on David Bowie, The Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones. It would be easier to point out his omissions than the many artists he includes, but let’s give it a try: He opines about Beyoncé, Beethoven, Madonna, Aretha Franklin, Britney Spears, Whitney Houston and Marvin Gaye, among others. It’s a sprawling survey that sometimes feels unwieldy, but Faber covers miles of ground with knowledgeable panache.

Music needs audiences, and Faber spotlights joyful children first introduced to rhythm and the elderly keeping their memories alive in the tunes embedded in their minds. Music is known for its healing properties as well, and Faber gives special attention to and heartfelt praise for caregivers who use it to benefit people with Parkinson’s disease, dementia and other conditions.

Exploring the act of listening through the prisms of history, culture and his own troubled childhood, Faber—who has chronic tinnitus—dances through chapters titled “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “Let’s Hear It One More Time for Ludwig!” In “The Tracks of My Tears,” he arrives at what it is about music that makes some people cry. With that, he brings his listeners to common ground where music thrives: our humanity.

In his compelling nonfiction debut, award-winning novelist Michel Faber vows to change the way you listen to music.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

At the height of their fame, Sly and the Family Stone carried audiences higher and higher with electrifying funk-rock performances. In Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), Sly Stone invites readers to join him on a rollicking ride and regales them with the ups and downs of his own rock and roll life.

Born Sylvester Stewart in 1943 Denton, Texas, Stone grew up surrounded by music, soaking in the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, The Soul Stirrers and The Swan Silvertones. Not long after he was born, his family moved to Vallejo, California, where he started singing solos in church when he was 5. Always with an instrument in his hand, Stone put together a singing group called The Viscaynes that eventually gained enough popularity on a local TV show to be offered a record deal. Stone learned his first lesson in the music business when he discovered that the rights to the song he’s written for the group are kept by the label head. After high school, Stone became a DJ at KSOL, and then started producing songs for a number of artists, including Grace Slick and the Great Society and Billy Preston. 

But more than anything else, Stone wanted a band. After a few years, Sly and the Family Stone was born. “The band had a concept—white and black together, male and female both, women not just singing but playing instruments.” After “Dance to the Music” rocketed to the top of the charts in 1968, Sly and the Family Stone released one album after another, riding high with their music and live performances until the mid-1970s. During this time, The Roots drummer and frontman (and author, filmmaker, actor and record producer) Questlove writes in the book’s foreword, Sly was “cooler than anything around him by a factor of infinity.” (Thank You is also the inaugural title of Questlove’s new imprint, AUWA.) 

As quickly as the band ascended into the rock stratosphere, it descended into a stasis marked by drug addiction and internal disharmony. By 1975, the Family Stone was over. Despite Stone’s personal struggles holding him back from attaining the level of stardom he had reached with the Family Stone, he nevertheless continued to have one goal: He wanted his music to “elevate whoever heard it.” Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) takes fans on the tour of Stone’s life they’ve been waiting for.

The long-awaited memoir from the frontman of Sly and the Family Stone is a rollicking ride about a rock life well lived.
NonfictionMusicArts & Culture

Goth: A History

Review by Catherine Hollis

Following on the success of his 2017 memoir, Cured, Lol Tolhurst returns with what he calls a “memoir of a subculture.” Goth: A History is Tolhurst’s compendious exploration of the music, art, literature and fashion that made up the dark side of post-punk. The Cure—which he co-founded as drummer with Robert Smith and Michael Dempsey—is often seen as one of the instigators of the movement, alongside bands like Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division. Richly illustrated with flyers and photos from Tolhurst’s private collection, Goth is a coffee table book for the discriminating vampire.

Goth was always more than black eyeliner and black clothes; in Tolhurst’s reading, it reflects the bleak social and political context of Margaret Thatcher’s England. As a philosophy, it suggests a melancholic point of view and a willingness to contemplate obsessive love, madness and death. In Goth, Tolhurst catalogs the poets and artists whose work appeals to those who also love goth music. Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar was a massive influence on Tolhurst, as were the poets T.S. Eliot and Anne Sexton. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is obviously goth, as are the death- and madness-drenched poems of Charles Baudelaire. David Bowie, Alice Cooper and Marc Bolan of T. Rex each have goth elements and were also early influences on Tolhurst.

Inevitably, a good part of this book focuses on Tolhurst’s time with The Cure as the drummer and later keyboardist. (He left the band in 1989). He dwells on The Cure’s three early albums, culminating in the magisterial fourth, “Pornography,” as exemplary goth music. But he is also generous in his assessment of other bands, tracing the continuation of goth music from the post-punk era in England to the Los Angeles goth scene and beyond. Structured as mini essays, Goth can feel disjointed, and Tolhurst at times is repetitive. But fans will find themselves immersed. It’s a beautiful book, full of concert photos, portraits and band flyers. Tolhurst is a passionate storyteller and an elder goth statesman worth listening to.

The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst explores the influences and impact of goth music and culture in an immersive new coffee table book.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

World Within a Song

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

Jeff Tweedy’s 2020 book, How to Write One Song, offered a practical guide to songwriting—a map of creative processes, daily habits and attitudes that have long sustained the Wilco frontman. It’s only fitting that Tweedy, one of contemporary rock’s most prominent figures, now turns his attention to what happens when he encounters the work of other songwriters and performers. In World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music, Tweedy shares an eclectic and admittedly idiosyncratic catalog of 50 popular tunes that reflect “how songs absorb and enhance our own experiences and store our memories.”

Although icons like Bob Dylan (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”), Mavis Staples (“I’ll Take You There”) and the Beatles (take your pick) are on the list, Tweedy grants an equally prominent place to a song by a “weird little band” called Souled American, and to one by the late Diane Izzo that doesn’t exist in recorded form. In that sense, World Within a Song isn’t a playlist of greatest hits, or even ones Tweedy considers mandatory listening. As a mildly misfit kid growing up in 1970s Belleville, Illinois, Tweedy knew at an early age he was destined for a music career. He discovered artists like Patti Smith, The Clash and The Replacements, whose songs helped him understand that, while he might have been lonely, he wasn’t ever alone.

Interspersed with Tweedy’s musical picks are bits of memoir he calls “rememories,” mini essays he considers “dreamlike passages recounting specific events in my life.” Some touch on aspects of his musical career, among them a hostile encounter with Timothy B. Schmit, the longtime Eagles vocalist. Most interesting are the deeply personal ones, like his reflections on his close relationship with his late mother. 

Tweedy is a smart, witty and empathetic writer. His unabashed joy in introducing readers to the music that delights him is infectious and will unleash a flood of associations and memories for anyone who shares that passion. More than anything, he wants people to realize that music is as much about how we relate to it as it is about the music itself, and “how much we all can bring to a song as listeners.” World Within a Song will expand your musical horizons and radically increase your enjoyment the next time you tune in.

In World Within a Song, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy introduces readers to the music he loves with unabashed joy.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

Bang Bang Crash

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

In what ways is writing like drumming? Like a drummer, the writer lays down a pattern of rhythm that keeps the plot of a story moving, propelling it with a steady beat through various twists and turns. Novelist Nic Brown’s peripatetic memoir, Bang Bang Crash, examines his past life as a drummer and the ways it both haunts and informs his current life as a writer.

When he was 8, Brown took drum lessons from a local jazz musician, and by the time Brown was in high school, he was playing in a few bands around the Greensboro, North Carolina, area. Although he was accepted at Princeton and Columbia, he deferred enrollment to keep gigging with his band, Athenaeum. They landed a record deal when Brown was 19 and even had a hit song. Brown spent much of 1996 touring the country, fulfilling all he’d ever wanted for his life—but by the end of the ’90s, he was losing his enthusiasm for music, and other dreams were starting to glitter on the horizon. One day, Brown picked up his acceptance letter from Columbia again and discovered he was still enrolled, even after his deferral over a year earlier. So he dropped his sticks, picked up his pen and left behind rock to start writing fiction, eventually landing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

After all these changes, Brown realized that writing offered a kind of artistic fulfillment that playing music had lacked. “As a drummer, I’d been yoked to the projects of others for so many years,” he writes, “that now, as a writer, I [was suddenly] so intoxicated by the opportunity to have an artistic project be all my own.” Even so, those old percussive impulses remain deep in his heart and soul. “I never play the drums anymore, but they never cease playing me,” he writes. “Rhythms and songs and patterns are dancing constantly through my mind, twirling in and around the beat of the windshield wipers, the thud of my footsteps, the click of my grocery cart as I wheel it away.”

Bang Bang Crash doesn’t always keep a steady beat, and sometimes it hits more rim than skin. Nevertheless, it offers a stylish portrait of a life in search of a deeper rhythm.

Novelist Nic Brown’s stylish memoir examines his past life as a drummer and the ways it both haunts and informs his current life as a writer.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

Arrangements in Blue

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

“When I love a song, there is almost always a moment that sounds like how I imagine truth to sound,” writes poet Amy Key in Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone. “It’s the moment in the song that touches the bruise you didn’t know you had, the aching, denied part of you. You are found out by it.”

Every track of Joni Mitchell’s Blue uncovers a bruise for Key. The 1971 album has been dear to her for three decades, since she borrowed the cassette tape from her older sister when she was 14. From the moment Mitchell sang, “I am on a lonely road and I am travelling, travelling, travelling, travelling, looking for something, what can it be?” Key experienced a sense of longing. At first it was a longing to consume every note of the album. But as she’s moved through the decades of her life, Key has come to associate Blue with her desire for romantic love. She yearns for a partner, but she also yearns for a sense of self that isn’t defined by her singleness.

In Arrangements in Blue, Key uses Mitchell’s seminal work as a magnifying glass for her emotions and experiences as a single woman. These 10 essays parallel the tracks of Blue, but intimacy with the album isn’t required to understand and appreciate Key’s insights. She recounts solo meals and solo travels, and reflects on how people have looked at her during those moments. She confesses all the ways she’s held out her heart and body to men who were happy to receive but unwilling to open themselves in return. By embracing a vulnerability that matches Mitchell’s, Key reveals the full spectrum of human feeling with words honed as carefully as poetry.

Key offers analysis of Mitchell’s work throughout, but Arrangements in Blue isn’t exactly about Blue. It’s a window into the way one woman has moved through a world that’s quick to define women by their relationships. It’s also an ode to the ways music can give voice to our emotions, sometimes shape-shifting over years to remain as relevant as the first time we hit play.

In Arrangements in Blue, Amy Key uses Joni Mitchell’s seminal work as a magnifying glass for her emotions and experiences as a single woman.
NonfictionSocial SciencePop CultureMusicMemoirEssays

4 fascinating books about pop culture to read with your book club

Feature by Julie Hale

Lynn Melnick’s I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton is an extraordinary homage to one of country music’s leading ladies. Melnick’s early life was marked by abuse and trauma, and she fell in love with Parton’s music at age 14. Mixing her personal history with reflections on the singer’s significance as a cultural figure, Melnick creates a moving narrative of female endurance. Parton’s popular tunes, including “Jolene” and “Islands in the Stream,” serve as springboards for the chapters of this inspiring book.

In Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, Anna Bogutskaya explores how our perception of what makes a “likable” woman has changed as more complex female characters have become prevalent in media. Bogutskaya uses tropes such as “the mean girl” and “the shrew” as reference points and celebrates how those misogynist terms have been, in some cases, reclaimed. Bogutskaya’s analysis of gender, sexuality and the power of the media will get book clubs talking as she explores famous figures such as Cardi B and Hillary Clinton.

Emily Nussbaum delivers a shrewd overview of the modern TV landscape with her dazzling collection of essays, I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution. Over the course of the collection, Nussbaum—an unabashed fan of the tube—provides engaging analyses of audience viewing habits and storytelling trends and traditions. She also interviews showrunners and considers the significance of watershed series like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Nussbaum’s lively writing style and gifts as a critic are on full display in this eye-opening collection.

Nerd: Adventures in Fandom From This Universe to the Multiverse, Maya Phillips’ smart, incisive essay collection, investigates the growth of nerd culture and its influence on modern media. Reading groups will appreciate Phillips’ personal yet wide-reaching critiques of cultural touchstones such as Harry Potter, Star Wars and Marvel comics and how they inspire feelings of belonging among fans. Phillips also delves into the complications of her own experiences as a Black woman engaging in fandoms without many Black characters. The evolution of pop culture, hero worship and the impact of fan bases are but a few of the rich themes in this intriguing book.

These great picks come with ready-made playlists and watchlists!
NonfictionTrue CrimeTravelNatureMusicMemoirHistoryEnvironmentBlack HistoryBiographyAmerican History

Fall 2023 preview: Most anticipated nonfiction

Feature by the editors of BookPage

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

Simon & Schuster | October 3

Throughout poet Safiya Sinclair’s childhood in Jamaica, her father was a strict Rastafarian who imposed harsh constraints on his daughters’ lives and appearances. As Sinclair read the books her mother gave her and began to find her voice as a poet, she likewise found her voice as a daughter struggling to get out from underneath her father’s thumb. In her debut memoir, Sinclair reckons with colonialism, patriarchy and obedience in expressive, melodic prose.

A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Riverhead | September 12

The celebrated novelist and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer turns to memoir for the first time in A Man of Two Faces. Viet Thanh Nguyen left Vietnam at age 4 and came to the U.S. as a refugee, but even after escaping danger in their home country, his family was separated, targeted and harmed in America. This book recounts the events of Nguyen’s life, of course, but it becomes much more than a straightforward memoir as Nguyen conjures stirring insights into memory, migration and identity.

The Sisterhood by Liza Mundy

Crown | October 17

The author of the 2017 bestseller Code Girls returns with The Sisterhood, a history of the women who have played key roles in the CIA since World War II. As spies, archivists, analysts and operatives, women have been underestimated and overlooked through the years. Liza Mundy now spins a gripping tale of how those women used those slights to their advantage as they captured state secrets and spotted threats that the men working alongside them had missed.

Being Henry by Henry Winkler

Celadon | October 31

Famously kindhearted actor Henry Winkler opens up about his life and work in Being Henry. From overcoming a difficult childhood and getting typecast as the Fonz early in his career to finding his second wind decades later in shows such as “Arrested Development” and “Barry,” Winkler peers beneath the sparkling veneer of Hollywood to tell the tender personal story behind his lifelong fame.

My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

Viking | November 7

If there is one book that truly captures the spirit of “most anticipated,” it has to be screen and stage legend Barbra Streisand’s memoir. Fans have been looking forward to reading the full saga of Streisand’s life and unparalleled career for years—and this fall, they will finally get the chance. At 1,024 pages long, this book is unlikely to skip over any of the juicy details.

To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul by Tracy K. Smith

Knopf | November 7

Tracy K. Smith digs into historical archives to craft a new terminology for American life in this centuries-spanning portrait. Using the personal, documentary and spiritual, Smith considers the memory and possibilities of race, family and intimacy throughout history and into the future. By the end of this meditation, readers will have a new vocabulary and insight into the powers of their own soul.

Gator Country by Rebecca Renner

Flatiron | November 14

Gonzo journalism meets nature documentary in this fast-paced Floridian crime story. Officer Jeff Babauta goes undercover into the world of gator poaching in an attempt to bring down the intricate crime ring. As he becomes embedded in the network, meeting a zany, desperate cast of characters, Babauta’s sense of justice is challenged and he soon has to choose between sacrificing his new community and the safety of the natural world. 

The Lost Tomb by Douglas Preston

Grand Central | December 5

True crime meets a crash course in archaeological history in this extravaganza of a book. When he isn’t co-writing bestselling thrillers featuring FBI Agent Pendergast, Douglas Preston has been traveling the world, visiting some of history’s most storied and remote locations. From the largest tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings to a mass grave left by an asteroid impact, Preston will take readers on a fun, insightful journey into history.

Discover all of BookPage’s most anticipated books of fall 2023.

From CIA spies to Barbra Streisand, alligator tales and more, there’s something for everyone in fall’s most anticipated nonfiction releases.
NonfictionPop CultureMusicMemoir

The Sporty One

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

Nothing could have prepared Melanie Jayne Chisholm—aka Sporty Spice—for the loneliness, isolation and debilitating episodes of imposter syndrome that accompanied the extreme highs (and lows) of fame. In The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl, the singer, songwriter and tracksuit-wearing Brit carefully unpacks her nonlinear journey toward self-acceptance while pinned under the glare of the spotlight.

The Spice Girls were a pop culture supernova at the turn of the new millennium. Contrary to the narrative wrought by the misogynistic media, the group was not the brainchild of industry executives. After answering a magazine advertisement, Victoria Adams (Posh), Geri Halliwell (Ginger), Melanie Brown (Scary), Michelle Stephenson and Chisholm came together to form the band Touch. When Stephenson proved to be a weak link, Emma Bunton (Baby) was recruited. It would take a pivotal name change and the reclamation of creative autonomy from their early male managers, but the Spice Girls would go on to smash records and, even more importantly, disrupt the cultural and musical landscape.

6 more celebrity memoirs that capture the grisly details of glitz, glamour and fame

This type of rise at a young age leaves a few scars, and Chisholm isn’t afraid to recount her personal battles. The pressures of being a ubiquitous pop star coupled with her innate perfectionism brought on depression and severe anxiety. At one point after the Spice Girls had gone on hiatus and Chisholm had embarked on a successful solo career, she was nearly agoraphobic and plagued by incessant panic attacks. And despite her public image of health and fitness, the singer was secretly contending with disordered eating, which eventually led to anorexia and binge eating disorders. In 2009, Chisholm gave birth to her daughter, Scarlet. Motherhood wasn’t a cure-all for her mental health issues, but this new caregiver role allowed her to appreciate the extraordinary power of her body and all she has put it through.

Chisholm’s narrative voice is warm, funny and unabashedly real. Fans will feel as though they’ve been invited to an enlightening soul session with a close friend. Hard truths about patriarchal oppression and the fickle nature of celebrity are examined with sympathy and understanding. The Sporty One is more than the memoir of a pop star; it’s an emotional revelation.

Melanie Chisholm, aka Sporty Spice, unpacks her nonlinear journey toward self-acceptance while pinned under the glare of the spotlight.
NonfictionScienceMusic

This Is What It Sounds Like

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Listening to music is a uniquely personal experience. It can evoke strong feelings and memories. It can unite us or be a source of debate. In This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, Susan Rogers (cognitive neuroscientist and Berklee College of Music professor) and Ogi Ogas (mathematical neuroscientist and co-author of Journey of the Mind) explain why we connect with certain aspects of a record. As a producer for artists as distinct as Prince and Barenaked Ladies, Rogers calls on decades of expertise regarding the musical preferences of herself and others. This real-world experience is intertwined with both authors’ scientific explanations of how the mind processes music. It’s like two books in one: stories of some of our most beloved musicians, singers and songwriters, coupled with insights about how and why our brains decipher musical notes, melodies and lyrics in particular ways.

Rogers refers time and again to an activity called a “record pull,” a music-sharing experience where friends discover things about one another by listening to their favorite records together. “Good record pulls feature as much storytelling as music,” she writes. Each chapter features a record pull suggestion to help us understand how we connect with music. It’s a fun, informative exercise that will undoubtedly open many readers’ minds and increase their musical knowledge.

In a tone that is both logical and approachable, the two authors explain that because each brain is wired to experience rewards from different facets of music, “it is misguided to suggest that anyone’s taste in music is superior to anyone else’s.” After reading This Is What It Sounds Like, lovers of all music genres will never listen to their favorite records the same way again.

This Is What It Sounds Like is like two books in one: stories of some of our most beloved musicians coupled with insights about how our brains decipher music.
NonfictionMusicHistory

Well of Souls

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

In the popular imagination, the banjo is an instrument played by white bluegrass or old-time musicians plucking out traditional Appalachian ballads on their front porches. Many folks associate banjo music with the theme from the “Beverly Hillbillies,” played by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, or Eric Weissberg’s “Dueling Banjos” from the movie Deliverance. However, in 2016, Laurent Dubois’ The Banjo probed deeply into the instrument’s true origins, revealing that the banjo evolved out of enslaved communities in the Caribbean and North America as Black musicians preserved the sounds of their African cultures by fashioning instruments similar to the ones from their homes. Kristina R. Gaddy’s superb Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History builds on Dubois’ work to provide an even more detailed look at the “culture and lived experience of the people of African descent who created, played, and listened to the banjo.”

Gaddy’s lively storytelling re-creates scenes from 17th-century Jamaica to 19th-century Washington, D.C., and beyond, illustrating not only the birth and development of the banjo but also its co-optation by white people. In 1687, the governor of Jamaica’s physician recorded his encounter with perhaps the earliest incarnation of the banjo, two- and three-stringed gourd lutes he called Strum Strumps, played during religious rituals by enslaved communities from West Africa. By the 18th century, the instrument—variously known as a banjo, bonja, bangeo, banjoe and banger—was being made and played by enslaved musicians on plantations, with some banjo players leading the wider community in song. In the 19th century, white performers who wore blackface in minstrel shows often included a banjo or two in their productions, mocking the Black musical experience while also popularizing the banjo. By the end of the 19th century, collections of slave songs had started to circulate, preserving the heritage of the banjo as an instrument used in religious ceremonies by Black communities.

Well of Souls’ coda points to the work of Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, Allison Russell and other Black musicians who are reviving the African history of the banjo through their albums, workshops and performances. Gaddy’s captivating book likewise recovers chapters in what is still a little-known history of this quintessential American instrument.

Kristina R. Gaddy’s captivating book reveals the African history of a quintessential American instrument: the banjo.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Lynn Melnick became a fan of Dolly Parton’s music after hearing “Islands in the Stream,” a duet with Kenny Rogers, while checking into rehab as a teen in the late 1980s. Parton was already decades into her successful country music career, with songs like this one also finding a home on pop charts. But she was a joke to the people in Melnick’s Los Angeles circles. “Islands in the Stream” was the first Parton song Melnick had heard start to finish, and it became her gateway into a life of fandom.

In I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive, poet Melnick analyzes the 22-track Dolly Parton playlist that she’s listened to for the past decade. As she examines Parton’s work, Melnick excavates her own past and shares what this music has meant to her over the years. Parton is a symbol of femininity and goodness, and Melnick has been inspired by Parton’s triumphs as she’s faced numerous traumas and struggles: The cocaine and whiskey Melnick used to mask the memory of being raped at 9 years old. The abusive boyfriend who kept popping up years after she left him. Deaths of family and friends. The retraumatizing effects of living as a survivor in rape culture.

While each chapter is personal, Melnick also brings outside analysis to her narrative, weaving together cultural criticism and academic research to place these songs in a broader context. And though Melnick describes herself as a die-hard Parton fan, she’s also willing to critique her hero. She examines some of the singer’s less admirable choices, such as naming a dinner show “The Dixie Stampede” or referring to the sex worker who inspired Parton’s look as “trash” and a “trollop.” In general, Parton has a knack for political neutrality, which can frustrate fans like Melnick. But Melnick also praises her idol’s charitable giving, her readiness to defend queer rights and the ways she has modeled what it looks like for a woman to make her own way in the world.

I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is more than an artful memoir; it is thought-provoking cultural analysis of a beloved icon whose relevance endures.

I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is more than an artful memoir about trauma and Dolly Parton; it is thought-provoking cultural analysis.

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