Starred review from May 15, 2025
To be young, gifted, and Black; to raise a musical prodigy; to be a force for good: Beyonc�'s mother tells her story. Knowles, born Celestine Ann Beyonc�, known as Badass Tenie B in her youth, begins her immersive and inspiring memoir with her childhood on Galveston Island, the youngest child of Creole longshoreman Lumis Beyuince and his wife, Agnes Derouen, a brilliant seamstress. She and her six siblings each have different spellings of their last name, but as her mother explained, when she tried to correct the registrar she was told to be happy that she was even getting a birth certificate, a relatively new development for Black people. This is one of the lesser indignities inflicted by systemic racism on what could have been an idyllic seaside childhood in the 1950s and '60s--instead, police officers almost killed her handsome high school football player brother and went on to target the family. The storytelling style established in this portion of the book is first class: One can both hear Tina's real voice and imagine that O'Leary, her credited collaborator, knew a thing or two about what makes a great memoir. A story about being forced by the nuns at her draconian Catholic school to give up her beautiful handmade white dress and her role in a ceremony to another little girl becomes the genesis of one of the central tenets of her life and of the moral code she sought to transmit to her children, Beyonc�, Solange, and "bonus daughter" Kelly Rowland (whom she co-parented with Rowland's biological mom). Fascinating subplots abound: her own early musical career; her rollercoaster history with her first husband, Mathew Knowles; her relationship with her gay nephew and best friend Johnny (son of her much-older sister Selena), with whom she honed her craft as a clothing designer and stylist; how her shy little daughter revealed her leviathan talents and became an iconic star; and the ongoing operation of racism, for example in the record company's blundering treatment of Destiny's Child. A great story of a singular American life.
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