American Diva: Extraordinary, Unruly, Fabulous
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An impassioned homage to the divas who shake up our world and transform it with their bold, dazzling artistry.
What does it mean to be a “diva”? A shifting, increasingly loaded term, it has been used to both deride and celebrate charismatic and unapologetically fierce performers like Aretha Franklin, Divine, and the women of Labelle. In this brilliant, powerful blend of incisive criticism and electric memoir, Deborah Paredez—scholar, cultural critic, and lifelong diva devotee—unravels our enduring fascination with these icons and explores how divas have challenged American ideas about feminism, performance, and freedom.
American Diva journeys into Tina Turner’s scintillating performances, Celia Cruz’s command of the male-dominated salsa world, the transcendent revival of Jomama Jones after a period of exile, and the unparalleled excellence of Venus and Serena Williams. Recounting how she and her mother endlessly watched Rita Moreno’s powerhouse portrayal of Anita in West Side Story and how she learned much about being bigger than life from her fabulous Tía Lucia, Paredez chronicles the celebrated and skilled performers who not only shaped her life but boldly expressed the aspiration for freedom among brown, Black, and gay communities. Paredez also traces the evolution of the diva through the decades, dismayed at the mid-aughts’ commodification and juvenilizing of its meaning but finding its lasting beauty and power.
Filled with sharp insights and great heart, American Diva is a spirited tribute to the power of performance and the joys of fandom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Paredez (Selenidad) explores in this vibrant study why divas—female performers characterized by their "virtuosity, charisma, and capacity for reinvention"—have been alternately "revered and reviled." Profile subjects include Tina Turner, who performed onstage with an "inimitable ferocity" and bodily power that belied the offstage abuse she endured from her husband, Ike Turner. Rita Moreno's "flamboyant" dancing as Anita in the film version of West Side Story mirrored the character's (and actor's) refusal to follow "linear" American assimilation narratives. Singer Celia Cruz asserted herself as a Black woman in the "male-dominated, lighter-skinned realm of salsa," including during one memorable 1974 sound check for a concert in the Democratic Republic of Congo when she was told she could stop singing and didn't, as if to say, Paredez imagines, "When you start something you better see it... all the way the fuck through." Yet divahood has its risks, the author notes, particularly for Black and brown women. When Venus and Serena Williams refused to hew to "grateful Black athlete" stereotypes during their 2000s rise, they were jeered at and maligned for their confidence—"diva girls," Paredez writes, were celebrated only if they "sparkled with whiteness" and didn't acknowledge their talent. Paredez's insightful analysis is interwoven with evocative memories of divas she's known, including her Tía Lucia, who was "never afraid of the big gamble," and who once marched a young Paredez into a newly opened San Antonio hotel so they could ride the glass elevators as if they were guests. The result is an inspiring ode to powerful women.
