Didn't we almost have it all : in defense of Whitney Houston

Didn't we almost have it all In defense of Whitney Houston

Gerrick Kennedy

Book - 2022

"A candid exploration of the genius, shame, and celebrity of Whitney Houston a decade after her passing. On February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found submerged in the bathtub of her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. In the decade since, the world has mourned her death amid new revelations about her relationship to her Blackness, her sexuality, and her addictions. Didn't We Almost Have It All is author Gerrick Kennedy's exploration of the duality of Whitney's life as both a woman in the spotlight and someone who often had to hide who she was. This is the story of Whitney's life, her whole life, told with both grace and honesty. Long before that fateful day in 2012, Whitney split the world wide open with her voice.... Hers was a once-in-a-generation talent forged in Newark, NJ, and blessed with the grace of the church and the wisdom of a long lineage of famous gospel singers. She redefined 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' She became a box-office powerhouse, a queen of the pop charts, and an international superstar. But all the while, she was forced to rein in who she was amid constant accusations that her music wasn't Black enough, original enough, honest enough. Kennedy deftly peels back the layers of Whitney's complex story to get to the truth at the core of what drove her, what inspired her, and what haunted her. He pulls the narrative apart into the key elements that informed her life--growing up in the famed Drinkard family; the two romantic relationships that shaped the entirety of her adult life, with Robyn Crawford and Bobby Brown; her fraught relationship to her own Blackness and the ways in which she was judged by the Black community; her drug and alcohol addiction; and, finally, the shame that she carried in her heart, which informed every facet of her life. Drawing on hundreds of sources, Kennedy takes readers back to a world in which someone like Whitney simply could not be, and explains in excruciating detail the ways in which her fame did not and could not protect her. In the time since her passing, the world and the way we view celebrity have changed dramatically. A sweeping look at Whitney's life, Didn't We Almost Have It All contextualizes her struggles against the backdrop of tabloid culture, audience consumption, mental health stigmas, and racial divisions in America. It explores exactly how and why we lost a beloved icon far too soon" --

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Subjects
Houston, Whitney
African American women singers > United States > Biography.
African American singers > United States > Biography.
Singers > United States > Biography.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : Abrams 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Gerrick Kennedy (author)
Other Authors
Brandy, 1979- (writer of foreword)
Physical Description
xii, 306 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [289]-293) and index.
ISBN
9781419749698
  • Foreword
  • Introduction
  • Didn't We Almost Have It All?: A Meditation on Loss and Memory
  • Under his Eye, Blessed be the Sound: Faith, Gospel, and the Almighty Power of Cissy Houston
  • Home: Newark and the Black American Dreams That Birthed Whitney Houston
  • Stuff that You Want, Thing that You Need: The Brilliance and Influence of Whitney's Voice
  • My Lonely Heart Calls: On Sex, Desire, and Sexuality
  • Miss America, the Beautiful: The Burden of the National Anthem and the Politics of Whitney's Blackness
  • Bolder, Blacker, Badder: The Sisters with Voices That Transformed Whitney
  • Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil: How Trauma, Shame, and Tabloid Culture Broke Whitney
  • The Undoing of Whitney Houston: Virtue, Vice, and a Requiem for Redemption
  • Won't they Always Love You?: Reflections on Meaning and Legacy
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Leaning on his personal relationship to Whitney Houston's music and extensive musical knowledge, Kennedy (Parental Discretion Is Advised, 2017) constructs a then-and-now cultural analysis of the narratives attached to Houston and her singular voice and reaches a resounding conclusion: When she was alive, we got it wrong. The tear-down scrutiny Whitney endured left nothing of her life untouched: her Blackness, her relationship with Robyn Crawford, her marriage to Bobby Brown, her musical choices, her drug use, her famous family connections, and her appearances, whether carefully orchestrated or painful displays of illness. The thematic rather than chronological structure of the chapters results in some repetition. Even so, Kennedy's winning argument invites readers to focus on Houston's triumphs: the ceilings she broke and the pathways she paved. Particularly impactful is Kennedy's work to locate Houston's legacy in a historical-cultural context, retrieving, for example, the no-longer-sung, racist third verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner"--which she breathtakingly performed in 1991--and contemplating the meaning of a Black woman performing the national anthem at such a profound level.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this stirring work, journalist Kennedy (Parental Discretion Is Advised) reexamines "all that Whitney was and all that she was never able to be." Raised in a family of musical, devout Christians and trained by her mother Cissy, a talented gospel singer, Whitney Houston was discovered by music executive Clive Davis in 1982 and fashioned into an "All-American, Miss Beautiful." Kennedy explores how, up until her 2012 death, that image took from Houston as much as it gave her, denying her from expressing her personality and sexuality, and leading her to end her "tender and loving" friendship with Robyn Crawford, which didn't fit into "the music industry... an intolerant place where homophobia openly thrived." He also points out how despite rising to meet "the moment"--from making history as "the first woman to debut atop the Billboard 200" to singing the "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 1991 Super Bowl--her Blackness was wielded against her. By telling Houston's story alongside those of contemporary Black celebrities including Beyoncé--who, Kennedy writes, have spent their careers walking the high wire between being "too Black" and "not Black enough"--the author both celebrates the legendary singer's inimitable talent and offers a rousing critique of oppressive systems still at work today. This is a must-read for fans. Agent: William LoTurco, LoTurco Literary. (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A former Los Angeles Times music journalist reevaluates the life and work of pop star Whitney Houston (1963-2012). For Kennedy, author of Parental Discretion Is Advised: The Rise of N.W.A and the Dawn of Gangsta Rap, Houston's untimely demise demonstrated how "we continue to confront the psychological toll of being a Black superstar in America." In this book, he deliberately eschews a "straightforward cradle-to-grave" biography by examining Houston in the context of her time and cultural milieu. Born in the early 1960s, when "the Black American dream was as much about surviving as it was upward mobility," Houston had a gospel-singing mother who recognized her daughter's gift early on and helped train the voice that would be Houston's "ticket out of poverty." White music executive Clive Davis later transformed her into a wholesome pop-music confection that stripped her of erotic appeal during the MTV--dominated 1980s, when singers like Janet Jackson deliberately played up their sexuality. Kennedy suggests that the pressure to conform to heterosexist norms haunted Houston, whose strict religious upbringing frowned upon the queerness she hid from public view. Considered "a sellout, an Oreo: white on the inside, Black on the outside" by some other Black artists, Houston married hip-hop bad boy Bobby Brown and began revealing an edgier artistic persona, both musically and onscreen. But private shame about her identity led Houston to follow Brown into a spiral of violence and substance abuse that irreparably damaged her career. The great strength of this book is that Kennedy--who sees Houston through the lens of the Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and LGBTQ+ movements of the last decade--refuses to pass judgment. Instead, he seeks to understand Houston's struggles as evidence of a woman who shouldered an enormous burden--not just as a pop icon, but as a deeply devout queer Black artist forced to inhabit an unforgiving premade identity. Thoughtful reading for Houston fans and music historians alike. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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