If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

By Farah Jasmine Griffin

Book Overview

More than four decades after her death, Billie Holiday remains one of the most gifted artists of our time-and also one of the most elusive. Because of who she was and how she chose to live her life, Lady Day has been the subject of both intense adoration and wildly distorted legends. Now at last, Farah Jasmine Griffin, a writer of intellectual authority and superb literary gifts, liberates Billie Holiday from the mythology that has obscured both her life and her art. An intimate meditation on Holiday's place in American culture and history, If You Can't Be Free, Be A Mystery reveals Lady Day in all her complexity, humor and pain-a true jazz virtuoso whose passion and originality made every song she sang hers forever. Celebrated by poets, revered by recording artists from Frank Sinatra to Macy Gray, Billie Holiday is more popular and influential today than ever before. Now, thanks to this marvelous book, Holiday's many fans can finally understand the singer and the woman they love.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345449738
• ISBN13: 9780345449733
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A brilliant work

This is a brilliant analysis, rumination, meditation, on Billie Holiday. I believe the previous reviewers who did not agree with me missed Professor Griffin's use of jazz phrasing within the prose of her work, the reworking and repetition of themes to provide new insight. It is a technique that perhaps would only be understandable to a jazz lover, but it is part of the creative wisdom of this piece. This is the best work on Billie Holiday that I have ever read and I highly recommend it. And incidentally, Dr. Griffin is one of the most respected scholars of African American and American Studies, so she should never be compared to a first year graduate student. I suggest readers check out her other work as well.

Thank you for the insight

I'm a graduate social work student and I recently wrote a paper about Billie for a class on counseling creative clients. From a strengths perspective, Billie's life was a creative success. She lived true to herself and she lived for herself. Given the enormous odds she faced, as a black woman in that time period, she overcame much. Ms. Griffin has done her justice and I highly recommend her book.

Something to do Billie Holiday a little Justice

This book serves to show yet another side of Lady Day. Despite a tendancy to repeat herself, Farah Jasmine Griffith gets her point across eloquently. She peals away layers created by media, stereotypes, and the politics of her time that hide a complex, intelligent and more human Holiday. Fans of the Lady will enjoy this newest edition to the collection of writings about her.