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x, 315 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm
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"We remember Whitney Houston for her soaring voice on songs that defined a generation and kicked open the door to Black women in pop music. Her trademark stance was a picture of elegance and power: head thrown back, arms flung straight out. Then there was her sound. One producer recalled Whitney's otherworldly ability to hold notes, comparing it to "holding lightning in your hand, holding lightning in your throat." She tried to hold the lightning as she bathed us all in the glow. But since her death in 2012, the woman known as "The Voice" has been reduced to just that. Whitney's critics have slotted her memory into a tired genre of famous doomed women whose success owed more to their labels and their producers than to any agency of their own. Yet a closer look reveals a serious artist and woman of conviction striving to be who she was. She said it best: "There would be no 'Whitney Houston' without Whitney Houston." In Holding Lightning, leading cultural critic and professor Emily Lordi has gained unique access to Houston's innermost circle to show us the Whitney we've been unwilling to see--her fluid sexuality, her unapologetic love of her own talent, her insistence that she be the architect of own career. And, crucially, Lordi positions Houston's pivotal life in the long history of Black celebrity. Before "rooting for everybody Black" became the norm, Whitney worked as a relentless advocate for Black female talent across the entertainment industry. Now, finally, in Holding Lightning, we have the essential, up-close portrait of the icon we thought we knew."--Publisher description
Holding Lightning is a biography of singer Whitney Houston that reexamines her life and career through her own agency and artistic vision. Drawing on access to Houston's close associates, Emily Lordi explores Houston's talent, career decisions, sexuality, and advocacy for Black women in entertainment, while situating her experiences within the broader history of Black celebrity culture. The book challenges narratives that portray Houston primarily as a victim of fame and instead presents her as a determined artist who shaped her own legacy