It was a privilege and almost magical experience to read this smart, poetic and personal collection of essays about Black performance in America. Performance that we think of in the classic sense and also performance by everyday people in daily life.

This was the most perfect book for deep dive reading. I kept a running list in my Notes app of things to look up and I stopped reading after each essay to do so. There were over 20 items on my list of people and performances referenced that I wanted to learn more about, or match the visual and sound with the written words, or recall my own experiences with them.

The greatest part of my deep dive:
Whitney Houston. ::Sigh:: She was my childhood musical hero and is, hands down, my greatest celebrity loss to date. For a long time, I couldn’t listen to her music without crying. But this book took me down a rabbit hole of old videos, performances and photos. And reminiscing with my mom about my endless hours spent listening to Whitney’s records in elementary school and singing into my hairbrush microphone.

I have a lot of nonfiction books on my TBR this year and this was a great start.