Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press

Kick Back This Summer with Beacon Audiobooks!

2021-06-28T16:55:07-04:00

Image credit: Marco Verch Professional

This will be our second summer with our favorite global party-crasher, the pandemic. (Leave already, Pandy! We want to get on with our lives.) Seems like a lifetime ago when this started, huh? Except this season, the rollout of vaccines is making outdoor time under the sun a little freer and a little less fraught with worry. Although still nowhere near the comfort and safety level we need, some of us may make to the beach. Others may make it as far as their backyard. Wherever you set your beach blanket or beach chair, vaxxed and masked, we have some audiobook suggestions for the occasion.

First off, we are so stoked about our audio rerelease of Kate Bornstein’s memoir, this time narrated by the gender outlaw herself with a new epilogue! A Queer and Pleasant Danger is as outrageous as it was when it first came out. Listening to it in Kate’s own voice makes it all the more delicious. From nice Jewish boy to Scientologist to the lovely lady she is today, her story is unforgettable and wickedly told. Just in time for Pride Month, too!

“I don’t call myself a woman, and I know I’m not a man. That’s the part that upsets the pope—he’s worried that talk like that—not male, not female—will shatter the natural order of men and women. I look forward to the day it does.”
—Kate Bornstein

Listen to a selection.

Summer is also the season for blissing out to bops and jams. We selected some choice memoirs and biographies on music and musicians from our catalog for you to cue up on your playlists, four of which are perfect for Black Music Month! You may even discover some new tunes to carry into the fall and winter. (I know: Let’s not think that far ahead into the year yet. We need to enjoy what we can of months coming up.)

In a rocking debut that Kimberlé Crenshaw calls “a spellbinding odyssey,” G’Ra Asim pens a survival guide to his younger brother, Gyasi, for tackling the sometimes treacherous cultural terrain particular to being young, Black, brainy, and weird in the form of a punk rock mixtape.

Listen to a selection.

An AudioFile Earphones Award winner and selected as an AudioFile Best Audiobook of 2020! Ian Zack brings the legendary singer and Voice of the Civil Rights Movement back in the spotlight in her first in-depth biography. So many folk roads lead back to Odetta. Where’s her Grammy?

Listen to a selection.

Leslie Uggams, Shawn T. Andrews, and Anthony Heilbut lend their vocal talents to narrate Gayle Wald’s biography of America’s first rock guitar diva, 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was the Woman Who Rocked before Women Who Rock.

Listen to a selection.

The late pop music critic and culture journalist Rashod Ollison had such an ear for music and such acumen for laying out the cultural context in which it was written. In his memoir, he described how music was his refuge during his tumultuous upbringing, especially soul and R&B, as he came of age Black and gay in 1980s’ Arkansas.

What’s left unexamined in many Woody Guthrie bios is how the bulk of his work delves into the importance of intimacy in his personal and political life. Gustavus Stadler dismantles the man we’ve been taught to reveal the overlapping influences of sexuality, politics, and disability on his art.

Listen to a selection.

If you get through these as fast as you get through a tall glass of lemonade on a hot day, look no further than our bestselling audiobooks! They cover a wide range of subject matter—asexuality, abolitionist teaching, fat justice, white fragility, embracing life and meaning in the face of stark hardship—to tide you over through the season.

Aces today are not concerned with how to have sex, but we are not anti-sex either. We don’t ask people to stop having sex or feel guilty for enjoying it. We do ask that all of us question our sexual beliefs and promise that doing so means that the world would be a better and freer place for everyone.
—Angela Chen

Listen to a selection.

Abolitionist teaching stands in solidarity with parents and fellow teachers opposing standardized testing, English-only education, racist teachers, arming teachers with guns, and turning schools into prisons. Abolitionist teaching supports and teaches from the space that Black Lives Matter, all Black Lives Matter, and affirms Black folx’ humanity.
—Bettina L. Love

Listen to a selection.

Regardless of our size, working toward fat justice will call upon our most honest, compassionate selves. It will require deep vulnerability, candor, and empathy. Together, we can create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.
—Aubrey Gordon

Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement. White fragility is not weakness per se. In fact, it is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white advantage.
—Robin DiAngelo

Listen to a selection.

The rules of the game of life . . . do not require us to win at all costs, but they do demand from us that we never give up the fight.
—Viktor E. Frankl

Listen to a selection.

Put on your shades, pull up your umbrella, and jack in those headphones.

Beacon’s Wealth of Black Women Biographies for Women’s History Month

2021-03-01T17:10:31-05:00

By Helene Atwan

Rosa Park, Odetta, and Lorraine Hansberry

When Beacon was founded, in the mid-1850s, two burning issues of the day were abolition and women’s suffrage. Here, as we transition from Black History into Women’s History Month, I’m feeling so proud of our lasting tradition of publishing biographies that celebrate Black lives and women’s stories, and often both.

Decades ago, about the time I came to Beacon, we published Marian Wright Edelman’s memoir of her mentors (and it was among the press’s best-selling books of the time), and more recently we have published biographies of Black women who have made an indelible contribution to our history, including, of course, the NAACP Image Award–winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis (also a best-selling book for Beacon, and just last month we published the YA adaptation of that book, coauthored by Jeanne and celebrated writer Brandy Colbert). These books put Mrs. Parks not just at the front of the bus but at the front of a movement that she very much helped to plan and lead. They correct the false image of an unwitting heroine who needed a rest and restore Parks to her actual role as an intentional and lifelong activist for civil rights.

The work of Black women as leaders in activism goes far deeper in our history, as recent films about Harriet Tubman and Madame C. J. Walker attest. But these women need no fictionalizing. In Keisha Blain’s powerful Until I Am Free, we will have a new book that tells the story of Fannie Lou Hamer, the youngest of twenty children, the granddaughter of enslaved people, a woman who worked as a sharecropper before dedicating herself to activism; and just out is a biography of Dorothy Pitman Hughes, With Her Fist Raised, Laura Lovett’s groundbreaking account of this pivotal figure in Black feminism and community organizing. The powerful work and witness of these women is baked into American culture and deserves to be better known. Like so many of the important books recently written by Black women activists, a good number of those published by Beacon, these stories correct the white supremacist version of history we’ve been fed for centuries.

We’ve also published in just the last half decade several important biographies of extremely influential Black women in the arts who are not as well-known as they deserve to be: Gayle Wald’s Shout, Sister, Shout!, the story of the life and times of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, often acknowledged to be the first gospel superstar, a book that led me to discover Sister Rosetta’s unique music, much as Ian Zack’s Odetta, an intimate portrait of a woman who was known as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” led me to hours of riveting listening. Angela Jackson’s acclaimed biography of poet Gwendolyn Brooks, A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun, introduces us to one of the great American literary icons of the twentieth century, a protégé of Langston Hughes and a mentor to a generation of poets, including our own Sonia Sanchez. I hadn’t read enough of Brooks’s work or understood her role, her very real importance in our culture, until Jackson’s book. And until Imani Perry’s multiple award-winning biography of playwright and essayist Lorraine Hansberry, Looking for Lorraine, I mostly knew only A Raisin in the Sun and failed to appreciate the ways Hansberry used her prominence to challenge President Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general, to take bolder stances on civil rights, for example, or in supporting African anticolonial leaders and confronting the more subtle racism of the new generation of white writers. These books will help reshape our understanding of the lasting influence of Black women in the arts.

Just a few months ago, Beacon’s associate publisher and editorial director, Gayatri Patnaik, was awarded BIO’s prestigious 2020 Editorial Excellence Award. Most of the books I’ve mentioned above were acquired and edited by Gayatri; she deserves our gratitude.

Finally, on a personal note, I feel deeply honored, over the course of my career, to have had the opportunity to work with Black women whose influence on me has been profound. In the days before I came to Beacon, I was lucky enough to get to know Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault, among other brilliant Black women. Since I became director here, now over twenty-five years ago, I’ve been fortunate to have had the chance to meet and interact with some of the writers mentioned here, along with some whose work I personally edited and whose friendship I count as one of the great joys of my life. So thank you to Amy Alexander, Elaine Brown, Dominique Christina, Carol Fulp, Lani Guinier, Anita Hill, Gayl Jones, Deborah Plummer, and Sonia Sanchez.

About the Author

Helene Atwan has been the director of Beacon Press since 1995.

She Will Not Be Silenced: A Reading List to Celebrate Women’s History Month

2020-03-20T17:35:21-04:00

She led a sit-in to ensure protections for people with disabilities and laid the groundwork for the Americans with Disabilities Act. She’s calling on all of us to act radically and build a different kind of future for cinema—not only for the women being actively hurt inside the industry but for those outside it, whose lives, purchasing decisions, and sense of selves are shaped by the stories told. She’s proving how a groundswell of activism, led by everyday women, can create the incentives our political leaders need to change course and make affordable healthcare accessible for everybody. She’s advocating an out-loud, unapologetic feminist manifesto to teach women and girls to smash the patriarchy by embracing qualities they’ve been trained to avoid. She made her guitar talk, went electric before many guitarists did, and defined what we know as gospel, R&B, and rock music today. She went to fight on the battlefield because she wanted to, because she had to, because she simply could.

These are the women who have made and are making history, because they spoke up, even when the annals of history tried to silence them. By speaking up and speaking truth to power, they’re showing us the societal change that we’re capable of, that we need. Right now. Let’s give up it for these heroes! You can read their stories in these selected titles from our catalog.

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner

“A moving chronicle of social change, Being Heumann will restore your hope in our democracy and the power of our shared humanity.“
—Darren Walker, president, Ford Foundation

A Black Women’s History of the United States
Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross

“A powerful and important book that charts the rich and dynamic history of Black women in the United States. It shows how these courageous women challenged racial and gender oppression and boldly asserted their authority and visions of freedom even in the face of resistance.”
—Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom

Marching Toward Coverage: How Women Can Lead the Fight for Universal Health Care
Rosemarie Day

“Day offers a simpler remedy for fixing healthcare. If we want a healthcare system that’s more humane, more practical, and gets the important things right, turn to women. Read it and let’s get going.”
—Andy Slavitt, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
Mona Eltahawy

“Incredibly direct and fiercely intelligent . . . . A book for those who don’t wait for permission.”
—Marwa Helal, author of Invasive species

The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood
Naomi McDougall Jones

“A call to arms for both men and women who desire the industry to be more equitable and inclusive.”
—Melissa Silverstein, founder and publisher, Women and Hollywood

The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race, and the Moorish Muslims in America
Jacob S. Dorman

“A prodigious feat of detective work and archival magic. A spectacular book in so many ways.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest
Ian Zack

“An absorbing portrait of a seminal artist. Odetta was my Queen.”
—Joan Baez, musician and activist

Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim
Leah Vernon

“I love the fierce, unflinching honesty and integrity in Unashamed . . . . I laughed and cried and read this book in awe of Leah Vernon’s brave, bold, and beautiful voice.”
—Randa Abdel-Fattah, author of The Lines We Cross and Does My Head Look Big in This?

Women Warriors: An Unexpected History
Pamela D. Toler

“Toler blows past all expectations with this thoroughly delightful, personable, and crucially important history of women warriors.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Gayle F. Wald

“She blazed a trail for the rest of us women guitarists with her indomitable spirit and accomplished, engaging style. She has long been deserving of wider recognition and a place of honor in the field of music history.”
—Bonnie Raitt

The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women
Scott W. Stern

“In our own era, when harassment is a great national topic, this book could not be more timely.”
—Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Women Rowing North

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
Jeanne Theoharis

“In the first sweeping history of Parks’s life, Theoharis shows us...[that] Parks not only sat down on the bus; she stood on the right side of justice for her entire life.”
—Julian Bond, chairman emeritus, NAACP

Bridging the Ancestors to the Present Generations: A Black History Month Reading List

2018-02-23T17:27:03-05:00

Black History Month is the time that connections need to be made between the ancestors of Black heritage and the living inheritors. As educator Christopher Emdin wrote on our blog, the stories of past battles should never be told as if they are over or conquered. The stories are alive and playing out today. Seeing the connections between the past and the present gives us the context that enriches our history. In the spirit of Emdin’s observations, we’re offering the following list of recommending reading.

Black Resistance

An African American and Latinx History of the United States
Paul Ortiz

Drawing on rich narratives and primary source documents, historian Paul Ortiz gives us this bottom-up history told from the interconnected vantage points of Latinx and African Americans fighting for universal civil rights.

The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
Howard Bryant

Sports journalist Howard Bryant traces the rise, fall, and fervent return of the Black athlete-activist, spanning from Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali to LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and Carmelo Anthony.

Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement
Premilla Nadasen

Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen resurrects the little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing.

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
Jeanne Theoharis

NAACP Image Award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects the national myth-making around the civil rights movement, revealing its complex reality, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of its vision.

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his final book, Martin Luther King, Jr. lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America’s future. He demands an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind—for the first time—has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

Confronting Injustice and Difficult Histories

Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade
Thomas Norman DeWolf and Sharon Leslie Morgan

Sharon Leslie Morgan, a Black woman from Chicago’s South Side, and Thomas Norman DeWolf, a white man from rural Oregon, embark on a three-year journey of racial reconciliation by confronting the unhealed wounds of slavery.

Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul
Anthony Graves

In his powerful memoir about fighting for—and winning—exoneration, Anthony Graves gives us the moving account of his ultimate fight for freedom as a wrongfully convicted man from inside a prison cell.

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
Andrea Ritchie

Police-misconduct attorney Andrea Ritchie documents the evolution of movements centering women’s experiences of racial profiling and police brutality and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave in the Building of a Nation
Daina Berry

Historian Daina Berry has written the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade.

Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense
Caroline Light

Scholar Caroline Light exposes a hidden history, showing how America’s racialized, violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.

Black Lives in Focus

Daddy King: An Autobiography
Martin Luther King, Sr.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. candidly reveals his life inside the civil rights movement and illustrates the profound influence he had on his son, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his memoir.

Redemption: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Last 31 Hours
Joseph Rosenbloom

Award-winning journalist Joseph Rosenbloom gives us an intimate look at the last thirty-one hours of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life as he seeks to revive the nonviolent civil rights movement and push to end poverty in America.

Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Gayle F. Wald

Professor Gayle F. Wald tells the untold story of the flamboyant musical prodigy and 2018 Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe, America’s first rock guitar diva who paved the path for Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Eric Clapton, and Etta James.

Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl
Rashod Ollison

In his coming-of-age memoir, pop music critic and culture journalist Rashod Ollison tells his story of growing up Black and gay in central Arkansas while searching for himself and his distant father through soul music.

A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life & Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks
Angela Jackson

Award-winning writer Angela Jackson delves deep into the cultural and political force of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, in celebration of her hundredth birthday.

The Best of the Broadside in 2017

2017-12-29T11:09:13-05:00

2017 has been ragged and turbulent, charged with a fraught political climate spawned by a divisive presidential election. 2017 witnessed assaults on progress in racial justice, backlashes against environmental protections, and more. When we needed perspective and lucid social critique on the latest attacks on our civil liberties, our authors were there. We couldn’t be more thankful for them. They make the Broadside, which reached its tenth anniversary this year, the treasure trove of thought-provoking commentary we can turn to in our troubling and uncertain times. As our director Helene Atwan wrote in our first ever blog post, “It’s our hope that Beacon Broadside will be entertaining, challenging, provocative, unexpected, and—maybe above all—a good appetizer.” We certainly hope that’s the case for the year to come. Before 2017 comes to a close, we would like to share a collection of some of the highlights of the Broadside. Happy New Year!

“Beacon Authors Speak Truth to Trump on Inauguration Day”

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and his approval rating spread doubts, fears, and concerns about what he and his administration would do during his term in the White House. For Inauguration Day, we reached out to a few of our authors, from Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II to Rafia Zakaria, to ask them to share what they wanted Trump to know, understand or beware of.

Aviva Chomsky’s “A Day without Immigrants: How the Undocumented Keep America’s Job Economy Afloat”

In response to President Trump’s immigration agenda, which pledges to seal the US/Mexico border, “A Day without Immigrants” boycotts and strikes were organized nationwide. The protests called attention to the contributions immigrant communities make to US business and culture. The generally unacknowledged work that undocumented workers do is crucial to the standard of living and consumption enjoyed by virtually everybody in the US. Aviva Chomsky explains in this excerpt from her book Undocumented that as the rise in undocumented workers over the past decades goes on, the US economic system continues to exploit them.

Lori Tharps’s “For Colored Girls Who Were Mistaken for the Nanny By a Public Who Didn’t Know Enough”

Remember when South Korea expert Robert Kelly was being interviewed live on the BBC and his two children walked into his office as the camera was rolling? It was hilarious! And the video went viral. Yet it was assumed that Jung-a Kim, the woman who swooped in to haul the kids out of the room, was the nanny, not Kelly’s wife. Same Family, Different Colors author Lori Tharps unpacks the notion that in American society, families are supposed to match; and when they don’t, all kinds of problems and false assumptions can arise, both inside and outside the home.

Christian Coleman’s “Her Eyes Weren’t Watching God: The Empathetic Secular Vision of Octavia Butler”

MacArthur fellow and multiple award-winning science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler would have turned seventy this year if she were still with us. Her fiction is still with us and stands the test of time, especially her classic novel Kindred. Our digital marketing associate and blog editor Christian Coleman paid tribute to her on her birthday in this piece about how her atheist outlook was just as important as her Black feminist perspective in developing the social justice consciousness of her work.

Christopher Emdin: “Thoughts on Transformative Pedagogy for National Teacher Appreciation Week”

Christopher Emdin’s For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood galvanized the field of urban education when it came out in 2016 and continues to do so today. It radically reframes the approaches to teaching and learning in urban schools by taking to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable and challenging educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become experts in their own learning. This excerpt, posted last year on our blog in honor of National Teacher Appreciation Week, generated a lot of enthusiastic conversation on social media this year, most notably on Twitter. It lists some of Emdin’s key musings to motivate educators to keep going.

“A Charlottesville Syllabus for Our Uncertain Times”

The events in Charlottesville, Virginia, were a frightening and disheartening reminder of how hate and intolerance in the US resurface when bigots feel empowered to act on their prejudice. Discussions about hate and dismantling white supremacy need to continue in order for us to work toward inclusiveness and social justice. That’s why we put together this list of resources and continue to add to it in our troubled times.

“Learning the Truth about Thanksgiving and America’s Origin Story”

Thanksgiving is a time when the topic of our nation’s origins crops up again in our conversations. But much of the US’s widely accepted origin story is skewed by the lens of settler colonialism and has silenced the voices of Native Americans. Consequently, many fabricated myths about Native Americans remain with us today. Revered historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and journalist Dina Gilio-Whitaker, coauthor with Dunbar-Ortiz of “All the Real Indians Died Off,” have debunked these myths and uncovered history that isn’t acknowledged or well known by the general public so that we can honor and reflect on the contributions of Indigenous peoples in America.

Gayle Wald’s “Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Inducted in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Class of 2018”

Although guitar virtuoso Sister Rosetta Tharpe has long been recognized as the godmother of rock, she’s been shockingly overlooked in rock ‘n’ roll history—until now. This year, she was finally inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We wouldn’t have the likes of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Eric Clapton, and Etta James were it not for Tharpe, who paved the way for them with her innovative, charismatic guitar technique and crossover appeal. We all agree with Gayle Wald, writer of Tharpe’s biography Shout, Sister, Shout!, that it’s about time she got her overdue recognition.

Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Inducted in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Class of 2018

2017-12-13T08:42:25-05:00

By Gayle Wald

Speculation is a risky but inevitably necessary business for biographers. When I was working on Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, I made a decision not to stray too far from what I could verify from historical and contemporary sources (even while acknowledging that these, too, are imperfect).

So when confronting the question of what motivated Tharpe, a musician embedded in the sonic culture of black Pentecostalism, to record secular songs and perform on secular stages beginning in her early twenties, I chose to tread carefully. Maybe this young woman, whose childhood had been defined by pleasing others with her musical gift, craved the love of an even bigger audience. Maybe she wanted to do something so anathema to the godly reputation of her philandering husband, the Rev. Tommy Tharpe, that he would not come looking to drag her back to him. Maybe she really thought she could save souls in nightclubs filled with party people.

Some readers may have wished for clarity regarding Tharpe’s motivations for performing gospel for the “sinners” as well as the “saints,” or of putting her God-given talent to dubious uses, such as singing for British teenagers wowed by the sight of a woman shredding on an electric guitar. But I chose to honor her mystery.

But the heady news that Rosetta Tharpe will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Class of 2018, makes it feel okay to indulge in a bit of retrospective guesswork. Would Tharpe, who strived to please her church audiences to her dying day, have welcomed the news? How would she have felt about being nominated alongside a British heavy metal band called Judas Priest?

She would have loved it.

In her lifetime, Tharpe was far less concerned with what others chose to call her music than whether it moved them. Her formation in the Church of God in Christ taught her that music had the power to transport audiences, to take them “higher,” emotionally and even spiritually. In the few interviews that survive, Tharpe maintained that it didn’t matter whether “they” called it gospel or blues or rock-and-roll. Music had power no matter what name you gave it.

There are plenty of historical reasons to induct Tharpe into the Rock Hall—reasons that led me to call her a “rock-and-roll trailblazer” in the subtitle of my book. She was an early pioneer of electric guitar, and developed a dazzling showmanship that involved intricate finger picking and teasing, daredevil sleights of hand. In the 1940s, working with the Sam Price Trio, she made edgy, rollicking songs—including her signature “Strange Things Happening Every Day”—with rock-and-roll charisma. Her craft and larger-than-life personality have imprinted themselves on Who’s Who of late-twentieth-century musical illuminati.

But inducting Tharpe into the Rock Hall is not just an acknowledgment of her “influence”—a tag that seemingly allows her to enter on the coattails of more familiar names. It is also a recognition of her self-authored musical adventurousness, one that drew from the incomparably rich traditions of African American Christianity. It is a means of symbolically allowing these traditions to “enter” the Rock Hall with her. And it is a means of chipping away at the brittle boundedness of “rock and roll,” a phrase that still relegates women to the sidelines, even when they commanded the whole stage.

As imperfect as rock institutions can be, it’s nevertheless thrilling to see Rosetta Tharpe honored for her music. I can imagine her saying, with the practiced diction of a proud sister of the church, “Well, I don't care what they call it—gospel, spirituals, rock and roll. But it is about time!”

About the Author

Gayle F. Wald is a professor at George Washington University and the author of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe and It's Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power TV. She was a consultant for the film Godmother of Rock and Roll. Wald lives in Washington, DC. Follow her on Twitter at @gaylewald.

Be Bold For Change: A Women’s History Month Reading List

2017-03-08T14:02:50-05:00

Today is International Women’s Day, a global day to honor and celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political accomplishments of women. Observed since the early 1900s, it marks a call to action for accelerating gender equality. This year’s campaign theme, #BeBoldForChange, implores us to help build a more inclusive, gender-equal world. It also coincides with the “Day Without a Woman” general strike, organized to bring attention to the inequalities women still face, including lower wages, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity. Women in thirty-five countries are participating in the strike.

We at Beacon Press publish works by and about women who have envisioned a better world and rose up to make it a reality, books that highlight the contributions women have made throughout history and today. In solidarity with the strike and the movement, we’re offering the following list of titles from our catalog. This list is by no means exhaustive. Make sure to check out all our other titles in Feminism and Gender.

Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller
Kim E. Nielsen

This is the first ever biography to unearth the fascinating relationship between Anne Sullivan Macy and Helen Keller.

Caged Eyes: An Air Force Cadet’s Story of Rape and Resilience
Lynn K. Hall

Lynn K. Hall gives us an insider’s account of misogyny and rape in the US military and her extraordinary path to recovery and activism.

Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
Christine Byl

This is Christine Byl’s lively and lyrical account of her unlikely apprenticeship on a national-park trail crew and what she discovers about nature, gender, and the value of hard work.

Faith Ed: Teaching about Religion in an Age of Intolerance
Linda K. Wertheimer

Veteran education journalist Linda K. Wertheimer takes us on a cross-country trip to look at the debate over religion in the public school system.

Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement
Premilla Nadasen

In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate
Nancy Gertner

“Human Rights Hero” Judge Nancy Gertner looks back on her illustrious career litigating groundbreaking cases when she was one of few women in a stubbornly male profession.

Kindred
Octavia E. Butler

Novelist and MacArthur Fellow Octavia E. Butler was the first African American woman to make a name for herself in the field of science fiction. Kindred, her time-travel classic about confronting the visceral realities of slavery, was the novel that put her on the map.

Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic’s Life
Alice Childress

Featuring a foreword by bestselling author Roxane Gay, Alice Childress’s classic novel is an incisive portrait of working-class African American women in 1950’s Harlem

The Lonely Solder: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
Helen Benedict

Helen Benedict’s The Lonely Soldier—the inspiration for the documentary The Invisible War—vividly tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006, and of the challenges they faced while fighting a war painfully alone.

Morning Haiku
Sonia Sanchez

This volume by much-loved poet and leading writer of the Black Arts Movement Sonia Sanchez is a collection of haiku that commemorates the lives of revered African American figures in the worlds of music, literature, art, and activism.

The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club
Eileen Pollack

Eileen Pollack was one of Yale’s first two women to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in physics. This book is a bracingly honest exploration of why there are still so few women in the hard sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.

Powered By Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists
Lyn Mikel Brown

Drawing from a diverse collection of interviews with women and girl activists, professor of education Lyn Mikel Brown explores how girls have embraced activism and provides a guide for adults who want to support their organizing.

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
Jeanne Theoharis

Professor of Political Science Jeanne Theoharis examines Rosa Parks’s six decades of activism in this definitive political biography, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement.

Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home
Anita Hill

From the heroic lawyer who spoke out against Clarence Thomas in the historic confirmation hearings, Anita Hill details how the current housing crisis imperils every American’s ability to achieve the American Dream.

Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk
Melinda Chateauvert

Activist and university professor Melinda Chateauvert traces the provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom.

Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Gayle F. Wald

Professor Gayle F. Wald tells the untold story of the flamboyant musical prodigy Sister Rosetta Tharpe, America’s first rock guitar diva who paved the path for Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Eric Clapton, and Etta James.

Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty
Annelise Orleck

Professor of history and women’s and gender studies Annelise Orleck tells the inspirational and little-known story of how welfare mothers in Las Vegas, America’s Sin City, built one of this country’s most successful anti-poverty programs—from the ground up.

Why We Keep Rediscovering Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Flamboyant Grandmother of Rock

2016-02-22T13:55:20-05:00

By Gayle F. Wald

Embed from Getty Images

This post appeared originally in Zócalo Public Square.

More than forty years after her burial in an unmarked Philadelphia grave, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, gospel’s first superstar and its most celebrated crossover figure, is enjoying a burst of Internet celebrity. A video of her playing one of her signature tunes, “Didn’t It Rain,” from a 1964 TV special filmed for British television has been racking up more than ten million views on YouTube and Facebook. Old and new fans the world over, dazzled by Tharpe’s powerful singing and wildly charismatic guitar playing—all while wearing a proper church lady coat—are proclaiming Tharpe the “godmother” of rock and grumbling over her absence from rock canons like as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Tharpe is truly great and this recognition is long overdue. Born in the small but thriving town of Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915 and raised partly in Chicago, Tharpe was a musical prodigy of the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal denomination that encouraged adherents to express their faith through music. (The honorific “Sister” came from the church.) With her mother, an evangelist, she came of age as a singer and instrumentalist at Southern tent meetings, churches, and religious revivals. She ultimately gained bigger fame in 1938, when she began appearing on the stages of prominent New York nightclubs and recording her music for the Decca label. The 1940s found her fronting Lucky Millinder’s popular swing band and then, in the post-World War II years, playing with the Sam Price Trio, with which she recorded “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” a No. 2 record on the “race” charts (which charted music made for black audiences) in 1945. In the late 1940s, she began collaborating with Newark, N.J.-based singer Marie Knight, with whom she made memorable duets, including “Didn’t It Rain” (1947) and “Up Above My Head” (1948).

She was so popular, particularly among black audiences, that in the early 1950s she staged her own wedding—her third—in a sold-out ceremony/concert in a Washington, D.C. baseball stadium, playing electric guitar from the outfield while wearing a white wedding gown. An indication of Tharpe’s flamboyance and gift for stagecraft, the stunt was featured in a multi-page photographic spread in Ebony. Fans brought gifts of tableware and even a television set, and the whole affair, which was more radical and perhaps more self-exploitative than anything Madonna ever did—was issued by Decca as a two-disc “wedding album.”

Tharpe didn’t just know how to play the electric guitar, she had a pre-Hendrix gift for making her relationship with the instrument a show in itself. She developed a distinctive finger-picking style and cradled the guitar with an eye toward spectacle. She calibrated her persona carefully, stretching the boundaries of gospel while crafting an image of churched respectability. As a woman who could outplay her male counterparts, she managed the “threat” of her virtuosity to men by undercutting it with disarming humor and a dose of feminine decorum.

By the late 1950s, Tharpe’s star had dimmed, for reasons that included the mercurial nature of the music industry, which demanded the production of new stars and new styles. Tharpe lived comfortably, but modestly, in Philadelphia, reduced to playing small venues and flailing around in search of a sustaining hit that could compete with the rhythm-and-blues records being put out by younger performers.

Paradoxically, her star was then on the rise in Britain and Europe, where earnest music fans wanted the chance to see African-American musicians live. Even as Beatlemania and the British Invasion took hold in the United States, the black American music that had inspired John Lennon, Robert Plant, Keith Richards, and others attracted young people’s attention in England. American kids wanted the Beatles singing “Love Me Do,” but back in the U.K., kids were clamoring to hear the black American blues musicians who had influenced the young British acts.

Ironically, the video that has sparked this recent Rosetta Tharpe “moment” on the Internet is a testimonial to the discovery of Tharpe and other black American musicians by these overwhelming white English audiences in the 1960s. With imprints of U.S. R&B records hard to come by in Britain and mostly unplayed on BBC radio, young Brits flocked to live shows. The much-circulated clip of Tharpe playing “Didn’t It Rain” is from one of these festivals, the American Folk, Blues, and Gospel Caravan, which traveled Britain and Europe in spring 1964, showcasing Tharpe along with the likes of bluesmen Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Muddy Waters.

The Blues and Gospel Caravan, as the TV show based on the 1964 tour was dubbed, was filmed at a defunct suburban Manchester, England, railroad station repurposed for the occasion as the fictional town of “Chorltonville,” a half-Hollywood, half-Disneyland fantasy of a (racially segregated) Southern railroad depot. On one side of the tracks are bleachers filled with long-haired white British kids; on the other side, a set of older, more formally attired black musical notables make their way among stage props including a bale of hay, a rocking chair, and two goats tethered to a rail.

Such an old-timey, countrified setting was embarrassingly off-key for a group of seasoned musicians who had performed at Carnegie Hall and on Broadway, but it gave the assembled English kids and folks watching at home the illusion of having journeyed to a mythic backwater and discovered a diamond in the rough, the sources of rock and roll. And although they were amused at being “discovered,” Tharpe and her fellow performers played along with the fans’ fantasy, appreciating the interest. At the beginning of the clip, as pianist Cousin Joe helps Tharpe off a horse-drawn buggy and onto the damp set, you can even hear her remark that she is having “the wonderfulest time in my life.”

In the performance of “Didn’t It Rain” that follows, Tharpe overcomes the cornball sentimentality—or, read less generously, the patronizing racialism—of her surroundings. Dressed in a cape and high heels, she sings and accompanies herself on a white electric SG with the self-assurance of a pro who has seen and done it all before. Her confident, magnetic persona upends expectations both of what a woman was or wasn’t supposed to do (She was handling the guitar with such boldness!) and of how African-Americans were supposed to carry themselves (Look at how sophisticated she seems!). At the same time, attentive viewers might see in Tharpe’s performance a submerged history of black female gospel musicians as musical trailblazers.

In the popularity of the 1964 British TV clip on today’s global social media, we see history repeating itself. That’s because Tharpe’s career, like the career of so many other black American musicians, has been defined by cycles of obscurity and popularity, forgetting and remembering. My own interest in writing a biography of Tharpe was spurred by a then-obscure video of her doing “Up Above My Head”—a clip that is now accessible to anyone with a smartphone. But my curiosity was equally piqued by the realization that I wasn’t alone my ignorance. Her erasure, I found, was a function not merely of the passage of time, but of a tendency in American history to celebrate and elevate the achievements of white men and to “forget” or ignore the brilliance of a figure like Rosetta. Nowhere was this made clearer to me than in a 1970 newspaper clipping I stumbled upon that attributed her sound and style to Elvis Presley—when it was Elvis, and so many others, who emulated Tharpe!

Tharpe’s present moment of fame is unlikely to end soon. This fall, two new theatrical productions—one set to debut off-Broadway, another in Pasadena—will bring elements of Tharpe’s story and a taste of her music to new audiences. Passionate supporters continue to lobby for her recognition by the Rock Hall. And gifted young musicians including Rhiannon Giddens, of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Brittany Howard, of the Alabama Shakes, continue to explore Tharpe’s repertoire and draw inspiration from her example.

That unmarked Philadelphia grave? Today it has a rose-colored marble headstone paid for by fans incensed that her legacy had been ignored for so long. Inscribed with a quote from a close friend, it reads, “She would sing until you cried and then she would sing until you danced for joy.” We are not finished crying or dancing.

About the Author

Rediscovering Our Black Forerunners: A Black History Month Reading List

2016-02-09T15:16:31-05:00

Black History Month is as much about rediscovery as it is about celebration and commemoration. At Beacon Press, the books we publish that cover black history reintroduce us to long-forgotten or hidden historical figures, unearth information previously unknown about prominent black leaders, bring us closer to the struggles and triumphs of African ancestors. In the current age of #BlackLivesMatter and other movements that compel us to evaluate our country’s progress in racial justice, it’s important to get reacquainted with the steps black forerunners have taken—and their history—so we can see how to step forward. For this year's Black History Month, we're recommending a list of new and older titles offering biographies, histories, memoir, and more.

The Long Walk to Freedom: edited by Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise

Editors Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise collected twelve first-person narratives spanning eight decades, all told in the voices of the runaway slaves themselves, that reveal the extraordinary and innovative ways these men and women sought freedom and demanded citizenship. More than half of the inspiring narratives in this collection, the first book about the runaway slave phenomenon, had been long out of print. The Long Walk to Freedom also includes an essay by history professor Brenda Stevenson that gives a context for these narratives, a comprehensive brief history of slavery, and a look into the daily life of a slave.

Premilla Nadasen’s Household Workers Unite

Scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen’s Household Workers Unite gives voice to the African-American domestic workers involved in the little-known history of domestic-worker activism from the 1950s to the 1970s. Contrary to mainstream labor’s notion that household workers were “unorganizable,” these women were far from the stereotyped passive and powerless victims. They forged alliances with activists in the women’s rights and black freedom movements. Through the power of storytelling as a form of activism, they established a collective identity as workers worthy of dignity and respect. They organized tirelessly on buses and streets across the country to bring legal recognition to their profession. These were fierce women at the vanguard of the labor movement.

Jeanne Theoharis's The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was so much more than the fable-like figure of the quiet and demure seamstress who refused to give her seat on the Montgomery bus we have been taught about in elementary school. In The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, professor of political science Jeanne Theoharis wants us to know that Parks was in fact primed for six decades of civil rights activism, not just the singled out historical day she is mostly known for. Through economic hardships and a constant barrage of death threats that took a toll on Parks and her family, she remained committed to calling out and eliminating racial inequality in jobs, schools, public services, and the criminal justice system. Up until the end of her political career, she was every bit as radical as Malcolm X.

Paul Robeson’s Here I Stand

Paul Robeson was quite the Renaissance man. Singer, actor, social activist, lawyer, and athlete, Robeson was one of most celebrated African Americans of his day. He was blacklisted after attracting the scrutiny of McCarthyism because of his outspoken criticism of American racism, his strong support for African independence, and his fascination with the Soviet Union. Part autobiography and part manifesto, Here I Stand brought his voice out of silence and still stands as a challenge to fear and racism.

Gayle Wald’s Shout, Sister, Shout!

Gospel’s first superstar Sister Rosetta Tharpe may have been buried in an unmarked grave, but the mark she left on black history and music history is indelible. Drawing on the memories of more than a hundred people who knew or worked with Tharpe, Gayle Wald’s biography Shout, Sister, Shout! introduces us to the trailblazing rock guitar diva who combined her foundation in gospel with blues, jazz, country, popular ballads, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. Her crossover appeal drew in black and white audiences from the North and South in the US and from international crowds. Tharpe went electric early on and would influence the likes of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Eric Clapton, and Etta James.

Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the death of renowned novelist and MacArthur fellow Octavia E. Butler, who drew the realities of slavery into striking, visceral focus through fiction with her classic novel Kindred. Dana, a modern black woman, is summoned repeatedly through time from her California home to the antebellum South to save Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner. Each visit grows longer and more perilous, endangering her life and her ability to return to the present, and forces Dana to confront her own ancestry. Written to honor the courage of people perceived as property, Kindred attests to Butler’s legacy as the first well-known African-American woman in the field of science fiction.

Alondra Nelson's The Social Life of DNA

Professor of sociology and gender studies Alondra Nelson’s new book, released just last month, shows that the billion-dollar industry of ancestry DNA testing is an active voice in our country’s ongoing and complex conversation about race. For many African Americans, genetic genealogy has become a new tool for addressing the unfinished business of slavery, establishing ties with African ancestral homelands, and making legal claims for slavery reparations based specifically on ancestry. The Social Life of DNA proposes that DNA, our portal to the past, could put us on the path of reconciliation, and that science could be the crucial ally to activism to transform the present and future of racial politics.

Historical Beacon Buzz: Langston Hughes reviews James Baldwin

2013-02-26T13:00:06-05:00

Fifty-Five Years Ago Today...

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Yes, this publicity hit is from February 26, 1958, but we didn't have a blog (much less the not-to-be-missed Beacon Buzz report) back then ... The New York Times published this review of James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, written by Langston Hughes.

James Baldwin writes down to nobody, and he is trying very hard to write up to himself. As an essayist he is thought-provoking, tantalizing, irritating, abusing and amusing. And he uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing.

Read Edward P. Jones' introduction to our new edition of Notes of a Native Son on Scribd.

You can get a copy of our new edition of Notes of a Native Son (or any other African American Studies title) for 20% off and free shipping if you order with code FEB2013. Check out the details of our Black History Month Sale at Beacon.org.

Recent Notable Mentions

Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas by Eva Saulitis

OnEarth magazine’s profile of Eva Saulitis, titled, “The Woman Who Loves Orcas” made the cover of their Spring 13 issue.

She had heard killer whales before, but this was "something other." Communicating across great distances, they would caterwaul in long, siren-like cries, turned up at the end as if they were questions. "This was a voice at once strident and mournful," she writes in her memoir, "a strange hybrid instrument, part trumpet, part oboe, part elephant, part foghorn. And loud." But when the lone scouts were joined by more members of their group, the calls changed to "upswept squawks punctuated by silence; bangs and cracks, like axe blows against one-by planks, some we could attribute to fluke slaps, and some not. Now and then a syncopated blast of echolocation, like automatic gunfire." [Read More]

Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious by Chris Stedman

Q&A with Chris Stedman on BuzzFeed.

Divided we Fail: The Story of an African American Community that Ended the Era of School Desegregation by Sarah Garland

C-SPAN/Book TV aired their “After Words” episode with Sarah Garland interviewed by Marc Lamont.

Fast Future: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaping Our World by David D. Burstein

Write-up of Burstein’s Politics and Prose event.

“Sick of getting a bum rap? Millenials fight back.” David Burstein on MSNBC’s The Cycle.

Interview on The Diane Rehm Show in a panel discussion titled “What It Means to be a Millennial.”

Excerpt, “Millenials Will Save Us,” on Salon.com.

“A Very Fast Future,” online at Forbes:

“FAST FUTURE is a fantastic read for anyone who is curious about the mindset and perspective that the Millennial generation is bringing to their businesses, their politics, and their personal lives. Millennials will continue to shape that world as their ranks elevate to higher levels in corporations and governments and, if FAST FUTURE is any indication, they’ll not be shy about letting you know that they’ve arrived.” [Read More]

Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle Wald

Watch author Gayle Wald and be amazed by the extraordinary guitar playing of “Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock & Roll” on the PBS American Masters website.

Excerpt from Shout, Sister, Shout! featured on Scribd’s homepage in their “Best of the Day” section.

Enter to win a copy of Shout, Sister, Shout! on Beacon.org

“In a Single Garment of Destiny”: A Global Vision of Justice by Martin Luther King, Jr.

An excerpt, “Racism and the World House” is now online at Yes! Magazine.

Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War by Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini

Featured in a Chicago Tribune column by Robert Koehler:

This remarkable book, published in 2012, takes a long, hard look at the dehumanizing effects of war, through the experiences of a number of vets from various wars (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) who share their suffering -- and bare their souls -- to the authors.

"Soul Repair" is an assault on the mythology and public relations of war, on the default setting of nationhood, that: "We sleep comfortably in our beds at night because violent men do violence on our behalf." No matter how many lies are at the foundation of a given war, no matter how disastrously unnecessary and destructive it turns out to be in retrospect -- oops -- the myth of war is ever-unsullied: This time the danger is really there. This time it's crucial that we carpet bomb civilians, then send in our boys and girls to clean out the enemy insurgents. This time it's really for democracy and the American Dream and a good night's sleep.

Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence by Geoffrey Canada

On the Freakonomics podcast, Steve Levitt calls Fist Stick Knife Gun: “one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life. I urge people to go and find it. It’s fantastically insightful.”

Coming Soon

Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl

Library Journal review: “This is no Walden: each chapter begins with a meditation on a tool, including an axe, rock bar, chainsaw, and skid steer... Byl’s writing is superb and doesn’t romanticize her dirty work.”

What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine by Danielle Ofri

“Here is a book that is at once sad and joyful, frightening and thought-provoking. In her lucid and passionate explanations of the important role that emotions play in the practice of medicine and in healing and health, Danielle Ofri tells stories of great importance to both doctors and patients.” Perri Klass, author of Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock and Roll

2013-02-25T10:55:06-05:00

Long before "women in rock" became a media catchphrase, African American guitar virtuoso Rosetta Tharpe proved in spectacular fashion that women could rock. Born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915, Tharpe was gospel's first superstar and the preeminent crossover figure of its golden age.

Sister Rosetta is at long last getting the attention she deserves with "The Godmother of Rock & Roll," a documentary that aired last weekend on PBS, and a related campaign to get her inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

To celebrate the premiere of the documentary "Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock & Roll," on PBS's American Masters series, Beacon Press is giving away copies of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F. Wald. Enter now for your chance to win!

This month is also a great time to buy a copy of Shout, Sister, Shout! During our Black History Month Sale, buy any African American Studies title using promo code FEB2013 by February 28th and receive 20% off and free shipping. Buy two titles and receive a free King Legacy tote bag. Plus, Beacon Press will donate 15% of all sales using promo code FEB2013 to the Young People's Project. More info here.

Friday January 11 is Sister Rosetta Tharpe Day

2008-01-10T10:46:24-05:00

Gayle F. Wald, a professor at George Washington University, is the author of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in 20th -Century U.S. Literature and Culture. She wrote the liner notes for a critically acclaimed 2003 Rosetta Tharpe tribute album. Wald lives in Washington, D.C. Read more about Sister Rosetta Tharpe at www.shoutsistershout.net.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was gospel’s first national superstar: the musician who, beginning in the late 1930s, took the sounds of the “Good News” music then developing in black churches to popular stages and Saturday-night audiences. Rosetta Tharpe had honed her skills as a singer-guitarist on the southern Pentecostal tent-meeting circuit, which she traveled with her mother, the evangelist Katie Bell Nubin, but her ebullient personality and masterful showmanship translated well to such prestigious New York nightspots as the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom. Her defiance of church strictures against engaging with the “wordly” world made her an outcast in some Christian circles, but it also made her a trailblazer and the most important popularizer of gospel before Mahalia Jackson.

Like many musicians, Rosetta Tharpe struggled to stay professionally viable as musical styles and industry allegiances changed. “Sister Rosetta” (as she was known in the church) was a force to be reckoned with in the 1940s, when she had hits such as “Strange Things Happening Every Day” and (with fellow singer Marie Knight) “Just Above My Head” and “Didn’t It Rain.” In 1951, more than 20,000 fans paid good money to attend her wedding at a baseball stadium in Washington, DC, where she entertained the crowd by playing electric guitar in her wedding finery. By the 1950s, however, as record-buyers gravitated to rhythm and blues, she was reduced to playing small gigs and was dropped by her longtime label, Decca Records. Her career was boosted in the 1960s by a series of successful European appearances (especially in England and France), and when Rosetta died, in Philadelphia in 1973 from a massive stroke, few people—in or out of the gospel world—seemed to notice.

Today Rosetta Tharpe lies in an unmarked grave in Philadelphia’s Northwood Cemetery, a casualty of short memory spans and, perhaps, an ongoing inability—even now—to reckon a female gospel musician from Cotton Plant, Arkansas, one of U.S. popular music’s most forceful innovators. Thanks in part to fans like Bob Dylan, who has showcased her on his popular satellite radio show, Rosetta Tharpe has become a minor sensation on YouTube, where her dazzling guitar moves, charismatic singing, and even a pre-Chuck Berry duckwalk amaze viewers. Notwithstanding this and other recent accolades—a 2003 tribute CD featuring the likes of Joan Osborne, Maria Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt, and Sweet Honey in the Rock; a 2007 induction into Blues Foundation Hall of Fame—Rosetta has never quite gotten her due. The unmarked grave is a potent symbol of that neglect.

A concert at the Keswick Theatre in suburban Philadelphia on January 11, 2008 (which Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell has proclaimed "Sister Rosetta Tharpe Day") promises to pay tribute to Tharpe and, in the process, do some fundraising to finally get her that gravestone. It features Philadelphia stalwarts and gospel greats The Dixie Hummingbirds, the legendary singer Odetta, and Rosetta’s old partner, Marie Knight, now embarked on her own resurrected gospel career. If you haven’t seen ’Birds lead singer (and original member) Ira Tucker get down on his knees to sing, you’re missing an essential gospel experience.