This month’s Book Club pick is Danyel Smith’s Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. Shine Bright combines music criticism, memoir and biography to give a detailed and intimate narrative of pop music’s bedrock, as built by Black women. Smith’s history as a music fan, essayist,Vibe and Billboard editor, and host of the Black Girl Songbook podcast has put her in the center of this American story since childhood. She covers everyone from the enslaved singing poet Phillis Wheatley to Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston, Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey and Gladys Knight, along with under-appreciated artists such as Deniece Williams, Jody Watley and Marilyn McCoo.
We will be discussing Shine Bright by Danyel Smith on Wednesday, May 25th. You can find out who our guest will be for that discussion by listening to the podcast on May 4th. If you’d like even more discussion around the book, consider joining The Stacks Pack on Patreon and participating in The Stacks’ monthly virtual book club.
Order your copy of our May book on Bookshop.org or Amazon, or get a copy of the audiobook from Libro.FM.
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