Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year

Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year

Alexander, Paul

Paperback

ArtistsBiographies GeneralMusicians

Publisher Price: $19.00

ISBN10: 059331252X
ISBN13: 9780593312520
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: Mar 11 2025
Pages: 368
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.20 Depth: 7.90
Language: English
A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon

A book written as only one artist could view another, with insight and sincere compassion. --Sandra Cisneros, best-selling author of Woman Without Shame

In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander--author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger--gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America's most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life--with relevant flashbacks to provide context--to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday's artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.

During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop--a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching--limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.

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