Billie Holiday The Last Interview and Other Conversations with an introduction by Khanya Mtshali

Why reading this book: Billie Holiday The Last Interview and Other

Conversations with an introduction by Khanya Mtshali? Because it is the most authentic portrait that you will obtain thanks to a series of meeting with this beloved singer, real, without filters. Music, life, dreams, her additions, racism, and much more.

Billie Holiday was a complicated person because, just, her life has been complicated; plus she was born black in a world still dominated by white people and where black needed to fight all the times for obtaining equal rights.

Her life started very shockingly: once raped she was sent to Catholic reformatory school for two years and then reunited with her mother, they went to NYC where they started to work in the sex business. Billie Holiday was just 14.

But it hasn't been just a conflictual life because of sex, but also because of her nymerous addictions; alcohol, heroine. She couldn't live anymore without heroine, she confessed once in an interview.

As written in this book: "It would seem to cast judgment on those who, like Holiday, discovered the best and worst versions of themselves at the bottom of a bottle, or the sharpest end of a needle. Addiction is lonely, hard, and exhausting, especially for women addicts born poor or working-class, who are rarely given any real shot at redemption."

Highly recommended.

I thank Melville for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori