‘Rather Than Her Biography’: Listening to Nina Simone’s Diary
Royce 314 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles“If we can draw out the emphasis on the female vocalist’s art, rather than her biographies,” critic Hortense Spillers once wrote. “Then we gather from the singer that power and control maintain an ontological edge. Whatever luck or misfortune the Player has dealt her, she is, in the moment of performance, the primary subject of her own invention.” Considering Spillers’s provocative claim, Professor Salamishah Tillet will look at Civil Rights musician Nina Simone’s diary (and her friendship with the writer Lorraine Hansberry) and discuss the tensions and possibilities that arise as she writes about Simone's inner life, while also exploring...