'American Diva' Celebrates Iconic, Charismatic Performers

What does it mean to be a diva? A shifting, increasingly loaded term, the word “diva” has been used to both deride and celebrate charismatic and unapologetically fierce performers like Aretha Franklin, Divine, and the women of the funk rock band Labelle. In American Diva, a blend of criticism and memoir, Deborah Paredez, chair of the Writing Program at School of the Arts, unravels the enduring fascination with divas, and explores how they have challenged American ideas about feminism, performance, and freedom.

American Diva journeys into Tina Turner’s performances, Celia Cruz’s command of the male-dominated salsa world, the revival of Jomama Jones after a period of exile, and the excellence of Venus and Serena Williams. Recounting how she and her mother endlessly watched Rita Moreno’s portrayal of Anita in West Side Story, and how she learned much about being bigger than life from her Tía Lucia, Paredez chronicles the performers who not only shaped her life, but expressed the aspiration for freedom among brown, Black, and gay communities. Paredez also traces the evolution of the diva through the decades, dismayed at the mid-aughts’ commodification and juvenilizing of its meaning, but eventually finding the diva’s lasting beauty and power.

Paredez discusses the book with Columbia News, along with the books she’s read lately and those she’s planning to read, and her summer plans.

What motivated you to write this book?

I wanted to know why and how exactly divas have sustained me and so many like me—those of us historically excluded from the choruses of America's anthems. I was interested in how divas have changed and how they’ve changed me over the last 50 years. I wanted to make sense of the tremendous proliferation and transformation of the word “diva” during the course of my lifetime into a term of derision for women who make demands, or into a role of aspiration for youngsters attempting to define and navigate the terrain of girlhood. I wanted to know how and why divas, once synonymous with virtuosity, became symbols of vitriol. And how and why, through it all, I kept on loving them. 

In the book, which divas do you discuss as having shaped your life and/or influenced you?

American Diva is a story of how divas have helped me become a brown feminist writer, artist, and mother. A story of how divas have modeled for me how to love, raise, and write about strong, complicated, imperfect, virtuosic women who last and last and last. The divas who accompany me—just a small sampling of my diva pantheon—include popular figures from film, television, opera, music, sports, and the stage. To tell my story is to tell the story of my diva relations: Vikki Carr, Grace Jones, Rita Moreno, Tina Turner, Divine, Aretha Franklin, Celia Cruz, La India, Selena, Serena and Venus Williams, Jomama Jones, Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, and Nadine Sierra. Oh, and my great-aunt, Lucia Bustillo, because what would a book about divas be without the inclusion of an influential, eccentric auntie?  

Do you think the concept of diva has changed in the wake of the Me Too Movement?

One thing I learned in the course of writing the book is that the term "diva" has shifted in its meaning during the course of my lifetime, most especially in the 1990s (when the concept became more commodified) and in the early 2000s (when it became increasingly applied to girls). And given that divas continue to be admired and vilified for making demands and insisting on self-possession in very public ways, it makes sense that the concept of divas would get evoked or revived or revised when any woman takes a stand publicly, and with great risk, to insist upon herself and her own bodily autonomy. 

What have you read lately that you would recommend, and why?

Two diva-related books I've delved into recently: Lynn Melnick's brilliant critical memoir, I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive, is a lyrical, moving, and exacting meditation on Dolly Parton's music and her influence on Melnick’s life. 

I just finished listening to Justin Vivian Bond (cabaret diva extraordinaire) read the audiobook version of Cynthia Carr's new biography, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar. The book offers illuminating insights into queer performance culture in New York in the 1960s and '70s, and Candy's own unique approach to what I would call a diva sensibility.

What's next on your reading list?

Carr's biography and my own chapter on a concert by the band Labelle in the 1970s that relied heavily on articles and ads from the Village Voice has made me excited to read The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture by Tricia Romano.

I'm also looking forward to reading Hanif Abdurraqib's new book, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. I feel a kinship with, and a reliable sense of inspiration from, the way he turns his poet's attention toward popular culture.

Summer plans?

I've done a few events to celebrate the book's release, but mostly I'm looking forward to traveling this summer (Iceland, France, Spain) without my bags being weighed down with loads of books for research and pages of chapter drafts. My next nonfiction book is about thrift stores, flea markets, (fast) fashion, and the acts of excavating and casting off. So I'm eager to dive into some reading about all of this, and to go to some flea markets and thrift stores in the places I visit.  

What are you teaching in the fall semester?

I am excited to teach my seminar on divas again at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. It's a course I've been teaching nearly every year for over a decade. I've learned so much from my students about the diva's enduring hold on us across generations. Over the years, I’ve noticed that we’ve talked about divas as a way of talking about difference, artistry, belonging, power, style, race, girlhood, discipline, pleasure, feminism, grief, family, possibility, gender, fantasy, survival, capitalism, sexuality, and, of course, freedom.