The power of the brown American diva

‘Please don’t let this be a scolding!’ I thought as I moved past this book’s tempting title to read the author’s bio, noting that she is ‘the chair of the Writing Programme at Columbia University’. Sure enough, the very first line of the prologue – ‘The sound of a diva’s voice was how I knew we were Mexican’ – made me fear that this might be the case. Funnily enough, my mother was also fond of the diva in question, Vikki Carr – especially the sob-fest ‘It Must Be Him’ – and my family weren’t Mexican as far as I know.

My scolding radar flared up even further on seeing the word ‘queer’ in a quote on the back cover by one Farah Jasmine Griffin (the author of the very scoldy-sounding Read Until You Understand): ‘A people – brown, black and queer – too big, bold, beautiful and messy to be confined within enclosures or by borders.’ Queer – that’ll be bored and boring straights piggybacking on to minority status for moaning purposes. Funny how ‘gay’ used to annoy some people; these days it comes as a blessed relief. To paraphrase Hilaire Belloc: Always keep a hold of ‘gay’/ For fear of finding ‘queer/ them/they’.

Part memoir, part manifesto – that by taking divas as role models, oppressed people may break the chains that hold them back and enjoy their place in the sun and the light of the glitter ball – this book begins when Deborah Paredez’s hard-working Mexican parents move from a Hispanic district of Texas to an Anglo one in the early 1970s. Paredez is praised for her bookishness by ‘well-meaning’ teachers – the rotters. Her parents encourage her to speak English at home rather than Spanish – the poor dupes.