Holding Lightning

"A top-notch biography of a generational talent." - Kirkus Reviews (starred) "Dynamic.... Lordi zooms out to interrogate why the singer was seen less as a self-determined artist with her own vision than a 'Black Barbie.'... Holding Lightning works eloquently to elevate and re-reframe." - The New York Times Book Review A showstopping portrait of Whitney Houston as we’ve never seen her before—a woman in her full power, a musician who knew the impact of her gift, and a fulcrum of Black celebrity—in this first major biography of the artist who became an icon. We remember Whitney Houston for her soaring voice on songs that defined a generation and kicked open the door to Black women in pop music. Her trademark stance was a picture of elegance and power: head thrown back, arms flung straight out. Then there was her sound. One producer recalled Whitney’s otherworldly ability to hold notes, comparing it to “holding lightning in your hand, holding lightning in your throat.” She tried to hold the lightning as she bathed us all in the glow. But since her death in 2012, the woman known as “The Voice” has been reduced to just that. Whitney’s critics have slotted her memory into a tired genre of famous doomed women whose success owed more to their labels and their producers than to any agency of their own. Yet a closer look reveals a serious artist and woman of conviction striving to be who she was. She said it best: “There would be no ‘Whitney Houston’ without Whitney Houston.” In Holding Lightning, leading cultural critic and professor Emily Lordi has gained unique access to Houston’s innermost circle to show us the Whitney we’ve been unwilling to see—her fluid sexuality, her unapologetic love of her own talent, her insistence that she be the architect of her own career. And, crucially, Lordi positions Houston’s pivotal life in the long history of Black celebrity. Before “rooting for everybody Black” became the norm, Whitney worked as a relentless advocate for Black female talent across the entertainment industry. Now, finally, in Holding Lightning, we have the essential, up-close portrait of the icon we thought we knew.

Emily Lordi is a writer, cultural critic, and professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of three books on Black literature and popular music, a writer-at-large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and a contributor to NewYorker.com, The Washington Post, and others. She lives in Nashville, TN.