Princess Noire

A complete account of the triumphs and difficulties of the brilliant and high-tempered Nina Simone, whose distinctive voice and music occupy a singular place in the canon of American song. One of eight children in a proud North Carolina black family, the prodigiously talented child was trained in classical piano through the charity of a local white woman, then devastatingly rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music--a dream deferred that would forever shape her self-image as well as her music. Central factors of her life and career include her unique and provocative relationship with her audiences, her involvement in the civil rights movement, her two marriages, and the alienation from the United States that drove her to live abroad. Alongside these threads runs a darker one: Nina's increasing and sometimes baffling outbursts of rage and pain and her lifelong struggle to overcome a deep sense of personal injustice, which persisted even as she won international renown.--From publisher description.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.