Customer Reviews

Her Name Is Barbra: An Intimate Portrait of the Real Barbra Streisand

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a biography unlike any other one is ever likely to read because it is an inspiring story of the sheer triumph of the will over society's attempt to define one into its carefully orchestrated boxes. Boxes, inside of whose confines, Barbra Streisand repeatedly refused to live.

This very "un-pretty," sexless, headstrong but very funny, and "driven" woman, repeatedly defied the very long odds society had stacked against her. As so few of us are able to do, Barbra, by always marching to the drummer inside her head, rather than to the cadence society had laid out for her, was able to use her considerable smarts, and her emerging but wildly untamed talents, to negotiate her own terms on life.

Through the sheer force of her will, she became beautiful, sexy, famous, wealthy, and is thus the living example of T.S. Eliot's maxim in a poem called the "Confidential Clerk": "If you lack the courage to impose your terms on life then you must accept the terms it offers you." She is, along with Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor and Miles Davis, one of my heroes.

Barbra Streisand did not like the terms life had to offer her: of coming from an emotionless and very dysfunctional family, being an ugly Jewish girl with only modest talents and emerging into a superficial world controlled mostly by either misogynistic idiots, conformist freaks and "fakes."

By the sheer force of her independence and the harnessing of her talents through her own penchant for perfection, she slipped the noose of the grim reaper and a possible certain trip to the "funny-farm," by turning all of her own lemons into lemonade. Not only did she thrive, becoming wildly successful at the age of nineteen, but also got to "thumb her nose" at those who wanted to control her, and thus she helped in her own very modest way to rearrange the deck chairs on the deck of America's so very ugly social order.

With her considerable wealth she also was able to buy herself some happiness and find peace and a refuge from the more inane aspects of this world.

Life's triumphs do not get much better than this. Five stars

Though not perfect, this is Streisand's best biography for three reasons (1) it is well researched, (2) the author is not in awe of Streisand and avoids writing a tribute, and (3) it is interesting from beginning to end.

My biggest complaint is that Mr. Riese steps into the shoes of Streisand more often than he should. The research is good, but only as good as the people he has interviewed (the majority of whom hold a grudge against Streisand). There are statements in the book in which he actually tells us her thoughts, this is not only arrogant on his behalf, but unfair. I think he takes too much creative license. Good attempt though.