The Woman I Am [Hardcover]

Helen Reddy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2006

In this highly anticipated memoir, Helen Reddy reveals the story of her rise to international fame-and her triumph over difficult times.

The Woman I Am is an incredibly inspiring autobiography by Helen Reddy, the woman who made "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar" a household phrase. With her song "I Am Woman," Reddy provided the feminist anthem of the 1970s. She became the first Australian to win a Grammy, to have her own prime-time variety show on a U.S. television network, and to have three number-one singles in the same year.

Then, at the height of her career, Reddy's world was shattered by the death of both her parents, and simultaneously, the news that she had a rare, incurable disease. In this riveting, frank, and ultimately brave memoir, Reddy reveals the emotional highs and lows that have shaped her as an artist and as a complex woman, with a rich inner life sustained by a strong spiritual faith.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

World-famous for I Am Woman and three other albums that went gold in the 1970s, Reddy was the daughter of hard-working, Australian vaudeville performers. Onstage with her parents since she was four, Reddy was 17 when she started getting her own singing gigs. She married at 19, but her husband was abusive when she became pregnant, so she moved out. Winning a ticket to America in a local singing contest, Reddy soon worked her way to the top of the charts. Unfortunately, her next husbands were also alcoholic and/or abusive, and Reddy struggled to recover financially and emotionally from each. While Reddy's career and husband problems are shared by many women in show business, her paranormal interests are distinctive. Reddy was 11 when she first experienced "astral projection"; later, she had a dream foretelling Robert Kennedy's assassination. Reincarnation, she explains, may involve individuals or groups of people "reincarnating together to resolve unfinished business." Thus, "Elvis was formerly King Tutankhamen," and "Richard Nixon was formerly Andrew Johnson, who was formerly Thomas Paine." Reddy also explains that AIDS is actually one of the long-dormant "biblical plagues." While mainstream Reddy fans may be turned off by the New Age–speak, alternative-reality readers won't bat an eye. Photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Unforgettable for the seventies feminist anthem "I Am Woman," Reddy became the first Australian to garner, in the same year, a Grammy, her own prime-time American TV show, and three number-one singles. The daughter of Australian vaudevillians, born six weeks after Pearl Harbor, she made her theatrical debut at age five. From childhood, she divided people into those who were in show business and those who weren't, and she always dreamed of going to America, where everything was "bigger and better." Her warm, inviting memoir discusses lean years making the rounds of Sydney nightclubs, a disastrous first marriage to an alcoholic, peripatetic early days in America, and then the unprecedented, life-changing success of "I Am Woman." She is moving about her losses, including her parents' deaths at the height of her fame and her own diagnosis with Addison's disease. She devotes a good deal of the book to her rich spiritual life, particularly her fascination with astral projection and reincarnation. Devotees of feminism and spirituality may join Reddy's musical fans in appreciating her story. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher; 1st American Ed edition (May 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585424897
• ISBN-13: 978-1585424894
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,264,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Would make a great VH1 Behind The Music, June 12, 2006

By 

John Jenks (West Hollywood, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman I Am (Hardcover)

In the time-honored tradition of celebrity memoir, Helen Reddy's The Woman I Am is utterly scannable without worrying itself with soul searching or excessive detail. I nonetheless studied it like it was the Torah. Reddy's story, however, is more interesting than the one presented in this tome: a young, divorced Australian single mother with a pretty voice & dreams of stardom comes to America, becomes first Australian to win a Grammy Award & host an American television show, writes THE anthem of the feminist movement (which is still being sampled & covered -- including an amusing revision as a jingle for a chain of fast food restaurant, I Am Man), privately battles Addison's disease (still not sure what that is), parts company with record label after the hits stop happening, loses an unspecified fortune when her addict husband/manager embezzles her earnings (some $30 million, if you believe Julia Phillips account in You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again), manages to find the will to divorce him AND pay off the debts he'd saddled her with (hear her ROAR!), retires from the showbiz racket and becomes a hynotherapist living off an AFTRA pension. What a ride.

What's the tell-tale sign of a cheap autobiography? No index! So it's not surprising that there is a dearth of detail. Her husbands, for example, are never even referred to by name -- Number One, Number Two, Number Three. (Taking feminism a little far, don't you think?) Reddy goes on ad nauseum (charts and everything!) about her interest in geneology and New Age mysticism, but it is her body of recorded work -- a multiplatinum greatest hits package, for heavens sake! -- for which she will be most remembered, yet she treats it almost in passing, perhaps because her meteoric rise coincided with the deaths of both her parents. Still, I found myself wanting to know what were her recording sessions like? How did it FEEL to be #1. Did she have anxiety about the winning streak coming to an end? (There are a number of hits -- big ones, too -- that don't even get a mention, such as Harriet Schock's Ain't No Way To Treat A Lady). She alludes to jealous, verbally abusive husband Number Two but is short on specifics, except to allege that after their split, people wouldn't hire her for fear he would show up with a shotgun. (So he was violent as well?) How much responsibility for the downward spiral of her career does Reddy herself cop to simply by virtue of being passively acquiescent to her handlers? And after two marriages to abusive men, what was her state of mind when she married her third? (Fat chance of finding out here!) Husband Number Three comes and goes with no description whatsoever. (How did they meet? Where did they marry? What led to divorce?) Poof, he appears, then poof, he's gone. (I think he was a musician in her band in the early 90's -- seem to remember something to that effect the one & only time I ever saw one of her concerts, which was excellent, by the way.) It dawned on me when reading about her early life as a culture shocked single mother first trying to find her footing in America, or later on as a stalwart who outsmarts an unscrupulous concert promoter attempting to stiff her out of her fee, that Reddy has written the basis for a one-woman show.

SERVING SUGGESTION: Any one of the number of Reddy's greatest hits packages.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classy-period. Actually-World Class Helen, World Class, May 4, 2006

By 

kooky Kid "Bookfiend1818" (east coast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman I Am (Hardcover)

I am so grateful to this generous performer who gave the world so much first rate
crafty sophisticated beautiful music that she made her own - there is no debate that they (She?) broke the mold that she was cast from. Helen earned the first Grammy given to an Australian, that I didn't know until today.As well she had a dozen songs reach the top forty in an era not so long ago when radio dominated the media , and it made you feel good to listen to "pop" music.
High class with no airs, the author did us all a service when she wrote this reflective heartfelt recollection of her experience as an artist in the 20th century, a working mother who held high standards, worked prodigiously , and left the world a legacy- and truly doesnt have an ego to protect, She reveals herself to be vulnerable and insightful all the way. I noticed that like many artists, she doesn't have much to say about the emotional or intellectual stuff of the songs- which is ineffable, personal, and can be felt and understood only by listening to the music itself.
There is much in this book to be appreciated, layers of history, vignettes of another time, in another place.One feels the members of her family peaking through- almost sitting beside this reader.Helen's love of the richness of geneology and history is so kindly revealed, as is her enthusiasm, kindness, compassion, and what I consider leading edge thought. Right on sister!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!, May 31, 2006

By 

Sue - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman I Am (Hardcover)

I read this book in 2 days. I was fasinated! I have waited for 30 years to read about Helen. I have loved her music for 30 years. I was glad to know that she seems to be a loving and warm woman. The best thing she said that she was glad that her children turned out to be good and kind people. They must have learned it somewhere!

As for that unkind review a few up, he obviously didn't read the end of the book. The part where she says , "You are what you think about." and "KINDNESS BEGETS KINDNESS:.