As fearless and unapologetic as the divas she profiles, Deborah Paredez’s newest book of nonfiction, American Diva: Extraordinary, Unruly, Fabulous (2024) is nothing if not inventive. Though Paredez’s latest book is thoroughly researched, insightful in examination, and revelatory in conclusion, it is anything but stiff in language, anything but ordinary in approach to an oft-misunderstood subject. Though the reader encounters such colorful creatives as Vikki Carr, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, and Venus and Serena Williams, we also meet Paredez’s Tía Lucia, an equally influential, and no less flamboyant, female figure in the author’s life. Perhaps surprisingly, though luckily, we encounter Paredez herself—as a young Mexican girl in San Antonio’s north side, as a college student at Trinity University, as a doctoral candidate in Chicago, as a tenure-track professor in Austin.
Not simply inserted within American Diva but rather inseparable from the narrative itself, snapshots from Paredez’s adult life abound in the author’s careful study of the divas’ performance (whether music or sport) and their lasting influence. Through such a unique literary hybrid, the reader witnesses the author incorporate diva-ness and diva studies into her own life—Paredez’s own education/professional trajectory, her gradual yet undeniable understanding of her racialized/gendered body, her intense exploration and assertion of her own sexuality.
“The sound of a diva’s voice was how I knew we were Mexican. Or, at least, how I knew we couldn’t hide it from the neighbors” (Paredez 1). And so begins the Prologue (“Vikki Carr’s Voice”) to American Diva. Though there indeed exist sobering reflections on exclusion or alienation throughout Paredez’s latest book (e.g., the willful mispronunciation of the author’s surname by presumably non-Hispanic teachers), there are also moments of welcome insight and celebration (ibid. 3-4). As with the role of the diva, Paredez suggests (citing listening to her father’s record of the Mexican singer Vikki Carr when young as an example), those polar sources of emotion were inextricably linked: “We turned the record over and played the other side. We knew both sides. We were Mexican. I was mortified. And I was mesmerized” (ibid. 5).
As much as American Diva is an examination, an acknowledgment, and a reclamation, it is also a critique. Not just of the way the diva has been appropriated and commoditized, or the insidious (and arguably incorrigible) nature of American neoliberalism and capitalism in general (however significant such observations are), but, regrettably, of the diva herself. In this way, Paredez proves herself first and foremost an objective academic (To a reader who might otherwise dismiss American Diva as nothing more than a secular hagiography, she shows them otherwise). As Paredez concedes, the diva is, unfortunately, not always feminist in function or nature:
Her insistent regularity, her outsider pose, her competitiveness with other divas, her effortlessly executed side-eye, all make her relationship with a collective cause vexed, at best. In the end, she refuses to be fixed within the category of empowering role model for unruly women. (ibid. 20). Nor, for that matter, is the diva always a womanist figure, or at least one to whom positive attributes are ascribed when incarnated by African American women. As Paredez bemoans, “Black women have historically been excluded from the exalted category of the discipline, virtuosic diva[,] even as they are regularly disregarded—which is to say racialized—as excessive and demanding and monstrous divas” (ibid. 18).
Though never in so many words, Paredez, at various points in the second chapter, is critical not just of the way in which the diva has been misused but also of the way in which the diva too easily lends herself to consumerism and materialism. As she bemoans, “‘Diva’ no longer seemed to describe or decry accomplished women of a certain age but to condition girls or would-be girls of any age to be hyper-feminine consumers” (ibid. 26).
Notwithstanding such legitimate critiques, Paredez’s assessment of the diva is overall quite positive (and rightly so). Yes, the diva does is inherently individualist (and, consequently, not always a friend to feminism). For that same reason, she proves herself too often accommodating to appropriation and commoditization. However, the diva also creates a space for those marginalized on the basis of sex, race, sexuality, class, or some other subordinate identity. According to Paredez, the diva allows for bodily triumph and transgression, providing a model for those who might otherwise hide themselves, fearing reprimand for laying claim to what is rightly theirs (be it their voice, their body, their life, etc.).
Mirroring Paredez’s own recognition and assertion of self (born the same year of the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality in New York; arguably reborn in 2009, the year in which she taught her first seminar on divas), the diva, too, is born and reborn (ibid. 7, 27). Not only Paredez or the diva, though, but the author’s daughter, too, whom she says “is reborn with every diva song she’s hailed to sing. Which makes her ‘Generation Diva’” (ibid. 28-29). Although not in the sense of living through her daughter or sacrificing herself for her (which Paredez takes pains to clarify and emphasize), she, too, becomes, like the diva, simultaneously of her “time and timeless” (ibid. 17).
Portrayed as woman (as opposed to a girl), the diva can prove problematic when intersected with race. As Paredez notes in “Diva Girls,” one of the later chapters of the book, tennis superstar sisters “Venus and Serna [Williams] were not legible as girls, much less luminous diva girls” (ibid. 152). Of course, there exists, on the other side of the spectrum, the historic infantilization of Black athletes, especially Black female athletes. Nonetheless, the ascribing of adulthood to the then-teenage Venus and Serena, and the expectations that attend such an unfair attribution, proved no less unfortunate. As Paredez notes (citing the exasperated response of Richard Williams to a reporter’s ill-formed question of Venus), “The Williams family had to keep insisting on Venus and Serena’s girlhood precisely because they understood that Black youth have never been regarded as children in American popular imagination” (ibid. 152).
Even with Girl Power, though, the arguably feminist movement of the 1990s, Black and Brown girls too often found themselves excluded as a result of the individualistic nature of the movement (ibid. 142). Though well-meaning in its emphasis on hard work and discipline, Girl Power did so at the expense of addressing structural inequities (ibid.). As divas, however, Venus and Serena Williams did not simply excel athletically but did so in a way that distinguished them from other Black superstars—performing without apology (ibid. 139). Careful to clarify that one can be both diva yet not a mere object of admiration for the white male gaze, unique in their “performance” yet collectively-minded (e.g., a winner of “four consecutive Majors titles” yet no less a feminist), Paredez talks to her then-baby daughter, telling “her that it’s OK to let it all out, the screaming and crying and language-shattering outburst. Sometime that’s what we need after a long hard, day” (ibid. 153, 154). In other words, Paredez gives her daughter permission to be diva. Or, rather, she insists on it.
Though devoted to the idea of the diva, her far-reaching influence, her role in music and sports, and the diva’s profound impact on her own life, Deborah Paredez is anything but a doe-eyed admirer. No, she is indefatigable in her research, assertive and unapologetic in her conclusions. If you are looking for a mere secular hagiography of artistic and athletic superstars, then skip American Diva: Extraordinary, Unruly, Fabulous. If, however, you are looking for something that makes you encounter, reconsider, reclaim, and critique, all the while being treated to musical hits (both canonical and underappreciated), as well as moments of triumph on the court, then pick up Paredez’s latest book. You won’t be disappointed.