You’ve probably guessed by now but I’m a sucker for a good themed reading list. I also enjoy variety in my TBR so I tend to have a couple of themes going at once. Beyond whatever else is in the stack, I usually have a bunch of biographies for a couple of reasons; first, people are interesting. And I mean everyone. There is something interesting about anyone and everyone who has ever walked the face of the planet. Obviously, not all of them get books dedicated to chronicling their lives. Fair enough. The people who do have typically done something particularly remarkable and I enjoy learning about those things, what spurred the person to get to that place when they did, and what happened after. Also, as a writer, biographies give me fodder for characters and stories, and sometimes, their subjects show up as they were, or are, in my own projects (Kusama Yayoi and her purple penis boat installations figure prominently in a series I’m working on right now, in fact).

There are times I read a bunch of books about the same person and times I read single volumes about many different people. My poor friends have to sit through flurries of random tidbits, micro lectures, and late-night deep-thoughts regardless and I figured I’d lessen their burden by foisting it upon you, my itty-bitty audience. Sound like fun? Good, because here we go:

CW: sexual assault, domestic abuse, suicide, overdose,

My Story by Marilyn Monroe with Ben Hecht with photography by Milton Greene

Memoirs are always interesting because they give you a very intimate view of the subject: their own. Do people lie? Maybe but when I compared Monroe’s version of her life (which ends abruptly with her marriage to Joe DiMaggio) to other chronicles she was, for the most part, crueler to herself than anyone else has been. And it’s no surprise the book ends where it does – DiMaggio was controlling, jealous, and most likely abusive, and if I had to guess, forbade her from discussing their life in any sort of public forum while they were together, especially one as permanent as print.

Sometimes, the stories people don’t write are as telling as the ones they do.

Many writers and historians have sought to discount the facts in My Story: the orphanage Marilyn writes about was kinder than she recalls and the foster families as well. They deny she was sexually assaulted (<– why women don’t report, by the way). She was bi, she wasn’t bi. She was bipolar, she wasn’t bipolar. She was quiet, she was a party girl. She was a honeytrap, she was trying to survive. She was a brilliant women who never had the chance at the education she wanted, she was a dumb(fake) blonde. The fact of the matter is, no one has the right to her story except her and what we remember is more important that what other people remember about us (except for the sexual assault parts and abuse parts. Believe women. Always). What Marilyn (and Norma Jean) remembered made her who she was and we can’t understand her, or who she became) without understanding where she came from.

So yes, this is an important book to read if that’s something you want to do even if every book you read about her frames an event she talks about a different way. It’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about the way Marilyn Monroe wrote her story. She deserves to be heard the way she wanted to be heard. We all do.

Marilyn by Gloria Steinem with photography by George Barris 

If you had asked me to choose an author who would be sympathetic to Marilyn Monroe’s upbringing, fight to find her place, and early, tragic death, I would not, in a million years, have picked Gloria Steinem but here we are. The famous feminist’s biography of the actress does call on My Story and on many other sources as well to populate its pages and the result in a generous, sisterly biography that not only lays out the milestones of the star’s life but also pegs her as a woman very much ahead of her time and asks the questions, “What if she had had the benefit of full on feminism?” “What if she had the benefit of the sisterhood?” “Could we have helped her? Could we have saved her?”

Most biographers have an agenda. They want to prove that their subject had a meaningful affect on history, be it positive or negative. They want to show readers that their central character was important. That the world would have been different had they not been where they were when they were there or had they made a different decision. Sometimes it’s even to prove whether the person was “good” or “bad” according to society, or the author’s moral compass (I’ll have more to say on that below). Steinem’s agenda is very different, novel at least from my perspective in that I’ve never read a biography that’s quite like it before: she set out to prove that history and posterity let Marilyn down by creating her from Norma Jean and then setting her adrift without the proper tools to survive the maelstrom that was 1950s and 60s Hollywood where men were men and women were blow up dolls.

She’s not wrong.

But she is kind.

And more of history’s women deserve that kindness.

Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon by Charles Casillo

Here’s what it’s okay for biographers to do: tell you what other people thought about an event in their subject’s life if they can back that opinion up with documentation. Here’s what it’s not okay for them to do: put their own value judgments on choices and events in their subjects lives. Casillo does that later a lot and I’m not saying he can’t, I’m saying that’s a different species of book and it shouldn’t be billed as a biography, which should at least make an attempt, at being factual even if it does have a thesis to prove.

Did I learn some new stuff reading The Private Life of a Public Icon? Yes, but… I feel as though anything that isn’t in at least two of the other bios is suspect and in places where it came into direct conflict with the other bios/memoir I read, I immediately leaned toward the other source (though I did try to verify; usually the other source was closer to the truth though not always). There’s also the fact that Casillo clearly loves the drama of Marilyn as a Porche with no breaks rather than a woman with a family history of severe mental illness who likely found herself in possession of a genetic legacy that wasn’t yet fully understood (and still isn’t) and faced with limited treatment options and a medical field packed full of misogynistic bias (surprise! it still is).

That’s all a very long way of saying there are a lot of really great biographies of Marilyn out there and in my humble opinion, this isn’t one of them so feel free to skip it and spend your time on one of the other options.

Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark by Cassandra Peterson (9/21)

And now, for something completely different…

I’m about 60% of the way through Yours Cruelly but I feel very confident telling you that if you wanted Elvira, or wanted to be her, which if you are a lady, man, or non-binary friend off a certain age, you probably did, you will love this book. Peterson holds nothing, and I mean nothing, back as she takes us through her rock-and-roll, Vegas showgirl, struggling-actress life to the nearly-missed opportunity at a local TV station that spawned millions of Halloween costumes and also, drag personas.

Every time I light up my e-reader, I end up running out of my office to tell the hubs, “Honey, you’re not going to believe –” or laughing my ass off or thinking, “This can’t all possibly have happened to one person…” And yet, it did and damn, I wish I’d caused more trouble as a teenager and in my 20s. I was far, far, far too well-behaved. *Sigh* I could have been a goth queen.

Anyway, if you were a child of the 80s and snuck downstairs to watch horror flicks your parents would have disapproved of hosted by the Mistress of the Dark your parents would have disapproved of, grab Yours Cruelly when it drops on Sept. 21st. You will not be sorry.

And that’s round 1! For round 2, I’m looking at Anna May Wong, Zora Neale Hurston, one more Marilyn (that focuses on her relationships with the Kennedys), and hopefully the 5,000 pound biography of Andy Warhol I started six months ago and then got distracted from. Happy reading!