Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year

By Paul Alexander

Book Overview

A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon

"A book written as only one artist could view another, with insight and sincere compassion." --Sandra Cisneros, best-selling author of Woman Without Shame

In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander--author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger--gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America's most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life--with relevant flashbacks to provide context--to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday's artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.

During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop--a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching--limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 059331252X
• ISBN13: 9780593312520
• Release Date: March 2025
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"