I'll Never Write My Memoirs

Jones's outrageous influence endures to the present day, so it is disappointing that her memoir, promising blood and thunder, instead turns into a litany of experiences, lacking the spark that would keep the reader interested. Jones was a 1970s runway model turned disco recording star, whose classics include the lasting "La Vie en Rose." She narrates her journey beginning with a painful childhood in Jamaica, where she was regularly beaten, and her rejection of how religion was practiced there. She writes that she felt "nothing" upon leaving Jamaica for America. Later she embraced her native country, letting Jamaica into her music. Jones plods from event to event, recounting bare facts of her life that could be easily found elsewhere. She gets more personal when talking about her love of hats and hoods, and in her discussion of her theatrical performances, channeling her androgynous persona into finding "a different way to be black, lesbian, male, female, animal." At the end, she is alone, but writes that she is not lonely. After a duet performance with Pavarotti, she feels afraid of being abandoned. She is disappointed with the singers who came after her because they don't stay true to themselves. And she writes about the sex, drink, drugs, and arrests that may come with fame. But all these anecdotes are unfortunately detached from emotion and insight. (Sept.)