Madonna

A Rebel Life

De: Mary Gabriel

Narrado por: Elise Arsenault

In this riveting biography, award-winning author Mary Gabriel chronicles the meteoric rise and enduring influence of the greatest female pop icon of the modern era: Madonna.

With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion—as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles—taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. Within two years of her 1983 debut album, a flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held a Madonna lookalike contest featuring Andy Warhol as a judge, and opened a department called “Madonna-land.”

But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanor of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever—and be whoever—they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And, as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative, visionary music, videos, films, and live performances that changed culture globally.

Deftly tracing Madonna’s story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"A gorgeous and unsettling narrative...Ninth Street Women is supremely gratifying, generous, and lush but also tough and precise -- in other words, as complicated and capacious as the lives it depicts...It's as if once Gabriel got started, the canvas before her opened up new vistas. We should be grateful she yielded to its possibilities."—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

"Ninth Street Women is like a great, sprawling Russian novel, filled with memorable characters and sharply etched scenes. It's no mean feat to breathe life into five very different and very brave women, none of whom gave a whit about conventional mores. But Ms. Gabriel fleshes out her portraits with intimate details, astute analyses of the art and good old-fashioned storytelling."—Ann Landi, Wall Street Journal

"Ninth Street Women is a must read...Gabriel seamlessly weaves the intimate and the public, the lives and the art, making us feel we were there...It is a story that is a part of the American story, told here in vivid, meaningful detail, an absolutely pivotal text."—Margaret Randall, Women's Review of Books

"Gabriel's fascinating group portrait shimmers with vivid personal detail...She traces their interwoven paths from studio to Cedar Bar to the Eight Street loft known as the Club...Over time, Willem de Kooning outshone Elaine; Jackson Pollock eclipsed Krasner. Key contributions were erased...Gabriel makes sure these major artists who have been written out of history are not forgotten."—Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com

"Masterful. Mixing critical insight with juicy storytelling, Mary Gabriel brings five brilliant female painters to the fore of the art revolution that cut a wide swath in postwar America."—Patricia Albers, author of Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter

Epic

An epic book for an epic woman and life. So delicious for a Madonna fan and music lover. I relived every fabulous album as the author meticulously expounded on every interesting detail. Where would we be without Madonna? Wow! What a life!

She’s an icon

I love Madonna but her story in life was boring. I admire how far she got and her intelligence & talent but boring story

Book Good, Narrator Not So Much

This is a thoroughly researched account of Madonna and her art. While there are some insights into her as a person, the greater focus of the book is on the art. I think that the author did a great job on this front. The grand problem I had with this book was with the narrator. She was slow and kept butchering names. When I bumped it up to 1.5, she went by at a normal speed and it was much more tolerable. Still, it was not a good reading on her part. This book deserved more, I think.

Fascinating portrait of one of most important artists of our time

Well researched and fascinating portrait of Madonna. If you aren’t going in as a fan, I’d be surprised if you didn’t come out as one. Her tenacity, drive, creativity and humanity in the face of constant criticism, misogyny and now ageism is astounding. Sadly, I think her true worth won’t be appreciated by many until she’s gone. Don’t wait that long .

Not a biography but a history document

A document not only for fans but for LGBTQ history. I will make you appreciate every detail of her legacy