Trailer: Billie Was a Black Woman

Billie Was a Black Woman is a four-part podcast series that refracts Black womanhood through the prism of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday - widely considered to be one of the most innovative artists of all time. In partnership with the Lee Daniels film, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, in each episode acclaimed host and writer Rebecca Carroll dives into different facets of Billie’s life and legacy, exploring what it means to defy the narrow categorizations thrust upon Black artists, Black bodies, and Black women today.

The full series will release on April 7, 2021.

Billie Was a Black Woman was produced by Spoke Media in coordination with Paramount Audio.

©2021 Paramount Audio, a Division of Paramount Pictures Corporation (P)2021 Paramount Audio, a Division of Paramount Pictures Corporation

No, this is not it.

In her intro, Carroll offensively and foolishly says “all Black women were fractured.” It went downhill from there. Sorry Carroll’s life has been experienced as “fractured,” but she doesn’t speak for most Black women know. She treats Black women as a monolithic. Had someone other than a Black woman said this, it would cause uproar with Black Twitter. She politicizes and markets Billie’s pain, trauma, and resilience to project perhaps her own fracturing? Who knows? This podcast reminds me of why the telling of the dead from the living reveals more about the living author than the subject matter. Read Holiday’s fictionalized autobiography to get Holiday’s nuances of herself.