The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey

 

Welcome Back, Booklovers. Now I don't normally read memoirs but as a Mariah fan I just had to pick this up. She's been talking about releasing her memoirs for so long and I wanted that deeper glimpse into her life. Now it should've been titled Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel but I digress. I've never listened to an over 11 hr audiobook so fast.

Hearing her narrate the audiobook herself really made this one rise above. She doesn't do bleak narrations. Instead she talks to you as if you're a friend she's telling stories to. Anyone who is a fan is familiar with her mannerisms that are ever present here. Even if you are the biggest stan and thought you knew Mariah well this was full of information you've never heard. 

Now if you're jumping into this for plenty of tabloid fodder you're not going to receive much here. Outside of the details of her affair with Derek Jeter where she describes him making her feel alive again as they snuck around NY and Puerto Rico you won't find that salacious gossip. While ultimately not the love of her life she thought he would be he did give her the courage to feel free to act and dress the way she wanted to. So she holds that relationship dear for what it represents. That being said I didn't expect her to put so much of their business out there on front street. He hasn't even shared much of his relationship with his wife and they have two kids together!

We've heard her say she had a rough childhood but she always refrained from truly going into depth about it beyond stating she grew up poor and moving from house to house. Rough childhood was an understatement. With a family like her family who needs enemies? Her family seemed to never be able to pull it together and get along. Her mother was neglectful and jealous of her, her sister tried to sell her into prostitution, her brother had rage issues and was unpredictable, and her father became estranged from her.  She spends the first section of this book on her early life with her family. Her early life is dark and full of suffering with few bright spots outside of some family friends here and there and some weekends spent with her father's family.  And she walks us through the start of her music career doing paid gigs when she was young and commuting back and forth while working on her demo tape. One thing Mariah always had was determination and hope. She knew she was destined to be more and was willing to fight in the face of adversity. 

In the second section we see her start her career and a tumultuous relationship with Sony Music's Tommy Mottola. This was a precautionary tale about getting involved with someone so much older with more power than you. Not only was he pulling the strings in her professional life but behind closed doors he was isolating her to keep her under his thumb. She really goes into detail about her life looking like a fairytale to the public while she was suffering behind closed doors. She lights up when talking about building her first house but little did she know Storybrooke Manor would become a prison surrounded by security cameras, intercoms, and armed guards. 

For years people have acted like Mariah kept quiet about her Black side even though she's mentioned it from the beginning. In this book she lights up when talking about spending time with her father's family. She praises her aunts and grandmother for what they accomplished despite the odds against her. It's very easy to write her off as a "tragic mulatto" as many people have over the years but when you listen to her talk about what she experienced growing up feeling out of place surrounded by white people and their micro and macroaggressions as well as what her father experienced it sheds new light. Yes, we've all had it hard. But not all of us have been jailed, had our faces literally spit in, our homes shot at, been locked in a room and verbally assaulted. And Mariah herself states it took her meeting Derek's family to realize her family's many other issues had nothing to do with racial identity and everything to do with them being dysfunctional.

The post Tommy (but not really because he was still behind the scenes in the industry) era starts off very difficult for her. There's sabotage behind the scenes with a certain singer being used as a tool against her which she talked about back then but people chose to ignore. The media wants to see her fail and revels in the hurdles she must overcome. Since she's only recently coming to terms with being bipolar she does mention the hospital visits and treatments and lows and highs back in 2001 when she was originally diagnosed but you can sense the denial. And much of that seems to stem from not wanting to be seen like her mother.

And after the lost of her father who she was able to mend the fences with at the end of his life and understand why he was the way he was she takes us through her triumphant return. I have fond memories of sitting around with my friends belting out the lyrics to "We Belong Together". I remember doing laps during practice listening to "Don't Forget About Us". She's been the soundtrack to so many people's lives and it was nice to relive some moments in time. 

This book has so many quotable moments like the diva herself. It is filled with her humor and wit even during more difficult scarring times. We get to hear her sing acapella as she describes the making of some of her best songs. I will say if you had a rough childhood this could be very triggering for you but maybe at the same time healing. Her story proves you don't have to succumb to your surroundings and when you believe in yourself you can accomplish great things. And I left the book feelings like I understood more about why she acts the way she does including her eternally 12 mantra. It's very fitting that the audiobook closes out with Mariah's theme.