Book

Author:	Karen Tongson
Title:	Why Karen Carpenter Matters
Publisher:	University Of Texas Press
Country:	USA
Date:	1 Jun 2019
Format:	Paperback
Genre:	Non-Fiction, Biography
ISBN-10:	1477318844
Barcode:	9781477318843
Total Editions:	2
Rating:	Rate
Collection:	I Own It I Want It
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Price Guide:	Valuation Page
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152 pages.

In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy;the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder.

In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer's rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippine, where imitations of American pop styles flourished, and Karen Carpenter's home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of normal love can now have profound significance for her, as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter's legacy.

This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters' sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.

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Other Editions

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Karen Tongson - Why Karen Carpenter Matters - Faber & Faber - Paperback - UK - 9780571369003 (2021)

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Karen Tongson - Why Karen Carpenter Matters - Faber & Faber - Paperback - UK - 9780571369003 (2021)

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