Fantasies of Nina Simone

Since her death in 2003, Nina Simone has been the subject of an astonishing number of rereleased, remastered, and remixed albums and compilations as well as biographies, films, viral memes, samples, and soundtracks. In Fantasies of Nina Simone, Jordan Alexander Stein uses an archive of Simone’s performances, images, and writings to examine the space between our collective and individual fantasies about Simone the performer, Civil Rights activist, and icon, and her own fantasies about herself. Stein outlines how Simone gave voice to personal fantasies through the dozens of cover songs that she released of her white male contemporaries such as George Harrison, the Bee Gees, and Bob Dylan. With these covers, Simone explored and claimed the power and perspective that comes with race and gender privilege. Looking at examples from Simone’s four-decade, genre-bending, career—from songbook standards, jazz, and pop to folk, junkanoo, and reggae—and at her work’s many uptakes and afterlives, Stein mobilizes the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to build a black feminist history with and for this multifaceted performing artist.

“With thoughtful analysis and experimental form, Jordan Alexander Stein’s Fantasies of Nina Simone is a daring exploration of how and why Nina Simone had to invent herself and what has motivated us, her fans, fellow artists, and audience, to embrace her iconicity over time and invoke her as the ultimate signifier of our own political demands and desires today.”, “Jordan Alexander Stein uses meticulous research and a vast archive of Nina Simone’s recordings and performances to provide a novel approach to engaging with the life and work of an iconic figure. Offering unique insights, Stein advances conversations both about how critics take her up as a figure and an artist and about how she fashioned herself through her music, writing, performance, and self-presentation. This groundbreaking book makes an important contribution to cultural studies, sound studies, and conversations about life writing.”, “With thoughtful analysis and experimental form, Jordan Alexander Stein’s Fantasies of Nina Simone is a daring exploration of how and why Nina Simone had to invent herself and what has motivated us, her fans, fellow artists, and audience, to embrace her iconicity over time and invoke her as the ultimate signifier of our own political demands and desires today.”, “Jordan Alexander Stein uses meticulous research and a vast archive of Nina Simone’s recordings and performances to provide a novel approach to engaging with the life and work of an iconic figure. Offering unique insights, Stein advances conversations both about how critics take her up as a figure and an artist and about how she fashioned herself through her music, writing, performance, and self-presentation. This groundbreaking book makes an important contribution to cultural studies, sound studies, and conversations about life writing.”

Jordan Alexander Stein is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Fordham University and author of When Novels Were Books and Avidly Reads Theory.