Spoilers Book Club: "Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin" by David Ritz

Program Type:

Book Club, Movies

Age Group:

Adult
Please note you are looking at an event that has already happened.

Program Description

Spoilers Book Club

The Spoilers Book Club reads books that are turned into movies. We read the book and get together to watch the film. We compare the two and discuss what we did and didn't like. 

Event Details

Respect
2021
PG-13
2h 25m

This "comprehensive and illuminating" biography of the Queen of Soul (USA Today) was hailed by Rolling Stone as "a remarkably complex portrait of Aretha Franklin's music and her tumultuous life." 

Aretha Franklin began life as the golden daughter of a progressive and promiscuous Baptist preacher. Raised without her mother, she was a gospel prodigy who gave birth to two sons in her teens and left them and her native Detroit for New York, where she struggled to find her true voice. It was not until 1967, when a white Jewish producer insisted she return to her gospel-soul roots, that fame and fortune finally came via "Respect" and a rapidfire string of hits. She continued to evolve for decades, amidst personal tragedy, surprise Grammy performances, and career reinventions.

Again and again, Aretha stubbornly found a way to triumph over troubles, even as they continued to build. Her hold on the crown was tenacious, and in Respect, David Ritz gives us the definitive life of one of the greatest talents in all American culture.