Melody Murray's Books

I mostly loved this biography of Joplin that's aimed at young adults, but there's the huge elephant standing in the middle of it that ruined it for me. The facts given jibe with the rest of the biographies I've read (and I've read 'em all). The author's love and reverence for the subject inform the book without glossing over any of Joplin's shortcomings. The photographs are lovely, of course. The introduction by Sam Andrew is very touching. The digressions about the sixties are fairly well-done. Joplin's addictions are discussed at length, as are her numerous failed heterosexual relationships.But nowhere at all is there the whisper of the fact that Janis never limited herself to heterosexual relationships. She had several well documented relationships with women, and I can't understand why that entire facet of Joplin was ignored. It's a dealbreaker for me, the whitewashing of history. So I'm dinging this otherwise perfectly interesting book a star.******Edited 1/9Re-read it very carefully today, and found this, on page 28:"Always hungry for affection, she compulsively sought attention from both men and women. Friends speculate that she had her first lesbian experiences in college. She didn't speak openly about her affairs with women, and in an era when homosexuality and bisexuality were stigmatized, she may not have felt that she could: however, the intensity of her interactions with certain women indicates that some of them may have been more than friends. (In particular, she and her friend Juli Paul were known for crazed, drunken fights that they sometimes carried into the streets.) In the years to come, Janis would be more open to friends and lovers about her bisexuality, although in the course of her life, she had many more relationships with men than with women." That's it. Sum total. Not enough, sorry. One single little paragraph is, indeed, better than the total absence of acknowledgment I found the first time through, but no. When there are pages and pages devoted to analyzing her heterosexual relationships, discussing the men by name and talking about what color eyes they had... no.