MARY GABRIEL

– Madonna: A Rebel Life

Pulitzer finalist Gabriel guides us through the latest biography of pop icon, Madonna; her astonishing life, career, personal struggles, romances, and sexual politics against the backdrop of American socio-political transformation.

We start with Madonna’s upbringing in Michigan and rebellion against her religious father. Having lost her mother to cancer at a young age, Madonna came to terms with her grief by living a double life – one intensely angry and insecure in private while rebellious and ballsy in her public performance.

At nineteen, she took her first plane trip and taxi ride to New York and wandered Lexington Avenue with $35 and ambitions to study dance. She met and made friends with queer artists like Keith Haring, which would eventually make her music inseparable from queer politics and AIDS activism, particularly when she saw her gay friends dying.

Gabriel meticulously charts Madonna’s life, albums, and music videos while connecting them all with social and cultural shifts in the US, from the rise of second-wave feminism to the election of Donald Trump.

Despite criticism and even bans on her music, Madonna has never stopped experimenting and pushing the boundaries – Papa Don’t Preach, Like A Prayer, Erotica and her photography book, Sex all came with various degrees of controversy.

She has endured harsh judgments from critics and the public, yet this 858-page book exquisitely captures her strength and resilience and the activism that makes her a hero for the LGBTIQIA+ community. – Hendri