#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A revealing personal life story like no
other—enlightening entertaining surprising empowering—and a testament to the world-making
power of Black motherhood “A fascinating memoir of Tina Knowles’s journey to become the global
figure she is today.”—Oprah Winfrey “You are Celestine ” she said. She squatted to push the
hair off my face and pull leaves off my pajama legs. “Like my sister and my grandmother.” And
there under the pecan tree as she did countless times that day my mother told me stories of
the mothers and daughters that went before me. Tina Knowles the mother of iconic
singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland
is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined self-possessed
self-aware and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But
this story is about so much more than that. Matriarch begins with a precocious if unruly
little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world
with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always
within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in she begins
to dream of a more grandiose world. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the
shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood. That life’s
journey—through grief and tragedy creative and romantic risks and turmoil the nurturing of
superstar offspring and of her own special gifts—is the remarkable story she shares with
readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak of loss and
perseverance and of the kind of creativity audacity and will it takes for a girl from
Galveston to change the world. It’s one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story and a
multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America—and the wisdom that
women pass on to one another mothers to daughters across generations.
