This is not the gossipy, celebrity reminiscence many might expect – but the chart-topping
Singer is captivating on race, wealth and her own ‘extraness’
In the popular imagination, Mariah Carey is a caricature: the embodiment of the demanding diva stereotype (a persona she has often played up to with relish). Her first memoir reveals her to be not just in on the joke, but peeling back the layers to deconstruct it. Because, for all the dry humour that flashes through The Meaning of Mariah Carey, it is not the glitzy, gossipy celebrity reminiscence some might expect, but instead a largely sombre dive into her past that, at times, feels like therapy. Indeed, Carey says as much: “Singing was a form of escapism for me, and writing was a form of processing.”
In this memoir, Carey processes her chaotic upbringing and troubled family relationships, her scrappy rags-to-riches entry into the
music industry, and the gilded cage of her first marriage, to former Sony CEO Tommy Mottola in the 1990s, which she describes as emotionally abusive.