Cover Story: The Lady Vanishes Who stole Billie Holiday? She is feminist property because she was a black woman who did it her way. Her outsider-victim status made her a gay diva. And to straight, white hipsters, she's the sound of cool comfort. But, says Phil Johnson, the cultural appropriation has gone far enough. It's high time we saw her for what she was...

From: The Independent on Sunday | Date: March 28, 2004| Author: Phil Johnson | Copyright information

When the jazz singer Billie Holiday died in 1959 aged 44 (of a complex of liver, kidney, heart and lung failure, her immune system weakened by drink and drugs) she was an alcoholic and on-off heroin addict with no money and a social circle of poisonous scroungers. The New York hospital room where she breathed her last had earlier been sealed off by police when a nurse found traces of white powder by her bedside, creating a symbolic dead end to a lifetime's persecution by the authorities. They...

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