Reviews

Christmas books: 'My Name is Barbra'

Reviewed By Father Jim McDermott, SJ
Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Why do we read memoirs? For me, part of the appeal is getting a glimpse into the life of someone who means something to me. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m hoping they can give me some kind of insight into my own life. 

I’m not sure how much any of us would suppose we have in common with a movie star, a middle-aged comedian or an English prince. And yet, I find that these three memoirs offer not just great reads, but rich insight into life.

For lovers of musical theatre, the last few years have been a gold mine, with great memoirs from Harvey Fierstein, Chita Rivera, Mary Rodgers and D.T. Max reporting on his interviews with Stephen Sondheim. But as thrilling as those books are — Mary Rodgers’ “Shy” alone is one of the most charmingly lacerating first person narratives I’ve read — nothing can compare with the excitement around Barbra Streisand’s first-ever memoir, “My Name is Barbra.”

And I’m happy to be able to report that the book really does live up to the hype. “I didn’t like camp,” she writes of the Catskills Jewish summer camp her mother made her attend as a child. “They had lousy potatoes.” Some might argue the purest form of Streisand involves her talking politics or Hollywood, but for me nothing beats Streisand kvetching about summer camp potatoes.

There’s plenty of the actress’ trademark humor here, like her story of being told by a teacher at her Yeshiva not to use the word “Christmas.” “Something about that just didn’t make sense to me, and as soon as she walked out of the room, I kept repeating ‘Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!’ And I prayed to God that He wouldn’t strike me dead.”

No doubt many will come to “My Name is Barbra” looking for juicy gossip about celebrities or behind the scenes stories of making movies, plays and musicals. There are certainly some great sections like that: Reading about how she and Robert Redford went about making “The Way We Were” fed every movie nerd atom in me.

But what I found most compelling about “Barbra” were the ways in which Streisand feels familiar in the reading, less like a star communicating from the stratosphere and more like a favorite aunt or even a parent. Telling stories of the father who died when she was a baby (and to whom she dedicated the book, along with her mother), the step-father who was viciously cruel to her, the failure of certain projects, she shows a vulnerability that is thoughtful and endearing.

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