Reclaiming Venus: The Many Lives of Alvenia Bridges chronicles the remarkable journey of Alvenia Bridges from segregated Kansas to the heights of fashion and rock 'n' roll, breaking barriers and rubbing shoulders with legends. It is a powerful testament to resilience and the pursuit of dreams against all odds.
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About the book
Growing up in the 1950s in segregated Kansas, Alvenia Bridges dreamed of leaving home and seeing the world. Despite her destructive home life and the racially oppressive environment of her childhood, Alvenia graduated high school, left for L.A., and successfully navigated the predominantly white and male-run worlds of fashion and 70s and 80s Rock and Roll.
About the author
Maya Angela Smith is a sociolinguist, a professor in the Department of French and Italian Studies, and the Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, and Inclusion in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington. She began her career primarily focused on the intersection of race, language, and identity among members of the Francophone African diaspora, such as in her book, Senegal Abroad (Wisconsin, 2019), winner of the Modern Language Association’s French and Francophone Studies book prize. Recent writing continues exploring this intersection but through the lens of music. Her upcoming book, Ne me quitte pas (Duke, 2025), analyzes how “Ne me quitte pas”—a text, a piece of cultural production written in a specific context, and a work of mass/popular art—travels across languages, geographies, genres, and generations by using Nina Simone’s single as a point of departure. Meanwhile, Reclaiming Venus: The Many Lives of Alvenia Bridges (Rising Action Press, 2024), addresses the systemic silencing of Black women’s voices in musical history by telling the story of Bridges’s personal journey when crossing paths with a wide variety of people in the entertainment industry, from long-term working relationships with the Rolling Stones and Roberta Flack to momentary yet extraordinary encounters with Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Tina Turner. Smith is also a visual artist and an avid hiker.
This event will be at our Mag Mile Location *400 N Michigan ave Chicago Illinois 60611