Excellent book. I wish I could give it 5 stars, but I'm not a fan of Imari Parks' narration.It can be an uncomfortable listen for a middle-aged, middle class, white woman, but it is so worthwhile. ( )

This novel is a novel within a novel within a novel with drink recipes. It is a tribute to Black Detroit through the 40s to 1967. ( )

Basically, thus is a history of a section of Detroit which was home to an incredible number of black artists and performers. As a white reader, I was saddened to hear of the numerous times that black performers were copied by white performers who went on to great fame. It is well written, interesting, and educational! ( )

Hagiography of Old Black-American Detroit
Review of the Amistad hardcover edition (August 2020)

A cradle-to-grave Catholic, and an altar boy, Ziggy grew up reading Butler's Lives of the Saints. Originally published in twelve volumes in the 1750s, 200 years later when Ziggy was planning, in the summer of 1952, for the opening of his Ziggy Johnson School of the Theatre in Detroit, Michigan, four-volume sets of Butler's Lives were almost as common as rosaries in Black Catholic American homes. On his deathbed, Ziggy wrote his own Lives of the Black Bottom Saints. In it he lays out the unexpected roots of both Motown music and Black girl magic, as well as fifty-two paths from trauma to transcendence. - excerpt from pg. 353, Black Bottom Saints

Alice Randall's Black Bottom Saints is one ambitious historical fiction that portrays 52 various figures, mostly Black American and Detroit associated, as mid-20th century "Saints" to be celebrated as inspirational to Black American culture. That ambition and the research that was involved would rate a 5-star rating. So why a 3-star mark for the general reader?

It is maybe not so compelling as a novel, as it reads as 52 short stories with one wrap-around arc which is the story of its fictional creation. Most of the portraits are framed with introductions by Mari Stanley, the fictional god-daughter of Ziggy (and the proxy of author Randall, with whom she shares some biographical history), who is completing Johnson's work and telling her own life story in the process. Each portrait is end framed by a cocktail libation inspired the classic The Ideal Bartender (1917) by Tom Bullock (1872-1964).

There is an element of coded vernacular that may also serve to distance the reader depending on their own heritage. The people and culture that Ziggy Johnson writes about is often called "Sepian", which seems to be a word used in order to avoid using "Black", "Colored" or "Negro." It does have an elegance to it, but it seemed unfamiliar every time I read it. Several running characters are provided with vernacular nicknames along the way, which again becomes disassociative as you pause each time to remember who "Colored Girl", "The Natchez Belle", "Baby Doll" etc. actually are (i.e. Ziggy's god-daughter, Ziggy's Mother, Ziggy's Wife).

The cocktails are also a somewhat distancing factor as you puzzle over their ingredients esp. if you are not a mixed drinks connoisseur (e.g. What is a jigger?, What is a pony?, What is bar sugar? etc.).

Still, this was a fascinating and ambitious bit of fiction with a huge amount of often humorous anecdotal information about the historical figures that it portrays. Only about a quarter of them were previously known to me from the worlds of entertainment and sports.

I read Black Bottom Saints as the August 2020 selection from Parnassus Books First Editions Club blind subscription generously gifted to me by Liisa, Martin & family. Much continued thanks for the interesting variety that it provides!

Trivia and Links
I attempted to research the difference between a jigger and a pony measure in cocktail mixology and could not really find a definitive answer. Jigger measures seem to come in all sizes ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 ounces. A pony measure does seem to be what is considered a small shot or a pony shot from a 1.5 ounce shot glass. I'm going to guess then that the standard jigger is the 1.5 ounce or the full shot glass and then the pony is the 1.0 ounce (i.e. 2/3rds of a shot glass).
References:
Jiggers at https://thecocktailnovice.com/resources/barware-basics/barware-basics-bar-jigger...
Glasses (see Shot Glasses) at https://thecocktailnovice.com/cocktail-glasses-basics-beginners/ ( )

Alice Randall is the Harvard-educated author of novels, including The Wind Done Gone, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Rebel Yell, and Ada's Rules. An award-winning songwriter, she co-wrote the #1 hit XXX’s and OOO’s which celebrates Aretha Franklin. With her daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, she co-authored the acclaimed cookbook Soul Food Love which won the NAACP Image award and the young adult novel The Diary of B. B. Bright, Possible Princess, which received the Phillis Wheatley Award. A Professor and Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University, Randall teaches courses on soul food, African-American children's literature, and African-American film. A native of Detroit, she lives in Nashville, Tennessee.