Dear Miss Simone,
If I could speak to you today, I would ask you if you regret creating your stage name. During your performance, you sang: “but you’ll never know the pain / of using a name you never owned.” I admire your dedication to create curiosity about and pride in identity among black people (“We don’t even talk about where we came from. We don’t know!”), but the creation of a stage name—a name that you never owned—effaces a fundamental part of your identity. If you could do it again, would you choose not to have changed your name? Or would you choose a different one that holds more meaning to you? In addition, when you lived in Liberia, away from the musical world, what did you learn, and how did you feel when you had to begin performing again?
In addition, your early experiences involving racism involved your parents being seated in the back of the church during your performance, and having to cross the train tracks on the way to your music lessons. How did these early experiences influence your strongly political pieces later in your career?
Finally, I genuinely hope that, with your rediscovery of music, you were able to reconcile with your daughter and gradually feel alive again. Thank you, for your contributions to music and civil rights that affect our lives today.
Janelle