Book Review: Put on Your Crown: Life-Changing Moments on the Path to Queendom
The Good: Queen Latifah, arguably one of the most powerful black women in media today, offers short, digestible lessons for young women based on her life and career. The lessons are universal, and the writing style is earnest and uplifting without being too pie-in-the sky
The Bad: Chapters are uneven, depending on the stories she uses to illustrate lessons. While some chapters (e.g., Money, Success, Loss) are deeply moving, others seem like space fillers
The Bottom Line: Good read overall, especially for those curious to learn more about Latifah’s path to Hollywood success
In the introduction to Put On Your Crown, Queen Latifah explains the motivation for the book : “there seems to be an epidemic of low self-esteem in this country, especially among young women.”
No disagreement there. Our generation, schooled on sarcasm and snark, was raised in far less stable families than times past and now, watching the so-called American dream obliterated by recession, it’s hard not feel that it’s all falling down.
Still, I’m skeptical than advice from a multi-millionaire could do anything for anyone self-esteem, other than her own. I approach the self-help genre with trepidation and I’m far more likely to read a book like Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Put On Your Crown is a less audacious type of self-help. As Queen Latifah explains, “don’t take my stories as blueprints. Instead, treat as guideposts on your individual path to queendom.”
Part autobiography, part advice, the book is organized around seminal “moments” in Latifah’s life and the lessons learned shares lessons learned on topics like success, beauty, money, etc. Two of the moments stand out in particular. In a chapter on “Money,” Latifah describes the aftermath of a day in 2000 when her accountant called to inform her that she’d run out of money. It’s hard not to scream “cry me a river” at these stories of super rich people going broke. But, Latifah doesn’t ask for the reader’s sympathy. Instead, she owns up to the errors she made – spending lavishly on a start-up, letting other people sign her checks, etc. – and delivers one of the more moving lessons in the book. The difficulty of separating feelings from finances is one that may women, particularly black women who are used to being the provider, can relate to and learn from. In another standout chapter, Latifah describes dealing with the losing her brother to a motorcycle accident. Though the lessons are harder to tease out, this chapter shows her vulnerability. Even the fact that there are no clear-cut lessons from loss and one must find a way to keep living, is moving.
The book is filled with good advice, everything from learning to be a be a renaissance woman and reinvent yourself constantly to putting your health and physical well-being first to learning to say no and recognize that “not everyone is a sista.” Unfortunately, the personal stories that Latifah shares are uneven. While there are a few standouts, many chapters seem rather flimsy with moments chosen simply to fill out the book.
Guidepost, blueprint, whatever you want to call it, I doubt there’ll be many epiphanies coming out of the book. Those who like motivational texts will appreciate it – I picked it up and went through it in just a couple of hours. It was a good read, if only to understand the struggles Queen Latifah has faced on the path to becoming the confident woman she seems today. Plus, I do have a soft spot for the woman who headlined the “original Friends.”
