Queer allyship figures prominently in Streisand memoir
‘My Name Is Barbra’By Barbra Streisandc.2023, Viking$47/970 pages Have you been told you’ll never amount to anything?
That an angry rodent is better looking than you? If yes, don’t worry. Barbra Streisand (hello, Gorgeous!), the EGOT-winning (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), divine, queer icon has been told and called much worse. “An ‘amiable anteater’?,” Streisand, 81, writes in “My Name Is Barbra,” her eagerly anticipated, recently released, memoir, “that’s how I was described at nineteen in one of my first reviews as a professional actress.” She was then playing a “lovelorn” secretary in the show “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” Streisand recalls. “I could see the comparison,” she writes.
But the demeaning comparisons kept coming. Over the next year, she remembers people likened her to “a sour persimmon,” “a furious hamster,” “a myopic gazelle,” and “a seasick ferret.” Streisand worked on “My Name Is Barbra” (whose title is the same as her acclaimed album and TV special) for more than a decade.
At nearly 1,000 pages, it makes “War and Peace,” seem like an Instagram post. Streisand name-drops more often than your nutty uncle curses during Thanksgiving dinner.
