The Burden of Brilliance: Nina Simone’s Tortured Talent

“When I used to get blue years ago, James Baldwin would say the same thing to me each time: ‘This is the world you have made for yourself, Nina, now you have to live in it,’” the trailblazing musician and civil rights activist Nina Simone muses in the opening lines of her 1992 autobiography, I Put a Spell on You. Throughout this slight, remarkably placid autobiography (co-written with Stephen Cleary), one sometimes wonders—almost with relief—whether these words are actually the voice of Nina Simone. Could this possibly be the same tortured musical prodigy whose mental illness and irrational actions are… Read Full Article