In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder.
In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer’s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter’s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter’s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters’ sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.
Karen Tongson is an associate professor of English, gender and sexuality studies, and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the 2019 recipient of the Lambda Literary Jeanne Córdova Award for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction; the author of Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries; and the co-editor of the Postmillennial Pop book series at NYU Press. Her cultural commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, among others. Previously a panelist on MaximumFun.org's “Pop Rocket” podcast, she now cohosts the podcast “Waiting to X-hale.” Visit her website at www.karentongson.org.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Whiteness and Promises 2. For All We Know 3. Long Beach State of Mind 4. Goodbye to Love 5. Queer Horizon 6. Made in America: Karen Carpenters of the Philippines 7. Now
Acknowledgments Notes
What People are Saying About This
Mx Justin Vivian Bond
A tale of two Karens, Why Karen Carpenter Matters is a story of displacement in which Karen Tongson brilliantly reveals how those of us who live outside the narrow confines of white, cisgender, capitalist America found a home—and a voice—in the aural landscape of a seemingly quintessential white-bread, suburban American pop star—Karen Carpenter.
R. Zamora Linmark
An unforgettable medley that’s part memoir, part pop culture and music criticism, part experimental narrative, and part biography of—and homage to—the legendary singer. I’m putting it on my altar of Carpenters memorabilia.
Maggie Nelson
Karen Tongson’s Why Karen Carpenter Matters dives into the lived complexities of fundamental queer concepts such as 'disidentification' and 'cruel optimism' by illuminating from within the queer alliance between the author and her namesake, Karen Carpenter. In addition to teaching the reader about Carpenters’ and Filipino culture and history, Tongson serves up a number of astute observations about fantasy, projection, longing, normalcy, and aberrance.
