Fantasies of Nina Simone

“With thoughtful analysis and experimental form, Jordan Alexander Stein’s Fantasies of Nina Simone is a daring exploration of how and why Nina Simone had to invent herself and what has motivated us---her fans, fellow artists, and audience---to embrace her iconicity over time and invoke her as the ultimate signifier of our own political demands and desires today.” - Salamishah Tillet, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of In Search of "The Color Purple": The Story of an American Masterpiece

“Jordan Alexander Stein uses meticulous research and a vast archive of Nina Simone’s recordings and performances to provide a novel approach to engaging with the life and work of an iconic figure. Offering unique insights, Stein advances conversations about how critics take Simone up as a figure and as an artist and how she fashioned herself through her music, writing, performance, and self-presentation. This groundbreaking book makes an important contribution to cultural studies, sound studies, and conversations about life writing.” - Soyica Diggs Colbert, author of Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry

"For me the most interesting passages by far are those where the author engages with specific Simone recordings and makes them more interesting. Although I admire Simone and enjoy her music and its oblique relationship with jazz, I know only a handful of her recordings and was pleased to read astute comments on a great many unfamiliar ones." - Graham Colombé, Jazz Journal

"Even if Simone Studies has well and truly taken off, it is undoubtedly richer for the addition of this book." - Richard Elliott, Popular Music

"With his latest work, Stein has done a wonderful job of tackling the . . . challenge of seeing Simone as not only a prodigious figure of . . . music and Civil Rights activism, but as a person who was able to summon her innermost fantasies to put a spell on us." - Stephen Renko, ARSC Journal

"Jordan Alexander Stein provides a fascinating and original approach that permits us to deepen the study of and knowledge about the incredible musical and cultural life of the great Nina Simone." (translated from Italian) - Marco Paolucci, Kathodik

"Fantasies of Nina Simone begins by asking why, at this moment, we might need another project about Nina Simone. Stein’s book is its own answer: a deeply researched and richly evocative project that readers will be happy to add to their bookshelves." - Gayle Wald, American Literary History