When a heavily pregnant Neneh Cherry appeared on Top of the Pops in 1988 in a Lycra miniskirt, gold bra top and matching bomber jacket to perform Buffalo Stance, the nation’s jaws hit the floor. In her memoir, Cherry says she couldn’t see what the fuss was about at the time, though now “I can see that it was important to be able to appear on the show, pregnant and proud … Change comes about partly through our choices being seen.”
A Thousand Threads traces Cherry’s early life as the child of a Swedish mother, Moki, an artist and textile designer, who lived in a converted schoolhouse; a Sierra Leonian father, Ahmadu, from whom Moki split when their daughter was three months old; and stepfather Don Cherry, the African American jazz trumpeter and the man she called Dad. “I had three parents,” Cherry recalls. “I guess that’s what we call a gift.”
As the book’s narrator, Cherry delivers her story with clarity and calm, even when revisiting the darker chapters in her life: a vicious assault, Don’s heroin addiction, the loss of a close friend to Aids. Rich in atmosphere and detail, the book also tells of the author’s early adventures travelling back and forth to New York and hanging out with Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman, touring with Moki and Don around Europe in a campervan and later embarking on her own music career while building a family, with songs written at the kitchen table. Hers is a vivid tale of love, family, chaos and a creative spirit passed through the generations.
• Available via Audible, 9hr 17min
Further listening
Agatha Christie
Lucy Worsley, Hodder & Stoughton, 13hr 46 min
The historian narrates her biography of the queen of crime, which shines a light on her unusual modernity – seen in her interest in psychology, fast cars and surfing.
The Life Impossible
Matt Haig, Canongate, 10hr 47min
When Grace Winters, a newly widowed septuagenarian maths teacher, is bequeathed a house in Ibiza, she immediately gets on a plane and is confronted by the mystery of her old friend’s death. Read by Joanna Lumley and Jordan Stephens.
