Books that changed Me: Aaliyah: More than a Woman

When I first started middle school back in 2004 my language arts teacher would keep this reading pages chart for how many books and pages all of her students read. As much as I was annoyed by reading because my mom made me do it all the time I actually took part in her chart record a lot being that she would give out prizes based on the reads, plus it was kind of fun to see who could put in the most reading. One day in the school library I found a book I had heard of but forgot about called “Aaliyah: More than a Woman” by Christopher John Farley. Since I was always a lifelong Aaliyah fan and was very interested in getting my reads up for class I picked this book out and I have to say, it really blew me away.

More than a Woman is Christopher John Farley’s biography of Aaliyah. The book chronicles every part of her life from when she first started singing as a child under the guidance of her aunt Gladys Knight all the way to her untimely death. With this story there were so many interesting details about Aaliyah that I had not previously known. The book chronicles not only her experiences, but also her mental and emotional state during these experiences. More than a Woman gives us a big history lesson on the relationships Aaliyah cultivated during her life. This bio tells us about who her closes acquaintances, what was the roots of her connection to them and how it all played into the bigger picture of who she was during her career.

The more in depth sides of the story are the parts that document how Aaliyah felt about the people around her, what was going through her mind in regards to how they treated her and how she felt about the highs and lows of her life’s biggest moments. When I reached the end of this book I didn’t just know more about Aaliyah, I actually knew Aaliyah.

This book certainly changed me and the way it changed me was by changing how I closely I examine people. What I meant when I said I knew more about Aaliyah was I saw more into her own heart and mind with this book than I ever did before. I didn’t just see what everyone else such as myself had thought and felt about her, I saw more of what she thought and felt mostly about herself. Before this book my mindset about people I admire whether it was a personal acquaintance or even a famous person was all about how I saw them. I never thought much about their own regards if those regards didn’t have anything to do with my own perspective.

More than a Woman showed me not just Aaliyah the star, Aaliyah the person and that person is who we all are underneath our exterior. A person who may be very smart, very talented, and very charismatic, but though our person may have a mighty social battery and may seem very powerful because of how they appeal to the rest of the world, that person still has weaknesses, shortcomings, insecurities, fears, inhibitions, faults, etc. Bottom line is whether a person is a devil in the flesh or an angel on earth like Aaliyah, most of us don’t make an effort to focus on who that person is from their perspective as opposed to ours. This is important to be mindful of because even an angel like Aaliyah Dana Haughton deserves to be humanized. That’s how More Than a Woman changed my mind, it taught me to always take a closer look at people because underneath their surface they are , more than a star, more than a man or more than a woman.