Fairytale: The Pointer Sisters' Family Story (HC) (2020)

FAIRYTALE is the first and only book to provide inside portraits of The Pointer Sisters' formative and professional life--June, Bonnie, Anita and Ruth come of age as "mold-breaking" artists during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. See how paths chosen and challenges faced--individually and collectively--strengthened and honed their forty-eight year musical career.

This is a story of love and rivalry between sisters--for lead vocals, and for men. It is also an intimate story of family love--of a sagacious, strong and caring father, and a mother's love.

In recorded and transcribed interviews over several years, and family heirloom photographs and private personal letters, Anita and Fritz Pointer (sister and brother) bring to life the exciting story of: migration during the 1940s Great Migration of Black Americans; fifteen family members living in one house; the deeply troubling dismissal of their father from the church he helped to build; Bonnie and Anita's founding membership in the Northern California Black Panther Party; the Sisters serendipitous discovery.

Fritz Pointer, one of the older brothers of June, Bonnie, Anita and Ruth, brings insight, veracity and passion to this story. No one else knows the family, community, political or social history out of which The Pointer Sisters came as thoroughly and deeply as he does. Fritz has a BA in English, Creighton University, 1966; MA, African Studies, UCLA, 1971; MA, African Languages and Literature, U. Wisconsin, Madison, 1979. He has thirty years experience teaching Composition, African and African American Humanities, and History in higher education. Fritz has authored two books and several scholarly articles in his area of African Literature.

Anita Pointer shares a passion with Fritz for telling the story of The Pointer Sisters--which has been their unshakeable commitment for nearly a decade. In FAIRYTALE, Anita takes us inside the relationship of the sisters, in one of America's most dynamic families, making contributions as: professional athletes, a college professor and world-renown entertainers singing, writing, and recording skillfully, passionately, beautifully across genres--Jazz (scat, bebop), Blues, Rock and Roll, Country & Western, Rhythm & Blues--uniquely unequaled and unparalleled in music history.