The Rhythm Becomes a Thing of the Spirit: On ‘Religion Around Billie Holiday’ by Tracy Fessenden
Billie Holiday appeared on the cover of the July 1949 issue of Ebony magazine; inside her essay “I’m Cured for Good Now” was a short but heartfelt testament of her recent struggles. She’d pled guilty to drug charges “on the promise of treatment for addiction” and was confined to the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. Her intake form listed her occupation as singer, and her religion as Catholic.
In the essay—likely ghostwritten by one of the magazine’s staff writers—Holiday said her “priest was extremely helpful to me in those first weeks and helped me chart the course I should travel in order to build my life, a focused, enlightening examination of the gifted singer, demonstrates that Holiday’s Catholicism was complex and formative.
