Ms. Tina Knowles’ Memoir ‘Matriarch’ Journeys Through The Maternal Line That Birthed Beyoncé And Solange’s Music
On Monday, May 19, Tina Knowles (affectionately called Mama Tina) graced the stage at the Brooklyn Paramount, dipped in Lorraine Schwartz diamonds and a bejeweled Bibhu Bespoke dress for the last U.S. leg of her international Matriarch book tour hosted by family history partner, Ancestry.com. Gayle King moderated the star-studded affair (which included a soulful performance of “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here” by Deborah Cox) where Mama Tina, the mother of entertainment icons Beyoncé, Solange, Kelly Rowland, and Angie, chatted candidly about the wild rollercoaster ride of life she’s lived and is still living. Matriarch, a revealing memoir drenched in tears and triumphs, details the brutal racism Knowles’ family survived in the South, the birth of her daughters, rounds of marital betrayal, entrepreneurship as the ultimate escape plan, second chances at love, and the latest plot twist: surviving breast cancer.
The opening chapter of the book, titled Under The Pecan Tree, waxes poetically through Knowles’ memories of her late mother. It reads, “Later, a daughter will miss the sound of her mother calling her name. You can’t convince her of this when she is young. Not while that voice is so plentiful in the air.” The passage, loaded with the unheard murmurings of a grieving daughter, speaks of a matriarch gone way too soon, but not soon forgotten. Agnes Derouen Buyince: an elder who, though we’ve never met personally, we most certainly know her by name.
Her middle name Derouen is House Of Deréon’s origin story, the nostalgic early 2000s brand launched by Beyoncé & her mother that had us all rocking New Orleans’ fleur-de-lis patterned hoodies and denim as an ode to their Louisiana Creole heritage. And of course, the last name Buyincé would go on to become the first name of one of the most prolific artists in world music: Beyoncé. Though Agnes would never meet her granddaughter in this life, their eternal blood-bond is etched forever in the sands of time and entertainment history. Mama Tina made sure of that.
The 70-year-old told HelloBeautiful backstage during her book tour that digging into her family’s past was empowering. She reflects on the great-grandmother she was named after, Celestine, who was sold at a slave auction for $1,750, a detail she found while working with Ancestry.com.
“I knew about my great-grandmother being sold, and I knew the person who purchased her is someone she had had a couple kids with,” she said.
Tina said “one of the best revelations” of her ancestral dig was learning both of her great-grandmothers were somehow able to prevent their kids from being sold away.
“They kept their kids with them. They were never separated. God knows what they had to go through to do that,” she said. That Buyincé legacy of keeping the family close at all costs has endured through the bloodline. Daughters Blue Ivy and Rumi are currently on the multi-city Cowboy Carter tour with their mother Beyoncé, which is not only a generational party, but also a symbolic passing of the torch. And the apples don’t fall far from the tree. Ms. Tina, who has backstaged her daughters’ careers for decades, once had a taste for the spotlight herself. She shares in Matriarch that growing up, she was a part of her own singing group called The Veltones. Though singing wasn’t in Mama Tina’s ultimate destiny, she said if she could sing any song from her daughters’ culture-defining music catalogues, it would be “I Was Here” by Beyoncé and Solange’s “Don’t Touch My Hair.”
As a parting gift, Mama Tina offered advice for moms and moms-to-be who are looking to create a legacy as enduring as hers: “Learn who your kids are, and let them be them,” she said.
“And let them do things because they want to do them. See them as individuals and not a collective. That’s my biggest advice.”