Being the child of a global superstar is never easy. Being the daughter of the Godfather of Soul—that’s a category unto itself. Fame, drugs, jail, and the complicated women in James Brown’s life set the stage for an uncommon childhood. Cold Sweat is about how Yamma rose to meet every challenge. Though celebrities ranging from Michael Jackson to Al Sharpton make appearances, Cold Sweat is not just a celebrity book. It focuses on an everyday issue faced by millions of women—domestic violence—and in this book Yamma faces it in an honest and powerfully moving way. Dealing with a complex and famous father eventually took a backseat to coping with her own abusive and deceitful marriage. Cold Sweat is about how Yamma got caught in the same trap as her mother, doing things in her adult life that, as a child, she’d promised herself she’d never do. But at the same time, Yamma learned valuable lessons about life from her father. The struggles she went through, both as a child and as an adult, make for a gripping read and, in the end, a profound examination of the nature of celebrity, violence, and survival.
On Friday, Oct 3, at 7 p.m., Yamma Brown brings her story to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. In the wake of too many news items forcing the interstices of domestic abuse and celebrity to the forefront of the public consciousness, Yamma’s strength and candor contribute powerfully to an important conversation.
The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library is located at 441 Jimmy Carter Parkway, Atlanta, 30307. A Cappella Books will have copies of Cold Sweat available for purchase and signing following the program. This event is free and open to the public.
About Yamma Brown
Yamma Brown is the vice president of the James Brown Family Foundation and the president and founder of Daughter of Soul Productions. She is the youngest daughter of Deidre Jenkins and James Brown. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Her recent projects include transforming her father’s Beech Island house into a museum, and producing the major biopic about her father, Get On Up, directed by Tate Taylor of The Help, starring Chadwick Boseman. She is also the spokesperson for Break the Cycle, a nationwide organization that empowers victims of domestic abuse. Robin Gaby Fisher is the author of the New York Times bestseller After the Fire and Boys of the Dark, a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing, and a member of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team.
Advance Praise
“Brown takes the reader into the home she shared with the ‘Hardest Working Man in Show Business’ in Beech Island, S.C. The result is the most intimate and unflinching portrait of James Brown yet.” —NPR
“This is a provocative, painful, and open book by Yamma Brown, whom I have known all her life as the daughter of a truly historic and incomparably influential figure. The world knew James Brown as a Godfather. Yamma knew him as a father. The good and the bad that she shared does not dim at the brightness of the greatness of James Brown.” —Rev. Al Sharpton
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