On a Positive Note - Hardcover

Winans, Cece; Weems, Renita J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671020005 ISBN 13: 9780671020002

Publisher: Atria, 1999

Synopsis

The Grammy Award-winning gospel singer shares a joyous message of hope, love, and inspiration in a memoir that describes her life, her marriage, her rise to success, her friendship with Whitney Houston, and her faith in God. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Cece Winans is one of contemporary music's most acclaimed vocalists. As one half of the award-winning duo BeBe & CeCe, she garnered unprecedented acceptance in both R&B and Christian music circles. In 1995, she released her first solo project, the Grammy Award®-winning album Alone in His Presence. She is the host of the Odyssey network's CeCe's Place. CeCe lives with her husband and children in Nashville, Tennessee.

Reviews

In her autobiography, gospel superstar Winans says she is still evolving as an artist and as a child of God. Yet, at 34, this soul-stirring songster says she is at peace with herself, her God and her music. She reminisces about the music that nurtured her as a child and bound her family together: Music became a place my soul could recline. Winans shares with her readers the experience of growing up as one of the Winans clan. She recounts both quiet and rambunctious moments as the first of three girls after seven boys. Her singing siblings include the group widely known as The Winans, BeBe Winans and Angie & Debbie Winans. Winanss big break came from Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, when she was chosen to be one of the PTL Singers. Since then she and her brother BeBe have risen above the criticism of their music to garner eight Grammy, seven Dove, five Stella and three NAACP Image Awards. According to Winans, however, None of them compare to being a wife and a mother. She notes that after the music stops and the party ends, nothing else really matters but family. Winans elaborates on her relationships with her husband, children and best friendsuperstar Whitney Houstonas well as on her faith. Although thankful for her things, she has learned that some blessings must be experienced only with the heart. Winanss simple, heartwarming telling of her story so far has the feel of two friends conversing over tea about their lives.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

How a girl from the Detroit projects became an eight-time Grammy winner.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: Home Training

Train up a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not depart from it.
-- Prov. 22:6

When the doctor announced that my mother had given birth to a bouncing baby girl, my mother lifted her head up from her pillow and asked the attending physician, "Did you say it's a girl?" The doctor nodded. "Did you say it's a girl?" He answered affirmatively. "Did you say a girl?" Poor thing couldn't believe her ears. "Thank you, Jesus," she whispered leaning back on her pillow. "You finally came," she later told me. I was also my father's little princess. The date was October 8, 1964, and David and Delores Winans were filled with joy. Mom was especially happy because she could finally put to use the girl's name she had chosen sometime before: Priscilla, which to her meant calm, quiet, soft.

For a while it seemed as if Mom wouldn't ever get the chance to use such a pretty name. With seven high-spirited boys underfoot, Mom tried not to get her hopes up when she discovered that she was pregnant an eighth time. In those days before sonograms became a routine part of the prenatal examination, mothers and fathers had to wait until they got to the delivery room to find out the sex of their child. But the old women in the church had their own down-home ways for predicting the sex of the unborn: "Judging from the way that baby is sitting up high in your belly," they would say, "it's sho' to be a girl this time, Delores." But Mama was scared to hope. From where she looked it seemed to her that she'd carried all her babies the same: big and wide. A boy's name was already picked out. But the name Priscilla was secretly pinned to her heart...just in case.

Although Mom decided on Priscilla as her name for me, her first baby girl, as far back as my childhood days I have been known to family and friends as "CeCe." With as many siblings as I have, you'd think that someone would remember where the name CeCe came from, but no one does. As best as any of us can figure it out, my father's mother, Laura Howze, was the one to start the family tradition of calling me Sister, in honor of my position as the first girl in the family. The names Priscilla and Sister were much too dainty for my brothers' macho tastes. So Sister finally metamorphosed to "CeCe," probably because of my brothers' aversion to prissy words and Mom's tendency to shorten her children's names to something quicker to say in a fit of anger: "Peanut! Butch! Skippy! BeBe! CeCe!" If I shared some of the other family names here, however, I could be banned from the family. "CeCe" eventually stuck in everyone's memory, including Mom's. With ten children soon underfoot, she was content just to get the name CeCe out when it was time to bathe each of us and get us to bed at night.

Only those who are really close to me know the real CeCe: the quiet, reflective, bashful, I-don't-want-to-be-out-front girl from Detroit. Friends back home are surprised by the confident, outspoken CeCe who appears onstage when they compare her with the little Priscilla they recall always looking on bashfully. Even I sometimes have a hard time reconciling the two women. They're not different people, however. They're different sides of the same me.

There's the artist I've evolved into, the woman who is not only out front, but also singing alone, onstage, donning the latest fashions and glamorous in her makeup, making decisions (with God's help), pushing the boundaries -- and enjoying it. Then there's the me whose idea of a good time is plopping down in the middle of my bed on a Saturday afternoon in sweats and a T-shirt, surrounded by my husband, Alvin, and our two kids, Alvin III and Ashley: Alvin II reading the business section of the newspaper on one side; the kids at the foot of the bed flipping cable channels and arguing about what each wants to see and whose turn it is to give in; and me with some devotional or daily meditation in my lap, wearing earphones and listening to the sounds of soft music and ocean waves. There's bound to be a bag of hot buttery popcorn plopped down in the middle of the bed, spilling onto the covers each time one of us readjusts our weight.

I guess there's at least two sides to everyone. I'm just grateful that I've finally learned to embrace both sides of me. It took me a while, however. It took me learning to be myself.

For almost four years I was the sole girl among a litter of seven brothers, the different child. Growing up a girl in a house of seven brothers will make you become either aggressive and outspoken or quiet and retiring. You learn how to fight and tussle one of them to the floor, pin him down, or knee him until he gives up and cries "uncle." That's how you win the respect of a whole litter of brothers. But if you're like me and you're too small and smart to try tackling boys twice your size, you learn how to keep to yourself and play by yourself. For stimulation you learn how to create your own private inner world of fun, frolic, and friendship and not depend on the wild games boys play. My brothers were always getting into trouble, jumping up and down on the beds, wrestling one another to the mat, fighting. But I was apt to withdraw into some private corner of a room, creating imaginary worlds for myself. With the birth of my sisters, Angelique and Debbie, years later I gained playmates and soul mates, but until they were old enough to climb out of their cribs and crawl over to play with me I had to content myself with playing alone with my dolls. My macho brothers wouldn't be caught dead playing dolls with a girl.

My doll time became my quiet and creative time. Sitting in a corner of a room, alone at a table with my dolls, dressing and undressing them, styling their hair in hairstyles I'd seen worn by movie stars and glamorous singers on television, kept me occupied for hours on end. I could lose myself in my play. From time to time my brother Ronald, the second oldest of my brothers, would have pity on me and wander over to keep me company. Of all my brothers Ronald was the only one who took time out and played with my dolls and me. I can still recall him pretending to sip tea with me and my dolls, with hands large enough to clutch a football but soft enough to cuddle a doll. Ronald is the one who came up with the idea of coloring my dolls' hair with shoe polish when he noticed me struggling to design new hairstyles for my dolls. Soon, with Ronald's help, every doll had red hair. The next day every doll had black hair. The next day white hair. I was grateful to my big brother for showing me how to change the color of my dolls' hair, but I had to use my own imagination to think of ways to change their lives. With each change of hair color came the opportunity for me to create a new attitude and personality for my dolls.

When Angelique and Debbie came along, four and six years later, I was thrilled to have sisters for company, but our numbers weren't large enough to make us a formidable gang against seven brothers. Nevertheless, three proved a large enough number to tackle one of the boys if he dared stray into our domain or dared to decapitate one of our dolls. But even with two younger sisters on my side, I still felt different: old, mature, wise beyond my years. With two sisters below me and seven brothers above me, I felt squeezed in the middle with the responsibility to be mature. Those two girls were looking to me as an example, and those seven brothers were looking down at me, testing my strength and my resolve. As the older girl I usually managed to earn Angie's and Debbie's respect pretty easily. But my brothers enjoyed reducing me to tears with their constant razzing and name calling.

My sisters' births brought the Winans clan to ten children: David, Ronald, Marvin, Carvin, Michael, Daniel, Benjamin,

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671020005
• ISBN 13: 9780671020002
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240