Barbra Streisand in her own words – and voice

One of Barbra Streisand’s signature songs is “People,” from the musical “Funny Girl.” But when Streisand, who landed the lead role in the Broadway production in 1963, first heard the lyric “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world,” the 21-year-old newcomer had a question for songwriter Bob Merrill.

“Isn’t it people who don’t need people who are the luckiest people in the world?” she asked. As she recalls in her massive autobiography, “My Name Is Barbra,” the lyricist shut her down with a curt “no.”

Streisand has a reputation for being difficult. She bristles at that charge but acknowledges that she could be, well, annoying, especially when she was starting out. Streisand, born in the Brooklyn borough of New York in 1942, was eager to learn and interrogated her collaborators about every element of their work. Confident in her opinions, she had the chutzpah to suggest ways colleagues could do their jobs better.  

The audiobook of the nearly 1,000-page tome, narrated by Streisand herself, runs to 48 hours. The promotional materials note that the audio version features excerpts from more than 40 songs, and while they’re a pleasure to hear, they’re like drops in the ocean over the course of such a lengthy account. 

The appeal of the audiobook is not in the occasional song snippet, but in hearing Streisand tell her life story in her own indelible voice. She says she considers herself an actress more than a singer. (Her meteoric rise was set in motion after she won a talent show at a Manhattan gay bar in 1960; when she told her best friend she was planning to enter as a singer, the shocked friend responded, “I’ve known you for two years and I’ve never even heard you hum.”) Her narration is entertainingly theatrical.

She dramatizes stories using various accents and the thick Brooklyn inflection of her youth; the many Yiddish phrases she deploys roll easily off her tongue. Streisand speaks in a conversational tone full of digressions – most appear in print, but some were ad-libbed for the audiobook. Now in her 80s, she describes, in exuberant detail, clothing she wore and meals she ate many decades ago. 

Streisand is just as exhaustive when it comes to her career. She dissects nearly all of her acting roles, including in the movie version of “Funny Girl” (for which she won the Academy Award for best actress in 1969), “The Way We Were,” and “A Star Is Born.” She devotes long chapters to each of the films she’s directed: “Yentl,” “The Prince of Tides,” and “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” She covers the making of many of the 50 studio albums she’s recorded for Columbia Records. 

She’s candid about her love life, dishing about her early first marriage to actor Elliott Gould, which ended in divorce, and her happy second marriage to actor James Brolin. She also had many romances between marriages, including with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, actor Don Johnson, and tennis star Andre Agassi.

The book’s emotional core comes from her difficult childhood.

Streisand’s father died when she was only 15 months old. She pines for him still, particularly since her mother was remote and withholding when Barbra was a girl. Later, Diana Streisand became jealous of her daughter’s success. (“Why are they honoring her? Why aren’t they honoring me? I’m the mother!” she seethed at a 1984 gala held in recognition of her daughter’s philanthropy.)

Despite Streisand’s shyness, stage fright, and what she calls a “deep insecurity,” she always expected to be famous. She also knew that she wanted to be in charge.

Negotiating her first record contract at age 20, she accepted less money in exchange for creative control. She’s remained in control ever since – in fact, she was the first woman to be writer, director, producer, and star of a Hollywood film (“Yentl” in 1983). 

Streisand makes a convincing case that she was tarred as “difficult” because men in show business weren’t used to having women call the shots. “What is so offensive about a woman taking control?” she wonders. 

Some of her challenges are relatable. Much of the book is not. Streisand cloned a beloved dog; she faxed her friend Bill Clinton with political advice during his presidency; when the leaves on a tree on her property turned brown, she directed her gardener to hand-paint them green. 

But do we want our divas to be relatable? 

“Looking back, it was much more fun to dream of being famous than to actually be famous,” she reflects at the end of the book. 

It’s a tough job, but Streisand was born to do it.