Nina Simone’s life as a woman was defined as much by the myth of the great tragic heroine in the history of Black American music as by her role as a Civil Rights activist. In her youth, she was reduced to her physical reality as a Black woman, and her musical talents were dismissively swept aside by a racist jury. Like the other women featured in Les Palpitantes, her body was a site of both struggle and ecstasy—the very place for which she fought, and the place where she was able to find happiness. This artist, whose ego was as immense as her suffering, belongs in this series.