In her new memoir, Tina Knowles, mother of Beyoncé and Solange, tells her own story
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Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Mother's Day is coming up, and there are the type of moms who are moms not just to their own kids, but play a motherly role for other people in their orbit, if even for a second.

Tina Knowles is one of those moms. If that last name rings a bell, her kids are Solange and Beyonce. Maybe you've heard of them. Anyway, Tina Knowles has got a new book out titled Matriarch, all about the inside story of how she got her girls to superstardom. But in this interview with NPR's Michelle Martin, the part that stuck out to me was her interaction with Maxwell, the R&B star. Of course, he wasn't a star when they first met. The way Tina Knowles tells it, he seemed just like a shy kid.

So shy, in fact, that she had to step in and play the role of mother for just one moment. That's ahead.

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Before Tina Knowles became known as the behind-the-scenes force helping to style and guide Beyoncé and Solange, she owned a beauty shop, she liked to cook and care for her family and friends, and she prided herself on helping other people achieve their dreams.

Now, in a new book, Tina Knowles steps into the spotlight herself with the inside story of how she helped her girls achieve rare heights of stardom. The book is called Matriarch. I spoke with her recently. I was at our studios in Washington, D.C., and Tina Knowles was in a studio in Los Angeles. Welcome. Thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, thank you for having me. May I call you Miss Tina?

Of course. I was struggling with how to describe your book. It tells the story of Black entrepreneurship, how you and your former husband, Matthew Knowles, built your business. And it's also the story of mothers, being a mother, the mothers we had, the ones we wished we had. It's a lot. And I was wondering when you started writing this book, is that what you started with or did it just become that?

You know, I actually was going to write a book about behind the scenes things with my career in the music business. But it just came out of me. Once I started writing, it was like I just wanted to tell my story. One of the things that I got from the book was how hard you had to fight to allow the girls to express their style.

There was a magazine cover shoot where they wanted to put Beyonce's hair in a bun. And you were like, they're not going to put your hair in a bun. Why does her hair have to be in a bun? And also Maxwell was in that same cover shoot. And you talked about the fact that this was at a point where if people know Maxwell, he had this crown of hair that was kind of his signature, but they wanted him to put on a hat. And you were like, don't let them make you put on a hat. You took his hat off and were picking out his hair.

Right. I took his hat off. I didn't even know him, but he looked sad. And so I walked over and I said, why do you look so sad? And he said, oh, they made me put this hat on. And I took it off and I took my pick and started picking his hair out. And Beyonce was mortified. She was like, mom, what are you doing? But Maxwell and I connected that day and we're really good friends.

And, you know, he tells that story all the time because why did they want Beyonce to put her hair in a bun and for him to put a hat on? I didn't like that. This happened like over and over again. And in fact, one of the music companies that you talked to actually talked to your ex, Matthew Knowles, who was their manager, and actually said that you were holding the girls back.

Well, they were just doing what they knew. And they felt like four black girls, curvy country black girls from Texas with big hair and very Motown-esque costumes were not, that wasn't the style. They were right and that wasn't the style then. There were all these pop icons with huge careers and they felt like they should look like them and they should wear jeans and midriff tops and everything.

And they were like, this is so Motown. It's so over the top. But we liked over the top. We were from Texas. They look different. And I think that was refreshing to the audience because in the meantime, people were coming up to us all the time saying, we can't wait to see what you guys are going to have on next. And some of it looked a little crazy. I mean, I look at it like now we look at it now. We were like, what were we thinking?

But it was that time. Well, how did you get the chutzpah? This is not a Texas word. I'm from New York, so I'm going to say it. The chutzpah to say to these people, this is what they want to wear. I'll tell you, I was a sort of laid back, behind the scenes person, a little, I wouldn't say shy. But when it came to my girls, I was a beast. Like most mothers are. You know, the mother bear comes out. And I would bring out badass Teenie B's.

Who's badass Teenie B? And I would stand up to people. Who is badass Teenie B? Badass Teenie B was this little girl who had to protect herself from the nuns and from the message that I wasn't enough and I didn't belong. And I had to fight. So I didn't have any problems saying this is who they are. This is what they like.

And people would be like, oh, God, who is somebody's mama coming in here trying to tell me my job? But I fought for it. I fought with people. And I'm really proud of that.

You write a lot about your relationship with your ex in the book. It's moving and it's deep and it had to have been hard to write about. Very on and off and on and off. And I will say for people who haven't had a chance to read the book yet, you don't let yourself off the hook. You talk about the ways in which you kind of participated in this. Well, it takes two people to be in a relationship.

And I just, for so many reasons, stayed in this relationship for way longer than I should have. But he was the first person in my life to really say, I won't say the first, but the second person that told me I could do anything and always said, oh, you got this. You can do this. He was always my biggest cheerleader. And that's hard to give up.

Did your daughters get input or a read in the book? Did they get an edit? They haven't read the book. They haven't read it? They only read their parts. Interesting. The parts that they're involved in. They are kind of busy. So how do you feel now that you've put your story out there, that you've got it down on paper and it's out there for the world? It's kind of scary. It's kind of scary. I tell you, sometimes I wake up and I'm like, did I just really do that?

You know, it's a big deal because you're opening yourself up. But it's important to me to tell my own story, especially in my family, because there's been so many narratives and so much speculation and

I just think everyone should write their story for their kids and their grandkids and their great, great, great grandchildren. I wish I would have had that from my mother. That's Tina Knowles. Her new book is called Matriarch, and it's out now.

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