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Matriarch

Beyoncé’s mother tells her story for the first time ever

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Matriarch

By: Tina Knowles
Narrated by: Angie Beyincé, Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, Solange, Tina Knowles
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The #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

'A must-read memoir that you'll want to share with all the women in your life' MICHELLE OBAMA

'A work of art' OPRAH

To understand the icons Beyoncé, Solange and Kelly, you have to understand where they came from... A deeply personal and revelatory memoir by Ms Tina Knowles - as you've never seen her before.

Tina Knowles, the mother of icons Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: the woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that.

For the first time ever, Tina Knowles shares her remarkable story in Matriarch. A life of grief and tragedy, love and heartbreak, the nurturing of her superstar daughters - and the perseverance and audacity it takes for a girl from Galveston, Texas to change the world.

This intimate and revealing memoir is a multigenerational family saga and a celebration of the wisdom that women, mothers and daughters pass on to each other across generations.

A glorious chronicle of a life like none other and a testament to the world-changing power of Black motherhood.©2025 Tina Knowles Business Entertainment & Celebrities Motherhood Parenting & Families Professionals & Academics Relationships Women's Voices Heartfelt Inspiring Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

A must-read memoir that you'll want to share with all the women in your life. (Michelle Obama)
A work of art. (Oprah Winfrey)
In Matriarch, her touching, surprisingly beautiful memoir, Knowles weaves together a rich tapestry of a life defined by providing love . . . Matriarch encapsulates the hypocrisies of the American Dream while eventually turning into an ode to its possibilities. (Poppie Platt)
A gifted storyteller who weaves together intergenerational narratives into an impressively cohesive whole...Throughout Matriarch, such scrupulous accounts of systemic discrimination and violence paint a vivid picture of a topic that can otherwise feel hard to grasp - one of the book's greatest strengths...What makes Beyoncé Beyoncé, Tina Tina, or you you? Matriarch poses big, pertinent questions, and the answers it offers are largely thoughtful. Packing plenty of wisdom even if neither you nor your progeny are global superstars, Matriarch insists on the multiplicity in us all - daughter, woman, mother, no matter how we came to be that way. (Emily Watkins)
I closed this book in awe of Knowles' hard grafting, hard loving, open minded and humbly accountable parenting ethos. No wonder her girls grew up to feel they could run the world. (Helen Brown)
A touching tale of growing up in the US south.
A mother memoir that, like Knowles herself, stands proud in a lineage of singular excellence. (India Block)
Matriarch is a rare look into the Knowles family . . . Tina Knowles gives us a full picture of her Southern childhood, witnessing her daughters' blooming talents and her rocky marriage. ('The Best Nonfiction Books of 2025')
Have you ever wondered how the heck Beyoncé and Solange Knowles found their way to becoming the most talented people on planet Earth? It's because they were raised and styled by Tina Knowles, whose unflinching memoir takes us from Texas to the top of the world. Her story is not just a rich tapestry of both her personal successes and failures but a beautiful exploration of her family's story of being Black in America. She's both an entrepreneurial and creative force, and this is an inside look at how her enduring pursuit of creative fulfillment helped establish the careers of today's most beloved artists. (Claire Parker)
An unusual take on motherhood, as it reveals the reality of rearing two musical superstars: Beyoncé and Solange. We learn how Knowles, whose great-grandmother Célestine was a slave in Louisiana, became the ultimate stage mom, guiding her girls to realise their creative dreams while fostering pride in their blackness and womanhood. ('The best memoirs and biographies of 2025')
All stars
Most relevant
I LOVED this book! I learnt so much about Beyonce and the start of her career, and about everything Tina was involved in, and her life leading up to Beyonce becoming famous. Beautifully narrated by Tina herself.

Amazing book!

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More than a book about Beyonce’s mum - this is for anyone who wants real life history and life lessons

Beautiful storytelling - full of history and humour

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Wow - I expected to like this book, not to be blown away by it. Miss Tina has lived an extraordinary life, and it felt like a privilege to be let into her world, with gorgeous writing to lead us through her memories. I listened to this every night while cooking dinner, and found myself laughing, nodding, and even crying over the stove! It was a pleasure to listen to and I will miss having Miss Tina keep me company. Highly recommend.

A stunning memoir

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What can I say. Ms Tina did it and did it well. So well. Thank you for this book.

Quality

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It was like hearing my grandmother tell a story but this was well written. l got to know Beyonce's mum as an individual not from the eyes of her daughter. There are also a lot of lessons to be learnt from self love to tanacity and living your dreams. Easy read and interesting.

Great Narration

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