Parenting & Family Quote by Della Reese

A flex, delivered with the offhand ease of someone who’s been underestimated her whole life. In one breath, Della Reese collapses the usual hierarchy of “serious” art: a children’s book and an autobiography share the same shelf, the same oxygen, the same claim on legitimacy. That pairing is the point. It’s not just productivity; it’s range, and it’s control over narrative in two directions at once - toward the innocent and toward the definitive.

Reese came up in an era when Black women in entertainment were routinely flattened into a voice, a look, a persona managed by other people. Saying she has an autobiography isn’t mere biography-as-merch; it’s a declaration that her life is not gossip, not liner notes, not a footnote to the men and machines around her. It’s hers to frame. The children’s book, meanwhile, reads like a second kind of authorship: speaking to the next generation without industry gatekeepers translating her. It signals warmth and moral authority, but also a strategic widening of the stage. If the public wants to reduce her to “singer” or “actress,” she answers with “author,” twice.

The syntax does quiet work. “Already out” carries a hint of being ahead of the question, ahead of the assumption that she’s only now dabbling. The understatement is the swagger: Reese doesn’t need to argue for depth. She lists receipts and lets the culture catch up.