Tina Knowles releases latest memoir, “Matriarch: A Memoir”
Tina Knowles released her latest memoir, Matriarch: A Memoir, yesterday on April 22nd. The mother of global superstars Beyonce and Solange Knowles, announced last October that she was gearing up to release a new book. “What inspires me is the wisdom that women pass on to each other…” she says, “and the inner wisdom we long to uncover in ourselves.”
Guiding Stars: Tina’s Role Beyond the Stage
Knowles is best known as the matriarch of the Knowles family. Her voice and life lessons have inspired and been featured in both of her daughter’s 2016 seminal works, A Seat At The Table and Lemonade. She served as a surrogate mother to fellow global superstar and Beyonce’s ‘Destiny’s Child’ groupmate Kelly Rowland. She has established quite the media personality, having just been recently honored as Mother of The Year at the 2025 Billboard Women In Music Awards.
The in depth memoir will trace the origins of Knowles’ matriarchal traditions. Her days when she was born Celestine Beyonce in Galveston, Texas. The story will profile Knowles’ transition from vivacious young woman and then member of high school girl group The Veltones, to wife of Xerox businessman Matthew Knowles, to owner of Headliner’s Hair Salon, a space largely memorialized in Beyonce and Solange’s many artistic works. Knowles and eldest daughter Beyonce together founded ‘Cecred”, a hair care brand line that also pays homage to Knowles’s days as a hairdresser.
Before the Grammys, There Was Her Needle and Thread
Perhaps the centerpiece of the Knowles family folklore is the role Tina Knowles played in the early days of Beyonce’s career as stylist and clothing designer of many of the iconic looks of her daughter’s girl group Destiny’s Child. In her acceptance speech for the 2016 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Fashion Icon Award, Beyonce says, “ when we were first starting out in Destiny’s Child, high end labels didn’t really want to dress four Black country curvy girls and we couldn’t afford designer dresses in couture. My mother was rejected from every showroom in New York but like my grandmother, she used her talents to give her children their dreams. My mom actually designed my wedding dress, my prom dress, my first CFDA Awards dress, my first Grammy dress, and the list goes on.”
Building Her Own House of Style
Knowles has established a brand that was all her own. She continued working alongside both her daughters by founding House of Dereon, a fashion line whose name is inspired by Knowles’s own mother, Agnes Dereon. She continued her work as a hair stylist and a fashion designer, with many of her looks being featured in Essence and Ebony magazine alongside countless fashion magazines.
Limited-edition signed copies of the book are available at Barnes & Noble and the book is available on Amazon. Purchase today in time for Mother’s Day.
