Mariah Carey Reveals The Chapters of Her Memoir She Read to Her Kids

Mariah Carey's highly anticipated memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, has officially been released, and her new album The Rarities not too far behind. Fans can finally read, in detail, all of the stories about the ups and downs in Mariah's professional and personal lives that have helped shape her into the person she is today.

In releasing her memoir, Carey shared on social media, "Butterflies in my stomach but pride in my heart. Tears of joy for little Mariah whose story gets to be heard for the first time. I've been waiting for today my entire life."

To celebrate the release of the book she's been waiting to share with the world, the star sat down with iHeartRadio's Angie Martinez during the exclusive The Meaning of Mariah Carey: Looking In. An iHeartRadio conversation with Mimi, where she opened up about The Meaning of Mariah, The Rarities and so much more.

During the special, Mariah talked about two very important chapters she read to her children, "Coloring Outside The Lines" and "A Girl's Best Friend," which talk about racism and being bullied as a young girl. She explained, "There's one chapter called 'Coloring Outside the Lines' that I read for the kids that I feel is very important in terms of their understanding of who they are as black children, who are also mixed. And, then there's a chapter called 'A Girl's Best Friend' about when I was taken out of my element by a group of girls and then bullied and the N word was used profusely."

Mariah added, "And the parents didn't intervene and the parents felt the same way, and that's difficult. So when people think, 'Oh my gosh, she has it easy, you know, she's light skinned or whatever, she's mixed, blah, blah, blah.' Guess what? What I grew up in, in terms of all the white neighborhoods, that was not a plus. I was in the close proximity to whiteness where my mother already explained to me, 'No, there's a caste system where you're higher than someone, depending on your degree of whiteness and Protestant-ness, whatever it is. And we're still in that situation.' And like I said, my book was locked months ago. I haven't been able to change anything. I knew what the subject matter [was that] I was dealing with."

Elsewhere in the special, Martinez read a passage from The Meaning of Mariah Carey that told the story about trying to sneak past her security while hanging out with Da Brat one evening to get some french fries. Mimi added of the memory, "The end of it, where we're actually at Burger King and she was like, 'I can't believe you are Mariah Carey and you're not even allowed to have a five minute reprieve. Like, you know, basically she was like, you got to get out of this moment. Like, this is not okay for anybody."

The feeling of this control over her life trickled into the recording studio as she recalled ruffling some feathers with her song "Looking In" from her 1995 Daydream album. Mariah explained, "I got in trouble and I'm going to use that terminology because, you know, he got mad at me for being honest in a song. I was very real; 'She smiles through a thousand tears/ And harbors adolescent fears/ She dreams of all that she can never be.' When he heard it, he was like, 'Why would you say those things?' I'm like, 'Because this is how I feel.' And I wrote that song in 15 minutes. But it's like, when I would talk to somebody out there, I would say, please check in with your creative self or your center. It's hard when someone is that much in control of your life, there doesn't feel like there's any safe place that just doesn't feel like there is one ... I didn't have one.

She added, "So try to create that for yourself, is what I would say to that girl, if I could go back and say that to myself or anybody out there that's listening that needs that. Just check in with yourself and be like, 'How am I really feeling? Is this okay for me?' You have to matter. That's one thing I learned the meaning that we're talking about, the meaning, like you have to mean something to yourself. And for a long time, I didn't know how to make that happen. I didn't feel worthy of existing or I didn't know what it meant to be 'Mariah Carey.' It was a very difficult time."

The Meaning of Mariah Carey is out now, and The Rarities is set to be released on Friday (October 2nd).


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