Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind The Making Of Bessie
Research
While doing research to write the film, Rees referenced several books, including Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis, Blues Empress in Black Chattanooga: Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South by Michelle Scott, and Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother. The last book informed Rees both thematically and visually, and she referred to Angela Davis’ book Blues Legacies as her Bible.