History and BRITerature

Birth Me Baby One More Time: Emerging From The Womb

Oops, she’s doing it again: Britney Spears is rumored to be negotiating a book deal with HarperCollins. The novel will draw on experiences from Spears’s own life. With that in mind, using only her song lyrics, here’s our take on the first paragraph of the novel. As a mother of two, we wouldn’t be surprised if Britney began with where it all begins for her character. (Ohh crazy. But it feels alright.)

Chapter 1

Birth Me Baby One More Time: Emerging From The Womb

Oh baby, baby. Lately I’ve been stuck imagining. Spinning ’round and ’round. My loneliness is killin’ me. I feel so small. I know I may be young, but I’ve got feelings, too. Feels like I’m caught in the middle. The Earth is movin’, but I can’t feel the ground.

When you walk (when you walk) and when you talk (when you talk) I get the tingle, I wanna mingle, that’s what I want. All I need is time, a moment that is mine, while I’m in between. I’m not that innocent. Shame on me to need release. I’m overprotected. Intoxicate me, I’m a lush. I wanna go. I-I-I wanna go. Come on get me, get me on the floor. Watch me move.

Born to make you happy. Better be ready, hope that ya feel the same. You wanna take me home, wanna make me your own. I’m stronger than I ever thought that I could be: baby. Here I go, on my own. Here I go, alright, here I go. See the sunlight.

Appendix

Guess the Source: A Piece of Me

All in good company: Britney will now join the ranks of serious writers--the most prominent of whom is Drew Gilpin Faust. Now that you have the first chapter, guess whether the quotes below are from Britney Spears’ seminal 2001 album “Britney” or Drew Faust’s historical text “This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War.”

1. I’ve seen so much more than you know now so don’t tell me to shut my eyes.

2. I’m a slave for you.

3. I can’t realize that I am never to see that \ dear boy again... It is too hard to realize.

4. Perhaps he extravaganza of mourning that greeted the public commemorations of Jackson and Lincoln served in some way as a surrogate for all the funerals that citizens could not attend.

5. Nothing we call trouble seems worth talking about.

6. Shimmy shimmy oh. Shimmy oh. Shimmy hey.