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4,147 words · no email, no account
No. 005 · Music · R&B & Soul
The Marsh Harbour Charter
a biography of Aaliyah Dana Haughton
What the book is
She sang almost under her breath. On record after record, Aaliyah Dana Haughton placed her mouth so close to the microphone that the air between syllables became part of the song — a quiet that carried more weight than any belt, any run, any of the era's louder women. By twenty-two she had remade the texture of American R&B. By twenty-two she was dead, in a small plane that should never have left a runway in the Bahamas.
Tariah Robinson traces the short arc of that life with patience and with care: a Brooklyn-born, Detroit-raised girl in a family of singers; a teenager apprenticed to producers who saw what her restraint could do; a young woman moving between Tim and Missy and Damon Dash, between Aaliyah the album and the films she had only begun to make.
At the center of the book sits the marriage that the industry agreed to forget. In 1994, Robert Kelly married her. She was fifteen. For nearly thirty years, the full account of what happened around that marriage could not be reported — not while he remained free, not while the women around him remained afraid. His 2021 conviction changed that, and Robinson works the Kelly chapters as investigation: documents, depositions, named sources, the verifiable record.
What emerges is a portrait of an artist whose quiet was a discipline, and of a silence around her that was something else entirely.
At a glance
- Subject
- Aaliyah Dana Haughton
- Shelf
- Music · R&B & Soul
- Written by
- Tariah Robinson
- Chapters
- 18 across 206 pages
- Narrated by
- Zara Thompson
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
- Content notes
- fatal plane crash · grooming allegations
Contents · 18 chapters
- 01The WhisperRead free
- 02Brooklyn / Detroit3,935 words
- 03The Uncle3,385 words
- 04Chicago Recording Company3,822 words
- 05Rosemont, Illinois3,807 words
- 06The Demo2,781 words
- 07The Studio3,600 words
- 08*One in a Million*3,463 words
- 09*Try Again*2,846 words
- 10*Romeo Must Die*2,957 words
- 11Akasha2,815 words
- 12Zee2,679 words
- 13*Aaliyah*3,067 words
- 14Marsh Harbour3,076 words
- 15The Tarmac4,092 words
- 16St. Ignatius / Ferncliff4,110 words
- 17Streaming (Twenty Years Later)5,011 words
- 18Ferncliff3,801 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 206 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- Hardcover · $24.99
- 6 × 9 in · 206 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90470-018-8 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Zara Thompson
ISBN 979-8-90623-001-0
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is The Marsh Harbour Charter about?
Aaliyah Dana Haughton. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Marsh Harbour Charter — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,147 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 63,000 words, 18 chapters, 206 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
06Does this book carry content warnings?
Yes: fatal plane crash; grooming allegations. They are listed before you buy rather than discovered afterwards. The material is handled as evidence, not as spectacle.
The writer
This book deals with
- fatal plane crash
- grooming allegations
Listed before you buy, not after.
