The daughter of a minister and his devout wife, Sandra Bush entered into a disastrous marriage immediately after high school. After giving birth toMickalene Thomas and her brother in the 1970s, ‘Mama Bush’, as she became known, divorced her husband and raised her two children in her hometown of Camden, New Jersey. She resolutely pursued a career in modelling in New York City when black women were finally given the opportunity to cross the colour line, while simultaneously hosting house parties and theatre productions to raise money for sickle cell anemia, which she had been afflicted with since birth.
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After a second ill-fated romance with a drug dealer, Mama Bush fell victim to addiction, entered rehab, and rebuilt her life as a practising Buddhist. “There was this complexity to her life,” Thomas tells AnOther while taking a break fromBetter Nights, the immersive art experience inspired by a box of Polaorids of Mama Bush and friends made in the late 1970s, which recently opened during Art Basel in Miami Beach.
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