Matriarch: A Memoir

Matriarch (2025) is a memoir by fashion designer and businesswoman Tina Knowles. The memoir recounts Knowles’s experiences from her childhood in Galveston, Texas, through to the present day, detailing Knowles’s rise to success as a designer while incorporating more vulnerable aspects of her marriage to Mathew Knowles and her experience mothering music icons Beyoncé and Solange Knowles. The memoir explores The Complexities of Motherhood and Family Dynamics, Resilience in the Face of Adversity, and The Pursuit of Personal Identity Over Time.

This guide uses the 2025 One World hardback edition.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide include depictions of racial violence, discrimination, sexual violence, emotional and physical abuse, pregnancy loss, gun violence, domestic violence, substance dependency, chronic illness, death, mental illness, and grief.

Summary

Tina Knowles lays out her life story, beginning with her childhood in Galveston, Texas. Throughout the text, she primarily inhabits her younger consciousness to immerse the reader in the texture of her past. She provides intermittent reflections on these experiences.

Knowles grew up with her mother Agnes Derouen Buyince and her father Lumis Buyince. She was the youngest, with three brothers and one sister at home and two adult siblings, and was close with her eldest siblings’ kids, too. Knowles loved her family, but she often felt trapped in Galveston. She had a habit of acting out, which she believes is what earned her the childhood nickname Badass Tenie B. As she came of age, she faced more and more adversity. She was living in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s, and witnessed constant racism and discrimination. She and her siblings were victims of this violence. Knowles did her best to stand up for herself, although she was constantly aware of her mother’s fear for her safety.

After high school, Knowles moved to California. She lived with her niece Linda and began working at a department store, where she did makeup and hair. She loved California and felt free for the first time. However, she soon had to return home to care for her ailing parents. It was hard to readjust to life in Galveston, but in retrospect, Knowles holds that leaving home gave her perspective on her parents and hometown.

Knowles soon met and fell in love with Mathew Knowles. Almost immediately after they got married, Knowles’s mother passed away. She then discovered that she was pregnant. After her first child, Beyoncé, was born, Knowles was overwhelmed with grief. She realized how much she missed her mom. Amidst postpartum depression, she tried healing from Agnes’s death and adjusting to motherhood.

Over the years following, Knowles and Mathew’s relationship struggled. Knowles tried to start her own career, but worried about Beyoncé. She also tried leaving Mathew, but soon discovered she was pregnant again. During her pregnancy with Solange, she was more devoted to creating a business plan. She launched her salon, Headliners, in Houston (where she and her family were now living) not long after Solange’s birth. She tried leaving Mathew at this time, too, but the two kept finding their way back to each other.

As Beyoncé and Solange grew up, Knowles was careful to nurture their creative spirits. She enrolled them in dance programs and encouraged their artistic instincts. Beyoncé quickly established herself as a singing talent. Knowles enrolled her in competitions and pageants, and she soon joined the group Girls Tyme. This group eventually became Destiny’s Child. Beyoncé’s friend Kelly joined the group and moved in with the Knowles family. She became like a sister to Beyoncé and Solange and a daughter to Knowles.

As Destiny’s Child took off, Knowles took on the role of their stylist. She gave her salon to her assistant and devoted herself to Destiny’s Child full- time. After the group broke up, she pivoted her career to help Beyoncé. The two would later launch the fashion line House of Deréon. Eventually, Knowles realized she had to leave Mathew for good. Knowles remarks upon how difficult this decision was for her. However, in retrospect, she knows she needed to let go of Mathew to grow as a person. After the divorce, she devoted more time to therapy and self-care. She learned new things about herself, confronted her trauma, and claimed her strength in new ways.

Over the years following, Knowles pursued a few new intimate relationships. She eventually remarried a man named Richard. The marriage was good for a time, but did not last. When they divorced, Knowles felt proud of herself. She had listened to her needs and prioritized her care over the longevity of an unsustainable relationship. She then went on to start a mentorship program called Tina’s Angels. She continued investing in her daughters’ careers and family lives. She identifies these relationships as her most life-giving connections. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, for example, her daughters stepped in to care for her.

Knowles reflects on her life and all the lessons she has learned. She is thankful for the experience she has had writing her memoir. She acknowledges all that she is grateful for and all that she is proud of.