A heartfelt, bittersweet, cathartic family portrait that’s imbued with illness and compassion at its core.
A woman recounts the impact of her mother’s battle with mental illness in this memoir.
With this book, comprised primarily of lucid memories and anecdotes, Smitherman, a third-generation Black Washingtonian, realizes a lifelong desire to uncover her family’s origins, a need that’s been in her “head for decades.” Her chronicle begins in the 1950s, when she was 10 years old, growing up in northwest Washington, D.C., and becoming horrified when her manic, diminutive, schizophrenic mother, Amy, would scream at the ceiling and mutter gibberish. Her father, a Marine stationed in Japan, came home infrequently and couldn’t deliver the parental attention that the author craved. In these pages, she recalls her mother’s “feral” behavior. Smitherman remembers that they always seemed estranged as compared to the bond her mother shared with the author’s brother, Billy: “Although she loved me in her own distant way, she looked at me with such indifference that it affected me deeply.” Smitherman asserts that the only time her mother focused on her was when the author was nearly killed by a motorcyclist as a child. Smitherman’s grandmother Florence and doting aunt Sarah stepped in and delivered the love she needed, though her mother’s worsening condition fractured the family as a whole. The author also recounts cruelties by other relatives, including her curmudgeonly grandfather, who told her mother, when she gave birth to Smitherman at 16, that her baby was “too Black.” Years later, he tried to kill the author when she was a teenager simply because of her clumsy cooking skills. Overall, her childhood was a grim, sad one, filled with an insufficient amount of love from her unstable mother. Conversely, Smitherman extolls the power of family despite quarrels, and how the bond “always remains crucial in the end,” even through the author’s own pregnancies and illnesses. The account is hobbled somewhat by its repetitive, often overstated assertions and sentiments as well as a nonlinear timeline. But the moving memoir is fortified by Smitherman’s astute opinions on genetics, a family’s evolution through a serious illness, and the precarious nature of love. Though she believes she was not her mother’s favorite, the author’s devotion to her was striking and unwavering, even when Smitherman assumed caregiving duties during her mother’s final years.
A heartfelt, bittersweet, cathartic family portrait that’s imbued with illness and compassion at its core.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9798985517330
Page Count: 311
Publisher: Ghost Book Writers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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