An unsentimental, authentic examination of a stormy mother-daughter bond.
Gorny’s memoir chronicles her days as the caregiver to the elderly mother with whom she’d shared a tense relationship.
The author’s mother, Gertrude, was 84 years old when she suffered a sudden stroke. Gertrude was a lively woman who, every spring, escaped the heat of her Florida home by making a long drive to New Jersey to visit family and friends, a trip she’d managed alone for years. The stroke took away her independence, as she was left paralyzed on one side of her body and reliant on a wheelchair. Gorny, an assistant professor in special education, stepped into the role of caregiver. Gorny’s younger sister, Melanie, lived in Canada and was, in Gorny’s view, the preferred daughter. In sharp contrast, Gorny and her mother butted heads throughout their lives, and the author characterizes Gertrude as somewhat inattentive and unaffectionate. But the older daughter devoted herself to her mother’s care, as Gertrude moved from a rehabilitation center to a nursing home. Gorny was disturbed by her impression of the nursing home, observing that the residents had only nominal privacy and suspecting the staff of using medications to subdue the residents and manage their behavior. Though Gorny found a more agreeable living environment for Gertrude, she couldn’t deny that her mother was clearly unhappy as well as showing signs of increasing dementia. Gorny visited the nursing home nearly every day, hoping to alleviate the depression that afflicted both her and her mother. Though Gorny feels that Gertrude never really expressed her love while raising her daughters, she remained a selfless, dedicated caregiver.
Gorny, who’s previously written about caring for her mother-in-law in Fridays with Eva (2012), describes other tensions within the family: Years earlier, the recently divorced Gertrude and her two young daughters lived with Gertrude’s mother Lena. With Gertrude busy working as a hospital nurse, the girls’ “hostile” grandmother, a habitual “slapper,” watched the girls. Gorny offers an intelligent, mature overview of her family; she holds no resentment toward Melanie for being the “favorite” and admits her own faults, including a stubborn streak equal to her mother’s. She also treats the assisted living industry fairly, praising one nursing home for such benefits as pet therapy and houseplants in the rooms. Some of Gorny’s descriptions are a bit crass, particularly those of the ill-mannered individuals she’d occasionally run into. She notes, for example, that an aloof staff nutritionist “looked anorexic” and that a heavyset nursing home administrator’s “pudgy fingers wrapped and unwrapped around each other like fat larvae.” Still, the author delivers an unfiltered look at her life and difficult relationship with her mother, admitting that the ordeal of caring for her threatened to harm her 25-year marriage. Such frankness makes her story all the more convincing and powerful.
Pub Date: March 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1667882475
Page Count: 202
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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