A candid, intriguing, but uneven Peace Corps account.
A Peace Corps memoir recounts a woman’s struggles to adapt to her new life in the remote Zambian bush.
Herbert stood out among her Peace Corps cohorts in Zambia in 2004. While they were young and preening, she was about 10 years older (in her 30s) and consciously tried to adapt to the local customs. The author does a great job explaining why her choice to join the Peace Corps was both surprising and inevitable. “Miss Responsible,” as she calls herself, had a staid lifestyle in the United States; the Peace Corps was a necessary yet daring way to broaden her horizons and do something interesting. What follows in this memoir is an account of how this American woman adapted to life in a Zambian village, learning both the Bemba and Lamba languages, adjusting to the climate and social expectations of her new home, and training villagers in her region in the health sciences. Herbert gives readers some very rich cultural details about her two-year stint. Scenes that stand out include a collective gratitude dance in a mud-hewn church, a game of “beer cricket” with some corps volunteers, and, most memorably, the gross but riveting side effects of a bout of malaria. The author bares all in a book that casts her in some difficult and embarrassing situations—a topic in which she excels. Yet for all her honesty, there’s not a lot that’s different here from other Peace Corps narratives. The story unfolds pretty much as readers would expect. Herbert learned to survive in a remote environment, befriended the local people, and eventually returned home. The author’s writing follows the conventions of the genre, offering few surprises. The pacing is also a bit problematic: Herbert slowly got situated and accepted her life in her post. That said, some relationships are quickly brushed over. The tenderest moment deals with the young, pregnant Mirabel, who deserves a fuller portrayal in these pages. The work devotes a lot of space to the specifics of getting from one place to another when the real draws are the people left on the periphery.
A candid, intriguing, but uneven Peace Corps account.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952919-76-3
Page Count: 282
Publisher: GenZ Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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