A sensitive meditation on a woman’s difficult life.
A son bears witness to his mother’s struggles.
In a slim, tender memoir, novelist and editor Louis offers an empathetic portrait of his mother, who for 20 years lived with her abusive husband, “her life deformed and almost destroyed by misery and masculine violence.” A lively young woman who hoped to become a chef, her dream was crushed when she became pregnant at 17 and married the baby’s father, who turned out to be a drunk. Soon they had another child, but by the time she was 20, she had left him and married her second husband, Louis’ father. He, too, was an alcoholic, cruel and demanding. “Nothing could happen unless it involved my father,” Louis recalls. Over the years, she could imagine no way to leave her husband and children, but Louis could not understand her passivity. He was resentful and ashamed of her, refusing to confide his pain over being called a “faggot” by boys at school. He saw himself as a “dissident, monstrous child”—a loser, like his mother. “The first pages of this story,” he writes, “could have been called: A Son’s Struggle Not to Become a Son.” As much as he later came to sympathize with her yearning “for the right to exist as a woman,” as a boy, he treated her with condescension and cruelty. His violence, he admits with regret, was a form of “revenge against my childhood.” When his mother was 45, long after Louis had left home to attend a lycée and university, she finally threw his father out. To support herself, she became a home health aide, a satisfying job that made her proud. She met a man and joined him in Paris, where Louis was living. He depicts her transformation into a happy, attractive woman, reveling in pleasure and hard-won freedom, as a gift to them both.
A sensitive meditation on a woman’s difficult life.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-60674-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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