An honest, endearingly personal portrayal of addiction and its repercussions.
Clay offers a memoir of alcoholism, family strife, and an absentee father.
The author’s parents met in Virginia in 1965 at William & Mary College. A few years later, her father, Ed, moved to San Francisco, and her mother, Annie, soon followed. Both of Clay’s parents were excited by the counterculture and music of the time—and both, as it became clear in retrospect, were also alcoholics. Their relationship was seemingly fraught from the beginning, yet, in 1968, the author was born. (The couple got married in Golden Gate Park in 1969.) The book includes photos of Ed and Annie taking their young daughter to concerts and Big Sur, but the Californian idyll was not to last; the family moved back east, and things fell apart. Ed eventually left his wife and child to embark on an alcohol-fueled, almost nomadic life that would see him start another family and engage in a long struggle with poverty. He settled into a career as a truck driver, though, this too, would last only so long (citations for driving under the influence resulted in the loss of his license, and he spent time in jail). But throughout it all, he wrote letters. These were personal missives, typically penned in “clean print.” They could be thoughtful and snarky, infused with his literary and musical interests; in them, Ed would float ideas that would clearly never come to fruition, like the notion that he might one day get his driver’s license back.
In addition to the story of her father, the author also tells her own, sharing her personal struggles with alcohol, reconnecting with family, and, of course, growing up in a world in which her dad was always unreliable—the work closely examines the complexities of a family burdened by addiction and other stressors. The letters from Ed convey both a poetic soul and someone who, as Clay phrases it, “could also be pretty shitty sometimes.” Per the author, in his enthusiasm for emulating the artistic restlessness of a Jack Kerouac, Ed left in his wake endless trouble. (One of his sons relates how difficult it could be to have him do something as simple as attending a Little League game, recalling Ed “hanging right behind the umpire with a Miller Life tallboy in his hand, slurring ‘Knock the hide off that puppy, son!’”) Thanks to the letters he wrote, and the author’s fearless investigation, readers come away with a three-dimensional image of Ed (later chapters delve into what his upbringing was like). The memoir covers a lot of ground with so many family members and their perspectives included, and it can grow repetitious—after so many examples of Ed’s trouble with drinking, it is perhaps unnecessary to point out flatly that “he was so addicted to alcohol, and it ruled his life.” Yet with so much to untangle in Ed’s history, there is always reason to keep reading.
An honest, endearingly personal portrayal of addiction and its repercussions.Pub Date: June 23, 2023
ISBN: 9798987908211
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Eclectic Content Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2024
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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