An anecdotal personal account of one woman’s Christian walk of faith.
Franklin, a pastor, delivers a memoir centering her Christianity.
The governing metaphor of the author’s nonfiction debut is a road map, used as a symbol for both trustworthy and unreliable navigation. Franklin likens the development of her faith to the unfolding of such a map, full of twists and turns and dead ends. She cautions her readers that God will not simply hand them a full itinerary: “We will not receive an exhaustive map that provides every detail or reveals each landmark and waypoint along our journey,” she writes. “If we did, there is a pretty good chance that we would either be terrified about what is to come or develop an ego-centeredness, and both scenarios would divert us from God’s ideal plan.” To illustrate the path of her own journey, Franklin draws heavily on her own life story from the perspective of “a Puerto Rican woman raised in financial poverty by a Roman Catholic family.” This narrative, she contends, “wildly messy as it is (you’ll see), has been used by God to illustrate the mystery.” The author reports that she “surrendered [her] life to Jesus” a month before her 40th birthday. Vignettes from her own religious history are liberally interspersed with Franklin’s more general theological musings, complete with a great many quotes drawn from Christian literature and Scripture.
Franklin writes with a good deal of empathy and heart. She snares the reader early in the book by describing her contemplation of suicide at the very young age of 7, after suffering some contentious encounters in her catechism class. What caused such a drastic reaction? Faulty cartography: “I was attempting to use my own map—my own interpretation of what was right and what was wrong, and how things should go,” she writes. “There was no room in my mind for any other human’s opinion or experience, much less God’s.” Her discussions of stories from Scripture are companionable and engaging, often highlighting the human contradictions in well-known tales. When mentioning the fact that certain countries and cultures don't let women preach the word of God, she cites other examples in Christian Scripture: “Nicodemus had the religious authority to talk about Jesus but didn’t,” she observes, “whereas the woman at the well, who had no authority, told everyone.” These piquant interpretations more than compensate for the author’s apparent misunderstanding of her own central conceit: “Maps are about what we want to happen or what we think will happen,” she writes, even though maps do not work that way (it becomes clear that “plans” would have been a better device than “maps” throughout). This along with a tendency for obscure faith-based pronouncements (“the way forward is not a formula but a relationship with Jesus cultivated by a rhythm of connection”) are the main weaknesses of a book otherwise brimming with personal honesty and cleareyed observations about religion.
An anecdotal personal account of one woman’s Christian walk of faith.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781957616193
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Fedd Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 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
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