A remarkably frank, comprehensive, and eye-opening account of triumphing over hardship.
In this debut memoir, a quadriplegic recounts the serious injury that changed his life in ways that he never could have imagined.
As a teenager in Oceanside, New York, Kunken relieved stress through sports, especially football. But it was during a game at Cornell University in 1970 that he injured his spinal cord and broke his neck. The 20-year-old spent months lying in hospital beds, with medical professionals refusing to explain the full extent of his physical trauma. It turned out that he was paralyzed and would need a wheelchair, likely for the rest of his life. While he nearly gave up hope at times, Kunken was determined to return to college (“I needed to go back to school and get the best education possible if I was going to have any chance of making something out of my life”). With a personal attendant assisting him (Kunken could only partially move his left arm), he graduated from college and even earned two master’s degrees. Then he opted to go to law school and faced a host of new challenges when he became an assistant DA in the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office on Long Island. He started to focus on his love life after he met a woman he envisioned a future with—including children. The author meticulously details his months spent in hospitals and what’s now called the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. He skillfully illuminates various procedures, physical therapies, and such diagnosed conditions as a neurogenic bladder. He likewise doesn’t skimp on later specifics about his grade point averages and court cases. The prose is refreshingly candid, and intriguing passages linger on recurring problems he ran across. Kunken, for example, recounts how he endured doctors with appalling bedside manners and hired myriad personal attendants who didn’t work out, including one who stole from him. On the other hand, he praises his supportive friends and family, particularly his older brother, younger sister, and motherly aunt. Such figures often crop up in the author’s huge selection of personal photographs showcasing his early life, his hospitalization and treatment, and his growing family.
A remarkably frank, comprehensive, and eye-opening account of triumphing over hardship.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781946074416
Page Count: 462
Publisher: Twelve Tables Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 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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