A bold, if occasionally terrifying, personal account of spiritual transformation.
Sensing her mental well-being unraveling, a woman embarks on a road trip that proves to be a mind-expanding voyage of spiritual discovery in this memoir.
According to Sweetland, she had her first conversation with the spirit world when she was about 2 years old and still in her crib. After hearing a female voice say “Be careful,” she recalls a visit by three witches. She reflects that these spirits were “guardians” who would bear “silent witness” to her “life with an alcoholic father and a chronically depressed mother. Through the years of teenage anorexia, escapism with alcohol, and a sense of constant loneliness.” Growing older, the author forged a career in veterinary medicine, but after 20 years in the profession, she felt the urge to quit and take a road trip to California with her dog, Arya. Fate decided otherwise, and she found herself drawn to New Mexico. There, she tells readers, she learned that the guiding voice she had been hearing in her left ear was that of Mangas Coloradas, a 19th-century Apache warrior. The trip turned out to be a catalyst for a spiritual awakening that released her from the bonds of her torturous past. Sweetland depicts a range of phenomena she experienced—including visions, voices, and precognitive dreams—with a sedate, straightforward lucidity. Describing astral travel, she writes: “I left the deep cosmos and reentered the earth’s atmosphere, finding my house safely held by the surrounding fir, cedar, and pine-forested neighborhood. I phased back in through a wall, no need for doors.” The author’s willingness to gaze into the darkest recesses of existence may prove disturbing for some, as when she recalls her mother’s gruesome death following a battle with lung cancer: “As my mother’s crimson blood repainted the white sterility of the hospital floor; every red blood cell jumped from the sinking ship, pouring from her ears, her eyes, her nose.” Besides her ability to shock, Sweetland offers some pithy nuggets of wisdom, drawing on Zen Buddhist influences: “My identity is not my career. I won’t disappear because I’ve quit the only life I have ever known.” Skeptics will struggle with the bizarre nature of the author’s spiritual adventures while those open to ideas of mediums and the existence of higher dimensions should find this book enthralling.
A bold, if occasionally terrifying, personal account of spiritual transformation.Pub Date: March 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9826769-5-0
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Cauda Pavonis
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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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