Remarkably well-done: a complex and warm insider’s take on a booming industry.
Engaging memoir of a former stripper’s last fling with the profession.
A New York journalist and free spirit, Burana agreed to marry a handsome cowboy she met on a trip to Wyoming. Suddenly, settling down seemed impossible without examining the world of stripping where she had come of age, so Burana set about crafting a cross-country journey that would let her explore the profession that supported but eventually exhausted her. She prepares with a week of “stripper school” at the Pure Talent School of Dance, and then works in clubs from Colorado to Alaska. She reports on the business of stripping, her own stripping experience, dancers and their relationships, why men go to clubs, and what all this has to do with her. When she stops by the Exotic World Burlesque Museum in the California desert to get a sense of stripping’s history, she imparts her own, a story that takes her from Times Square to San Francisco’s bohemian scene. With appealing grace and humor, Burana sidesteps the pitfalls of writing about stripping—sensationalism, preachy moralism, self-righteousness—and instead ponders the historical and social complexities of such a ubiquitous, shadowy trade. With a deft touch, she answers the questions that you’d expect from a thoughtful stripper: How did you get into this? How does it feel? Don't you have any self-respect? And Burana is even-handed: for all the affirmative sisterhood-is-powerful moments, there is a flip side: the weariness of “stripper damage,” with its “self-hatred as wide and deep as the sea.” And always present is the pressure to remain glamorous—drilling out a belt buckle so it can be easily ripped open onstage, the requisite hours on the tanning bed, endless maintenance of hair and nails and mirrored velvet bikinis. Under all the camouflage, the author is entirely credible: When she asserts that “Stripping, at its best, feels like cheating death,” one might even nod in understanding.
Remarkably well-done: a complex and warm insider’s take on a booming industry.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-6790-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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