A fluent and far-ranging celebration of communication and world travel.
Marshall recounts her journeys through foreign languages in this travel memoir.
While growing up in Kirkwood, Missouri, the author says, the “windows of [her] life remained largely shuttered.” But she says that her later study of non-English languages, and the process of acquiring fluency in more than a dozen of them, expanded her horizons in many ways: “These languages…introduced me to new ways of thriving, to new ways of seeing myself, of seeing others.” While in college, the author decided to study for a year in Spain, where her exposure to the Spanish language—which she had to master quickly in order to take Spanish-only classes—helped her find new levels of skill and self-sufficiency. After receiving a master’s degree in Spanish, and then a doctorate in Hispanic languages and literature, in the 1970s, she took a job as a translator for three years. After that she worked as a stay-at-home mom for a few years, but she longed to get another job using her language skills; she started again by working for three weeks as an interpreter for a church group traveling to Brazil. She soon found a full-time job as a U.S. government linguist, taking on assignments in various African countries, including Zambia during a failed coup d’état in 1990, South Africa immediately post-apartheid in 1994, and Tanzania in the company of President George W. Bush in 2008, among others. In this memoir, Marshall effectively details how her experiences in these countries, as she navigated their diverse languages, helped her better understand the world and her place in it. The author writes so lovingly about language acquisition that readers will find themselves itching to sign up for an immersion class. Here, for instance, she describes the pleasing syllabary of Amharic: “Each of its 260 symbols reminded me of a tiny piece of artwork….I wanted to copy the little pictures, draw the tiny bells, the cacti, the squiggly trees, as though sketching a picture.” Although this episodic book lacks a strong overarching narrative, the individual sections are often compelling and always informative.
A fluent and far-ranging celebration of communication and world travel.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781647427207
Page Count: 264
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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