An intimate and illuminating glimpse into a parent-child relationship.
A daughter distills her mother’s correspondence into short, reflective entries in this collection.
In 2021, two decades after her mother Milly’s death, Dordal rediscovered 180 letters that her mom had written to her between 1989 and 2001. Intent on preserving the collection, Dordal began typing up the handwritten letters, but soon began “tinkering” with them, stripping away what she felt was unnecessary text. She was drawn to her mother’s observations about the passage of time, the natural world, and grief and loss, and writes that she felt as if she were in collaboration with her parent. The result is a series of “entries” whose forms lie somewhere between letters and poems. Dordal’s relationship with her mother was tested by her parent’s alcoholism; she writes of how she loved her “daytime mother,” but lost her at night to bourbon or vermouth. The entries meld everyday chitchat with profound hopes; in one instance, Milly tells of finishing Kathleen Norris’ 1996 book The Cloister Walk, adding “(I wish I could be that spiritual).” These moments, Dordal writes, helped her to recognize her mother’s “whole-hearted love” and to draw parallels to her own deepening relationship with God after she came out as a lesbian. The entries feature casual cultural and geographical references, as in one dated “August 1991”: “The chemical spill in the Sacramento River sounds terrible. / And now those oil tankers polluting the Olympic Rain Forest.” The distilled letter becomes a breezy verbal collage, displaying the sprezzatura of one of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems(1964). Other entries, such as the one dated “September 1991,” offer poetic fragments of sentiment that subtly denote the warmth of maternal care: “Your packages are in the mail. / I’m sure the cookies will be crumbs, / but they were sent with love.” Further entries carry bluntly moving confessions: “You were 10 when I started drinking, / maybe 9. I’ve put you through a lot of pain.” This touching work effectively approaches universal themes of motherhood, addiction, and illness, among others; readers will even sense the changing of seasons as it progresses.
An intimate and illuminating glimpse into a parent-child relationship.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2023
ISBN: 978-1625570536
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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