An engaging and informative personal account; will especially appeal to those pondering major life changes.
A memoir chronicles a challenging post-retirement journey to a life of reimagined possibilities and fulfillment.
After working 40 years as a corporate manager of environmental issues for major energy and chemical companies, Jackson had no plans to retire. But when she turned 65 years old, Human Resources began pressuring her. The author pushed back, finally securing a severance package and staving off her departure for another year. During her final months, she began planning her next “Act”: “I attacked the idea of leaving the corporate world in the same way I would have managed a major capital project.” She sketched a five-point “project development and execution process” and titled it “Project Escape.” Phase I was to “Identify Needs,” which would have to work for both her and her husband, Craig, a biochemist. She created charts and tables, searching for something that would benefit others; allow her “to recover, regroup, and find” herself again; connect with the gentleness buried beneath her thick corporate skin; and make her feel “valued.” Then came her eureka moment: the Peace Corps Response, a new program designed for older volunteers with professional experience. Off she and Craig went to Palau, an island in Micronesia in the western Pacific. Jackson’s articulate memoir is an intriguing, emotion-filled story about how things can go wrong despite the best laid plans; lessons learned; and a few significant things that, despite adversity—or perhaps because of it—went unexpectedly right. In vivid detail, she recalls the sometimes-humorous, often chaotic, and demoralizing months spent trying to fulfill the intended mission while adhering to senseless Peace Corps regulations, such as the prohibition against supplementing the couple’s tiny stipend with personal funds. Their shabby housing was a few miles from Jackson’s office, with no public transportation. She describes walking along the heavily trafficked road and having to jump for safety into “the litter-filled culverts on each side of the road where sewer-smelling mud squished up” onto her flip-flops. The couple persevered admirably, but readers are likely to feel frustrated that it took them so long to start breaking the rules.
An engaging and informative personal account; will especially appeal to those pondering major life changes.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-403-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2021
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
