Despite inevitable repetition, this is a sensitive, poignant collection.
An immigrant memoir in essays "about growing up Indian outside of India, in non-Indian places."
In a series of previously published personal essays, creative writing professor Shah recounts 20 years of moving around, forming her ethnic identity in America’s cities and towns. The daughter of “Gujarati parents born in India and East Africa,” the author ponders how one moves in a “body often viewed as other.” How, she asks, “do you claim the I, the person dancing, the person leading the dance?” In “Skin,” she introduces us to “a brown girl here [in the U.S.], never just a girl.” She portrays a life rich with places visited and lived in as well as family, friends, writing, and exuberant Indian weddings—including, finally, her own, with its vibrant clothing, jewelry, and especially dancing, an “important part of how I understood myself to be Indian.” As an adolescent, Shah read serial novels, like those of Nancy Drew, but “there was no one like [me] in any of them.” She chronicles how, forever in search of a permanent teaching position, she moved through a series of writer-in-residence jobs, supplemented by fellowships, workshops, and retreats. She recalls watching Mira Nair’s film Monsoon Wedding, listening to its “effervescent” music: “I remember it still as a bodily sensation, the visceral pull toward the screen.” Luscious Indian food abounds, but the author shuns cooking: “I didn’t want to be anyone’s passage to India.” Shah also describes her experience at Burning Man, where she drank scotch and dropped acid: “I wanted to burn. I wanted to be free.” Despite her significant time in the U.S., the author remains an Indian American (no dash) writer who has lived a bifurcated life, both sides of which she revels in: “Words are surfacing; this is one way to dance. Words are rising: this is how to dance.”
Despite inevitable repetition, this is a sensitive, poignant collection.Pub Date: June 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8203-5723-2
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
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
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