A gripping account of survival and a condemnation of the conditions that marginalize and endanger the unsheltered.
Blue presents a memoir of her experience as an unhoused person.
The author, an investigative journalist (for CNET, CBS News, and the Financial Times, among others)and author or editor of 40 previous books, offers her remembrance of growing up unsheltered on the streets of San Francisco. The book is both an individual’s story of surviving on the streets and a look at the conditions that made it possible for someone of her background to end up there. The daughter of a Silicon Valley engineer who was also a drug user, Blue reports that she became one of the casualties of the war on drugs of the Reagan era. This book examines this phenomenon while indicting the government’s neglect of AIDS patients during this period (“when faced with the public health crisis of AIDS, the government used anti-gay prejudice to leave us dying in the streets by the thousands”). The author also criticizes the gentrification and “urban renewal” that made San Francisco so famously unaffordable and precipitated the specter of unhoused people squatting in crumbling Victorian mansions. Blue makes a clear distinction between people like her and voluntary runaways, for whom living on the streets was an adventure they could return from. The book’s very title reflects how the state of homelessness becomes as unremarkable to the unsheltered as water is to a fish—yet it can be incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it. The events Blue describes don’t always connect as a narrative—for example, the author’s traffic accident referenced at the beginning of the book is only seriously addressed much later in the narrative, when its significance may not be as apparent to the reader. Readers should be advised that the book contains many graphic descriptions of violence and deaths. The author’s unsparing style reflects Blues’ investigative journalist background, and the prepared reader should get a lot out of her story.
A gripping account of survival and a condemnation of the conditions that marginalize and endanger the unsheltered.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9780986226694
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Digita Publications
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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