A troubling account of the obstacles our system places in the path of rape survivors.
A survivor of rape and childhood abuse chronicles her healing and her activism.
Nguyen arrived as a freshman at Harvard in 2009 under unusual circumstances—she had flown directly from the emergency room in California, where she was treated for injuries inflicted by her abusive father. When he flew to Boston, an injunction was issued to prevent him from stepping on campus. But her safe space of four years was shattered in October 2013 when she was raped by a classmate. Her memoir excludes almost all details of the event and its perpetrator, which seems odd since headings like “3 Hours Until the Rape” appear to lead up to an account. A friend asks her what she’s going to wear to a party, a question she says reverberated in her head for years, but we never find out the answer. Since she doesn’t explicitly state that she’s going to omit further details, one is surprised to reach the end of the book without ever learning more. What we do hear about is the incredible frustration she suffered trying to stop the state from destroying the evidence in her rape kit after a six-month waiting period, a fraught battle that drove her all the way to Congress, where she spearheaded the passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016. The sometimes outrageous machinations this required are narrated in granular detail. Interwoven with it is an extended fantasy/adventure sequence where characters named 5, 15, 22, and 30—the author’s selves at these ages—go on a quest through the phases of grief (Denial, Anger, etc.), processing sorrowful memories and family history to arrive at healing. Meanwhile, there’s another curious omission. Since the whole purpose of preserving the rape kit evidence is to prosecute the rapist, it is perplexing that we hear nothing about whether any case ever went forward or is planned.
A troubling account of the obstacles our system places in the path of rape survivors.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780374615918
Page Count: 224
Publisher: AUWA/MCD
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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