An engaging coming-of-age account that explores manhood across cultural boundaries.
A memoir chronicles a young man’s travels in Mexico and Spain.
In this book, Stanton recounts his experiences with the Spanish language and Spanish-speaking countries. The early chapters are set in his 1950s California childhood, where he learned both idiomatic Spanish and a sense of masculinity through his interactions with undocumented Mexican immigrants. When the author reached his teen years, he ventured into the seediness of Tijuana, Mexico, visiting local sex workers and conversing with them, losing his virginity in the process. Later, he spent time living in other parts of Mexico. After college, he made his first visit to Spain, where he stayed for a while, returning in later years. The book delves into the cultural and political aspects of his travels—for instance, Stanton takes note of the repression of Franco’s government during the author’s early years in Spain and contrasts it with the socio-economic changes he found on his post-divorce visit more than a decade later. The work also examines the lessons in community and identity, particularly what it means to be a man, that Stanton absorbed through his cultural exchanges. The author is a lyrical writer (“More than immigrants they were like swallows migrating to California from their winter roost in Jalisco”), adopting a tone that suits the work’s nostalgic mood. Descriptions of his participation in iconic events, such as the running of the bulls or his first bullfight, are elegant and stand up to the inevitable comparisons to Steinbeck and Hemingway, who makes his own appearances throughout the text. Stanton employs the second person in his memoir, an unusual stylistic choice (“Your room opened onto the light-filled patio”), though there are awkward detours into other point-of-view language that can be slightly jarring (“As we watched those corridas, your friend taught you most of what you know about the bulls and the men who meet them”). The female characters, while plentiful and active in the narrative, do tend to feel secondary to the volume’s very male perspective. But as a story focused on the lives and experiences of men, the book achieves its goal and provides an enjoyable reading experience.
An engaging coming-of-age account that explores manhood across cultural boundaries.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-949003-47-5
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Waterside Productions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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 determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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