by Mary L. Trump ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2024
Another scathing exposé of the enduring fallout from a poisonous, dysfunctional family dynamic.
A second tell-all memoir from the former president’s niece.
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, expands her vehemently critical assessment of her family outward after the first memoir, Too Much and Never Enough, skewered Uncle Donald. With raw authenticity and bracing detail, she painstakingly reveals the devastating psychological impact of the Trump clan's outraged reaction to her first tell-all, which forced her to check herself into a treatment program utilizing experimental ketamine therapy. Three years prior, she’d had treatment for “intensive trauma” and a dissociation condition, all exacerbated by the fact that “Donald Trump is my uncle.” Looking inward, she peels back the traumatic layers of her early life growing up in Jamaica, New York, with parents Freddy, a commercial airline pilot, and Linda, a flight attendant. Sadly, her parents’ idyllic romance curdled beneath the constant mockery and “stifling control and blanket disapproval” of her grandfather, real estate mogul Fred Trump, the “unaffectionate” family patriarch. Eventually the author would grieve for her parents, who each suffered with personal demons, particularly her father, who succumbed to alcoholism and died prematurely at age 42. Ordeals with chronic asthma attacks (which were ignored by her dismissive mother), sexual harassment from a neighbor, and an indifferent family forced her to shut out the world around her and “turn inward.” With blistering frankness, Trump elaborates on the melodrama surrounding her grandfather’s will and the numerous lawsuits (“my family’s love language”) that ensued after Donald and his siblings calculatedly stole her and her father’s inheritance from her grandfather’s estate. Trump, who is openly gay and a mother to a grown daughter, doesn’t skimp on the jarring, revelatory details of her toxic family, telling her truths with lucidity despite the narrative’s relentlessly despondent tone and texture. She unpacks the baseline origins of her debilitating stress, self-loathing, and self-isolation in a heartless clan that apparently couldn’t care less about her.
Another scathing exposé of the enduring fallout from a poisonous, dysfunctional family dynamic.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781250278470
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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PERSPECTIVES
by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton
BOOK REVIEW
by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton
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by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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SEEN & HEARD
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