Intimate, moving essays.
A new nonfiction collection from the award-winning fiction author.
Dubus III, who also wrote a well-received memoir, Townie, gathers 18 deeply personal essays, all but one previously published, on fatherhood, manhood, family, vocation, and, most of all, love and gratitude. The father of three writes tenderly of his sense of wonder after the birth of his daughter—“those moments of unspeakable grace” holding a newborn—and of his overwhelming fear when his four-week-old son underwent emergency surgery to correct a congenital malformation. The author honors his wife, whom he credits with nurturing his life “of peace and stability and deep fulfillment.” But that life has been hard won. Growing up in poverty, raised by a single mother after his father abandoned the family, Dubus lived in 25 houses throughout his childhood and was bullied as the new boy in town and at school whenever they moved. Angry and defiant, he transformed himself into a muscular fighter with “a short fuse for bad behavior of any kind.” Several essays probe the connection between violence and masculinity—e.g., the irresistible allure of guns and the adrenalin rush of a fight. By the time he was in his 20s, though, the author felt terrified that he was incapable of “truly loving someone, and being loved back.” A relationship with one girlfriend was doomed by unbridgeable differences in money and class: Her wealth, he writes, “created a chasm between us we tried to pretend wasn’t there.” Still, while they were together, she taught him to knit—an act that at first he denigrated as a sign of her privilege, but soon came to value. “It required me to focus,” he admits, “and it allowed me to drift, too.” Although inevitable repetitions occur in pieces written over several decades, the collection melds into a touching memoir.
Intimate, moving essays.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781324000440
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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 frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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