A touching memoir that should resonate deeply with anyone yearning to connect with familial roots.
Paolantonio recounts her trips to Italy in search of her ancestry and a new life.
Born in 1959, the author, the daughter of two first-generation Americans of Italian descent, grew up mostly in Long Island, New York. Her paternal grandfather Nicola first traveled to the United States in 1907 to join his three older brothers there and fell in love with the country so deeply that he enthusiastically pushed his children and grandchildren to thoroughly assimilate; as a result, Paolantonio was raised somewhat disconnected from her Italian heritage. This was a void she looked to fill when she first traveled to his native town of Calitri, an “ancient hilltown” in eastern Campania. She would travel back many times thereafter; delightfully haunted by the “ghostly world of [her] ancestors,” she established relationships with both the paternal and maternal sides of the family. In this sweetly tender remembrance, the author, affectionately nicknamed L’Americana by her family, fell deeply in love with Calitri…and then with Giuseppe Zarrilli, “The Handsome Man from Macchiursi.” She also learned about the secretive life of Angela Maria, her mysterious grandmother, and even bought the home that was once hers in the village, making it and Calitri her own. (“I always felt deep down that someday I would find the spirit of my grandmother. Between my first journey and today there have been several years of discovery in this small mountain village that I now call home. After buying her house on via Fontana, I had finally found her.”) The author’s rediscovery of her lineage, and the dramatic way in which she embraced it, is related with humor and warmth in endearingly informal, even intimately confessional, prose. The memoir’s tone can veer into the earnestly sentimental (bordering on saccharine), but, in the main, this is an affecting recollection, conveyed with candor and poignancy.
A touching memoir that should resonate deeply with anyone yearning to connect with familial roots.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2016
ISBN: 9781537410913
Page Count: 300
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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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