Puritans take note: Nothing is left to the imagination in this hypersexual memoir of life as a porn star.
The relentlessly risqué exploits of an award-winning adult film star.
Akira, an Asian-American porn actress who has starred in nearly 400 adult films, turns in a lascivious, personalized journey through the pornography industry—a provocative livelihood she has reveled in for over a decade. Akira is unapologetically prideful “for having the guts to indulge in my desires,” and the book is saturated with the intimate details of her life on the set of wet-and-wild porn shoots, her badass attitudes about others’ presumptions, navigating relationships (“omission isn’t lying”), and the frequently hilarious, surprisingly humbling anecdotes of a life spent having sex for the camera. Her X-rated hubris was definitely not passed down from the conservative, traditional Japanese parents who raised the New York native, nor was it a product of her private school education. She exposes years spent intensively experimenting with petty theft and heavy drugs, which began (and then ended) by the time she’d graduated high school. Akira then got her feet wet in the adult entertainment industry as a diffident dominatrix in a fetish fantasy club. Alive with an unconventional affinity for raw human sexuality, this exuberant memoir is effortlessly honest, without coming across as cavalier or catty. Her passion lies in the rush and the “high” of the perfectly filmed sex scene. Open-minded readers will find themselves bombarded by a carnal locomotive of industry insider secrets and amusing observations on everything from baby wipes to body odors and anal sex. Nothing, however, compares to an intoxicatingly graphic chapter of diary entries encapsulating 2012.
Puritans take note: Nothing is left to the imagination in this hypersexual memoir of life as a porn star.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2259-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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