A slim and uneven but striking book, sensitive to grief and tested relationships.
A writer reckons with her grandmother’s “mercy killing” in this set of loosely connected essays.
In 2014, Farmer’s family became a national news story. Her grandmother, a quadriplegic in severe pain after a fall, was shot and killed by her husband in a Carson City, Nevada, hospital to end her suffering. (He intended to kill himself as well, but the gun “broke apart in his hands.”) In her debut nonfiction book, Farmer discusses some of the public responses to the incident and ensuing debates over assisted suicide. An appendix reproduces a formal letter she wrote in support of her grandfather and the state’s motion to dismiss charges against him. But most of the book represents the author’s interior effort to assess her grandparents’ relationship (she reproduces snippets of interviews with them), the manifestations of grief that followed the incident, and the author’s own struggles to write about it. She’s attuned to how much America is steeped in gun idioms: “It’s strange how guns suddenly appear in ordinary phrases: Under fire. Stick to your guns. Oh, shoot.” Yet her sympathy for her grandfather isn’t absolute. “Regardless of my grandfather’s intention, she writes, “I consider the hearts stopped at the sound of the single shot, the psyches jarred, the people who thought, if even for a second, that they should run or take cover, who thought, This is it.” Farmer weaves these considerations, somewhat awkwardly, into essays exploring her own feelings about family: a failed first marriage, a second marriage so defined by hand-to-mouth living (to make ends meet, she stitched together multiple adjunct teaching gigs) that children seem unlikely. In that regard, Farmer’s book feels like two solid but incomplete essay collections. However, at her best, the author exposes how trauma and family shape our lives no matter how we try to resist.
A slim and uneven but striking book, sensitive to grief and tested relationships.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-946448-90-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Sarabande
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
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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