A brilliantly illustrated guide to prominent masculine-presenting artists, scientists, and activists.
Cassell profiles 40 masculine-presenting women, nonbinary folx, and trans men in this illustrated who’s who.
There have always been people whose masculinity has gone against society’s expectations. “From bulldaggers to butches, in the past few years the gender identities of masculine-presenting women have expanded to include a broad spectrum of possibilities,” writes the author in the introduction. “The people featured in this book are all masculine queer activists that have enacted change in unique and powerful ways.” With this compendium, Cassell profiles people from across that spectrum, showing how they have worked to increase the visibility and prominence of masculine-presenting queer people, even when their work does not deal specifically with queer issues. Readers will likely already be familiar with some of these figures, including cartoonist Alison Bechdel, basketball star Brittney Griner, astronaut Sally Ride, and author Fran Lebowitz. But have they heard of Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, the Native Hawaiian academic and spoken-word artist whose work explores the intersections of colonialism, indigeneity, queer theory, and feminism? Or filmmaker Shine Louise Houston, who started a production company to make pornography for a queer audience featuring body types that aren’t generally found in mainstream pornographic material? Cassell also introduces readers to Phranc, “your basic all-American, Jewish, lesbian, folksinger”; Australian senator and climate defender the Honorable Penny Wong; and genderfluid ecologist Sidney Woodruff, who’s working to remove the invasive bullfrog from the American West. Each profile is accompanied by a black-and-white illustration of the subject drawn in a coloring book style, inviting readers to fill them in with colors of their choosing.
The journalistic prose weaves a narrative from the facts of each subject’s life, as here, in the case of writer Heather Hogan: “Heather stayed in Georgia, watched her parents get a divorce, got bullied in high school, kissed a classmate as practice for kissing boys, graduated, worked a dull office job, and shared her first adult kiss with her boss’s daughter, a sophisticated gender studies student who was visiting for the summer and who slipped Heather a copy of Stone Butch Blues on the way out.” Some of the profiles, which generally run three or four pages, are based on original interviews. More often, though, they’re drawn from the writings and research of others, which gives these entries a slight press release–like feel. The frequent quotes from the subjects provide a nice introduction, but there isn’t really enough space to get into their deeper ideas. The highlight is most certainly the illustrations, which are as playful as they are striking. Twenty different artists have contributed, and while each piece is unique, a collective style nevertheless emerges. A significant list of relevant works and resources rounds out the volume, which feels in some ways like a primer for readers starting on their own masculine-presenting journeys or seeking to learn more about that part of the LGBTQ+ community. It may not be a page-turner, but as a reference volume—and coloring book—it works quite well.
A brilliantly illustrated guide to prominent masculine-presenting artists, scientists, and activists.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9798988746911
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Stoic Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
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