A forthright, poignant, and heartwarming account of a storied and beloved career in nursing.
In this memoir, a veteran health care worker shares inspirational adventures from her long career.
For as long as she could remember, Prisceaux always wanted to be a nurse. In her heartfelt, anecdotal book, she recalls growing up in Yonkers in awe of nursing revolutionary Florence Nightingale and how she “wanted to be just like her.” As a teenager, her bouts with paralyzing shyness soon vanished once she pursued a nurse’s aide job at a local hospital in the Philadelphia suburb where her family had relocated. Prisceaux emerged as a determined, goal-oriented young woman aiming her sights on New York City’s Bellevue Hospital Center and School of Nursing in 1959 (costing only $200). Even falling down a flight of stairs at the Port Authority on the morning of her admission interview couldn’t derail her. She describes her school years in animated detail, recalling working as a nurse “determined to survive every curve thrown at me in this strange new world I found myself in.” A naturally engaging storyteller, Prisceaux stuffs her memoir with anecdotes, stories, opinions, and seasoned perspectives, spanning the best and worst moments of the author’s 60-year nursing career. Among the more resonant highlights are memories of the first time she sponge-bathed a smirking male patient at the age of 18 and the whirlwind months spent in the Army Nurse Corps, only to then fall madly in love, get married, and welcome her daughter Laura Mary in 1964. As a young nurse, the author agonized over the accidental deaths of patients she’d attended to in the emergency room or intensive care ward. But with experience and numerous relocations, and despite marital discord and the exhaustive mothering of three children, the author became admired and respected as a nursing “road warrior.” Prisceaux closely observed the health care industry evolve across its medical, political, and technological landscapes. She remarks with great insight and knowledge about the seemingly never-ending series of changes that continued to take place in modern medicine. Nurses in general—as well as those suffering from career burnout—will find much inspiration and encouragement in the author’s tender, droll, humorous, and immensely moving stories about the intense work regimen, the personal struggles, and the often bittersweet but fulfilling patient interactions.
A forthright, poignant, and heartwarming account of a storied and beloved career in nursing.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 978-1954676534
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Indigo River Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2023
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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