A distinctive, haunting tale of family, loss, and hope.
Debut author Lane offers a memoir of a divided family.
The author and her biological sister, Kay, grew up in foster care in the 1950s and 1960s. Their lives in St. Louis County, Missouri, with Bernard and Leonarda Pisciotta were far from ideal, as Bernard abused the girls. The sisters’ time with the Pisciottas is, however, just the beginning of the story. The siblings had nine other sisters with whom they had lost contact when they were placed into foster care. What happened to their sisters? What would make their parents give up on 11 children? In 1997, at the age of 46, the author set about answering the first question. She discovered that all of the sisters were still alive and that all were eager to meet. The hard part came later: the task of unraveling what had happened to their family. Each of the sisters had her own story to tell. All seemed to have endured hardships. Many gave accounts of abuse in the orphanage and foster-care systems. They also had different views of their mother and father: While one recollected a mother who was hardworking, another found her to be a complete disaster. Did their mother really leave her daughters home alone for three days until social services intervened? The story of their father proves to be equally clouded. Who was this man who ended up buried without a headstone in a Tennessee cemetery? As the author learned more about her sisters, she came to find that some of them were in failing health, and death and illness factor into the later chapters.
As an experienced ministerial counselor, the author has helped others through similar situations, and she maintains a positive tone throughout. Although it is not always easy for the reader to keep track of so many siblings, the text makes for a unique and intriguing family story. What drives two parents to give up their children? What are the repercussions of such an act? Why did they have so many kids to begin with? The answers to these questions are rarely simple and often troubling. Some of the author’s descriptions are not particularly illustrative; individuals in her recollections are often simply declared “beautiful,” such as one sister who was “beautiful with a thick head of dark, curly hair.” Other sections veer somewhat off topic, as when the author recalls a medical miracle she experienced. Yet the story keeps the reader engaged from chapter to chapter, eager to see what the next sister will remember about her parents. The fact that “memories can be distorted” only adds to the intrigue. A newspaper photo from the 1950s shows the author’s biological parents and most of their children; everyone in the picture seems fine. The attempt to piece together what shattered it all makes for a compelling detective story of sorts.
A distinctive, haunting tale of family, loss, and hope.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 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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