An affecting story of how a young woman’s traumatic brain injury took away her language but not her joy.
A memoir chronicles a mother’s coming to terms with her daughter’s needs after an accident and aiming to provide her with a vibrant life.
On July 1, 1991, Rubin’s 17-year-old daughter, Jenn, suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in a car crash. Jenn was initially comatose and needed surgery; she spent more than a year and a half in a rehabilitation facility before moving to a group home. Rubin describes Jenn’s injury as profoundly affecting some parts of her brain while leaving others untouched. Although Jenn learned to walk, eat, and do routine daily tasks, she never regained the ability to speak, communicating only through facial expressions, body language, and nonverbal sounds. Damage to her brain also caused problematic behaviors, such as biting, hiding things, and responding inappropriately to others’ emotions. The Rubins successfully sued the other driver in the crash and established a supplemental-needs trust for their daughter in 1993, the first of its kind in New York state. Rubin effectively details how she longed for the gentle, social, and elegant girl Jenn had been before her injury; however, she came to accept her daughter for who she was. She used funds from the trust to hire dedicated caregivers, buy a car, and provide an extraordinary range of experiences to enrich her daughter’s life, such as going on a trip to Walt Disney World. The author argues convincingly that her daughter and other disabled people should have “the same pleasures and privileges of travel in life as do others in our society.” She also touches on the inadequacy of medical insurance and Medicaid in particular and describes incidents when Jenn was subjected to overt discrimination. Over time, Jenn’s family, her caregivers, and her caregivers’ families became close; she was surrounded by a loving community. Overall, Jenn’s story will offer hope to people hoping for rich, connected, and fun lives for brain-injured loved ones.
An affecting story of how a young woman’s traumatic brain injury took away her language but not her joy.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-249-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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
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