An emotionally affecting, historically edifying memoir brimming with cultural insight and wisdom.
Horovitz recalls her upbringing in Israel and how the example of her Holocaust survivor father helped her weather troubled times.
The author was born in Israel in 1952, a member of the Sabra generation (the first to be born in the new nation); this is a vital part of her identity. “Being a Sabra influenced the way I came to portray myself. Israel was about my age, a teenage nation. I grew up at a time when Israel was rebelling against the false image of the ‘weak and wretched’ diaspora Jew.” Her father moved to Palestine in 1946, even before the birth of Israel as an independent nation, fleeing war-torn Europe. He was born in Poland and, at 19, sent to Auschwitz along with his entire family. He was the only one to survive. So while the author enjoyed a joyful childhood, one “wrapped in love, cultural diversity, and natural beauty,” she also detected a “quiet undercurrent of suffering” in Israelis like her father who stoically avoided discussing the pain of their pasts. Horovitz inherited her father’s strength of character that helped her during her teenage years serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. Then she faced an even greater challenge: After moving to the United States with her husband, Zvi, she gave birth to a boy, Ronny, who had a serious mental and physical disability. Doctors told her he likely wouldn’t live a year, but she refused to succumb to pessimism or self-pity and managed Ronny’s care into his adulthood—he lived to be 39. Horovitz thoughtfully relates three tales—her father’s survival of the Holocaust, the birth of Israel, and her own personal trials—each connected by the theme of perseverance.
The author always rejected the question so often posed by victims of disaster: Why me? Reflecting on a long family history of triumph over adversity, she accepted her challenges with grace and fortitude: “I had grown up in a community marked by war, genocide, poverty, famine, and disease. That being the case, why did I expect to be exempt from hardship? In a world where horrific things happened to good people, why not me?” Admirably, the author goes well beyond the simplistic platitudes characteristic of contemporary self-help books—this is not a cheery injunction to stay positive but rather a call to consider the tribulations of life a necessary feature of one’s moral existence. The author interprets this not as an opportunity to indulge in emotional suppression or self-conscious introspection but rather as a chance to celebrate the beauty of human life and to enjoy its splendors as much as possible. In the end, it’s a stubborn love of life she finds at the very heart of Israel’s founding ethos. The reader will be hard-pressed to find either bitterness or a shallow sanguinity in this moving memoir—the entire remembrance radiates a remarkable combination of moral pragmatism and an enthusiasm for being alive.
An emotionally affecting, historically edifying memoir brimming with cultural insight and wisdom.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2022
ISBN: 9781736873441
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Endeavor Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 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
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
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