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
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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