An offbeat but affecting set of remembrances.
This part-memoir, part-travelogue ventures to quirky locations and discussions of serious topics.
Sellers, the president of global manufacturing company Chroma, has a lot to share about her travels over the years—particularly about offbeat places she’s spent the night, including an underwater lodge in Florida and a one-room inn shaped like a beagle in Idaho. These locations were not happenstance, but selected with the careful planning of a dedicated voyager. The author, who often had to travel to faraway places for work, explains that she had an extensive to-do list that encompassed a wide range of potential destinations. Sometimes she visited these places with her husband, Big Ed, and at other times she was alone. Throughout it all, she has, more often than not, taken photographs with a dream of one day having a credit in National Geographic. Readers follow along as the author looks for wigwams on Route 6, indulges in a chocolate bath in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and takes a mule ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Amid the fun, though, she also details the deteriorating health of her parents. She tells of how her father, a lifetime farmer and a practical sort, liked to point out such things as how she need not pay to sleep in a former grain silo in Akron, Ohio, when she could sleep in a silo on his farm for free. Despite her dad’s lifetime of vigor, the pressures of old age eventually took their toll. She also describes how her mother suffered from dementia, which led to difficulties in her later years. As her mother’s memory faded, she says, a great deal was lost, including family recipes that vanished “like writing on a chalkboard that had been erased.”
This mixture of obscure travel locations and harsh truths about aging makes for a distinct and highly personal combination. Readers can never be sure if the next chapter will be about staying in a house where Lizzie Borden once lived or about the author’s father playing down the seriousness of a health issue. Whatever the topic, however, a sense of humor often shines through. When her dad apparently developed a crush on one of his nurses, he decided to bring a picture of his younger self to the hospital—a recollection that readers may find both funny and touching. The laughs in some of the travel pieces sometimes feel forced, however. The author’s account of her attempt to “build a rapport” with a police officer after being pulled over on Route 66 is lengthy and without much payoff; after she recalls singing him a Bruce Springsteen song, she follows up by stating that it “didn’t seem to be helping me bond with the officer.” Overall, though, the book presents well-developed accounts of people and places—including some locales that the average person may never have visited. By the end, readers will not only have new ideas for travel destinations, but also more empathy for aging loved ones.
An offbeat but affecting set of remembrances.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781665722773
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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
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