An intimately personal journey that provides engaging ways to thrive in the face of complex challenges.
Podcast host Calloway offers a memoir with advice on how to find meaning in everyday life.
The author grew up in a military family, which frequently moved to places such as Japan, Italy, and Germany, as well as Georgia and New York. Calloway was instilled with a profound sense that home isn’t just a place with four walls and a roof, but rather the people who surround you with love. Calloway’s caring mother was a driven member of the U.S. Air Force, who provided the author with a strong feeling of protection and provided her with a “unwavering belief” in her abilities as a budding stage performer. The author says that her father, however, was a dangerous alcoholic who physically and emotionally abused her. That experience, along with the racism she encountered as a Black woman in the performing arts (and, later, the nonprofit and corporate world), endangered her well-being and sense of self. Calloway says she was still able to achieve her dream of studying at New York University. The city’s vibrancy energized her, but she had to sever contact with her father before she could rebuild her identity. An assortment of authoritarian figures would upset her hard-won serenity, which taught her to embrace her talents while also establishing well-defined boundaries. In this book, she effectively presents each challenge she’s faced as a teachable moment for readers: “What Did I Learn?” she asks at the conclusion of each chapter before clearly spelling it out. One such takeaway is “It was in this act of choosing myself, of acknowledging my right to peace and happiness, that I truly began to find myself.” Overall, this memoir is a cathartic exercise in personal self-discovery in which the author never forgets that the point of the endeavor is helping others share in the healing. An extensive collection of prompts and worksheets makes up the final portion of the book, ably affording readers with a tangible way of applying Calloway’s life lessons to their own lives.
An intimately personal journey that provides engaging ways to thrive in the face of complex challenges.Pub Date: June 10, 2023
ISBN: 9798987676127
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2024
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
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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