An astute, affecting remembrance of an eventful life and time.
Bryant recounts his accomplished career as an activist advocating for racial and environmental justice.
Born in 1935 during the Great Depression, Bryant spent his early youth in Little Rock, Arkansas, largely cloistered from the reality of racism in a “small, close knit world.” In fact, the “system of racial apartheid that governed our lives” only came to his full awareness gradually—until it was brought home forcefully by a tragedy he experienced while in the second grade. Fellow classmate Lee Andrew Peters died while trying to make his way home during a storm, a death that might have been avoided if the Black neighborhood he lived in was constructed as well as the White neighborhoods. This disaster effectively shattered the author’s “sheltered existence” and brought to his attention an issue that would form the fulcrum of his work as an activist: the ways racial discrimination causes environmental injustice. Bryant would go on to have an impressive career both as an academic and as a social justice advocate. During the tumultuous ’60s and ’70s, he opposed war and was immersed in the civil rights movement as a member of the Congress of Racial Equity. He was also a founding member of the Environmental Advocacy Program at the University of Michigan—a groundbreaking organization. The author was eventually appointed to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council under President Bill Clinton. Bryant came to adopt and evangelize nonviolent protest, a philosophy he presents with great clarity as well as candor: “I was well aware that I’m no moral superstar. I’m just an average person. At times I felt brave, at other times I felt fearful. Sometimes, in the face of violent and racist language spewed at me, I had to void myself of feelings of both love and hate in order to survive emotionally and control my violent instincts.”
Bryant furnishes a vivid depiction of the civil rights movement during its most turbulent times—when the resistance to equal rights was at its zenith in the United States. His commentary on the racial tensions within the world of higher education is particularly instructive, especially his account of the ways college administrations, even unwittingly, pushed policies that created racial disparities. Furthermore, the author ably limns the differences between his youthful experiences in both the North and the South—his family moved to Flint, Michigan, in 1943; while his new community was officially desegregated, he sensed an unmistakable alienation there. He writes, “Still, there was something sinister about Flint, particularly by the time we got to be teenagers. We lived in racially segregated communities, even though the public schools were desegregated. When Negroes moved into a white community, whites would move out.” Bryant’s memoir can lean too much into granular, personal detail—it likely could have been shorter and more focused. Nonetheless, he provides a lucid account of an admirable life devoted to praiseworthy causes and an insightful synopsis of a troubled time in the nation’s history.
An astute, affecting remembrance of an eventful life and time.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953943-13-2
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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