Distressing yet powerfully illuminating writing.
In this frank debut memoir, Klatzker excavates suppressed memories of an abusive childhood.
During a meditation session, Klatzker, a pediatric intensive care specialist, began to experience auditory hallucinations. She noticed a familiar tingling sensation, but she didn’t slip into her customary stillness. Instead, she heard voices pleading, “Please don’t hurt me!” The experience was followed by a bout of incontinence, and the author was left questioning her sanity. Battling chronic insomnia, Klatzker began to identify and refer to the voices as “parts” or, more specifically, parts of her childhood that had “split off” so that they felt separate from her. Seeking psychological help, the author began to confront years of childhood abuse. She describes having dual visions of her father—“Good Daddy,” a “loving and proud father,” and “Bad Daddy,” a “raging tornado of fury” who sexually abused her. The author grows to understand her “parts” and realizes that the dissociative disorder with which she was later diagnosed opened a pathway to her salvation. Klatzker elucidates complex psychological states using clear, descriptive prose: “I glided upstairs in my inner house and noted the changes....I used to creep around in the gloom, the walls felt cold and I could barely see my way. All the years of darkness, of not knowing where my voices came from.” The author courageously revisits moments of abuse that may prove too upsetting for some readers: “I’m having trouble breathing through his hand—it covers both my nose and my mouth, keeping me quiet.” Klatzker also succinctly pinpoints how an abuser shifts guilt to his victim: “He pretended he was good, as if he never did those things, making me think I was wrong, crazy, dirty, until the next time.” On occasion, the author’s descriptive style could be considered vague and digressive: “The bottoms of his loafers had those little metal things to extend the life of the soles and heels.” This doesn’t detract from a lucidly written memoir that documents the devastating psychological impact of childhood abuse while offering hope to fellow survivors.
Distressing yet powerfully illuminating writing.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-945233-08-1
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Stillhouse Press
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2021
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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