An engaging memoir of life lived to its fullest.
Kahane chronicles a life full of transformations during the mid-to-late 20th century in this memoir.
In 1935, the author was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland (“They were a tumultuous pair, my father and mother”). Per Kahane, their life traumas became ingrained in her psyche, resulting in a constant tug of war between being a stereotypical good daughter and pursuing the unconventional life she desired. Attending City College of New York, she met her lifelong friend and travel companion, Val; after graduating, they vagabonded through Europe, where she began the first of a series of fraught relationships with men. By 1966, her progress toward a doctorate degree at the University of California, Berkeley was at a standstill, and she realized that she “could no longer ignore the fact that [she] was inevitably drawn to men who needed [her] or something [she] represented.” The author began “the intimidating process of self-discovery” through analysis. Gaining insights from consciousness-raising groups popularized by second-wave feminism, Kahane “began to take [her]self more seriously as a scholar who was not just playing but working toward a serious profession.” In 1973, the author began her distinguished 24-year career as a professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Buffalo also provided a fruitful personal relationship with Rainer Hauser, a professor of German literature; they married and had a son in 1976. After retiring, the author returned to Berkeley full time, trained to become a psychoanalyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, and embarked on a new romance. Tracking her life from the Great Depression and World War II through the aftermath of the Holocaust, the 1950s and 1960s in New York City and the Bay Area, the anti-war and free speech movements, and the rise of feminism, Kahane’s compelling writing illuminates life during the turbulent 20th century from a female perspective often missing from history. The extensive descriptions of travel, varying from free-spirited, low-budget adventures through Europe, North Africa, and North America to professional conferences in Poland and China, are likewise fascinating.
An engaging memoir of life lived to its fullest.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781962416825
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Brandylane Publishers, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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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