Carr resurrects a trans icon whose life, artistry, and struggle speak directly to our moment.
The biography of a transgender performer whose brief life illuminated 1960s and ’70s New York.
“She began life as a tortured effeminate boy because she wasn’t really a boy,” writes Carr, author of Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. Candy Darling’s 1950s Long Island childhood was miserable, with a mother who was ashamed of her and a volatile father who drank to excess; at school, she was bullied. “Nobody gets who I am,” she told a classmate. Her escapes were TV, movie magazines, and, eventually, cosmetology school. New York City beckoned, with its gay scene—but also its 19th-century laws that still criminalized cross-dressing. Candy developed an image as a glamorous fantasy woman inspired by Hollywood starlets like Lana Turner and Kim Novak; friends recall her as a “natural star” emanating an “ethereal light.” Candy was taken up by Andy Warhol, photographed by Richard Avedon and Peter Hujar, and cast in off-off Broadway shows and underground films such as Flesh. Yet wider success eluded her, as Hollywood wanted nothing to do with a trans actor (the casting of Raquel Welch in Myra Breckinridge was a particular blow). She rarely had a stable address, often slipping back to her mother’s suburban house under cover of darkness. She was plagued by bad teeth, longed for love yet shied away from intimacy, and died of cancer at the age of 29. Carr devotedly pieces together this incandescent portrait from irregular diary entries, hilariously unreliable narrators, and taped interviews conducted by Candy’s friend Jeremiah Newton after her death. “You must always be yourself no matter what the price,” Candy once wrote. “It is the highest form of morality….Don’t dare destroy your passion for the sake of others.”
Carr resurrects a trans icon whose life, artistry, and struggle speak directly to our moment.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781250066350
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
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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