An impressive and reflective treat for diehard fans of Da Brat and Judy.
A queer rapper and her equally successful wife dispense their secrets to achieving love and happiness.
Female rap artist Da Brat and her wife, Harris-Dupart, aka “DaRealBBJudy,” a multimillionaire beauty entrepreneur, dispense wisdom about relationship navigation and life in general in this dual-authored advice-memoir hybrid. The couple met after the rapper began doing promotional videos for Harris-Dupart’s hair-product company, then fell in love, and were married in Georgia in 2022. While they admit their mutual attraction was an “organic experience,” it was the learning process after the honeymoon phase that created the foundation for their lasting relationship. For two strong-willed, outspoken, high-profile Black women, there were roadblocks and challenges they didn’t foresee, and the authors don’t mince words as they escort readers through their shared lives and how their shared “golden rules” developed as guideposts. For Da Brat, who grew up in a religious household, her queer feelings unmoored her sturdy lifestyle and changed the ways she looked at love and attraction. Once the couple decided to announce their relationship in public, both were free to focus on each other and to work toward making their bond stronger, despite public scrutiny. The book stresses the importance of establishing boundaries, responsibility, accountability, faith, honesty and communication, which, they admit, was initially difficult as both women had different styles of personal expression (and text response times). Da Brat admits that while sexual chemistry is important, “it isn’t everything,” and definitely not the only engine that runs a partnership. Filled with takeaways and wise, self-reflective pearls, the book succeeds in allowing both women to be frank and transparent in sharing their perspective on how the relationship emerged, grew, and continues to evolve, including the birth of a son in 2023. Despite how clichéd these pages of motivational, uplifting, timeworn, and, at times, cautionary aphorisms and platitudes might read to some, it’s advice that continues to be imperative to the success of the authors’ relationship with each other. Sensitive readers be warned: This is a rapper’s book, and the expletives fly as freely as the advice.
An impressive and reflective treat for diehard fans of Da Brat and Judy.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780063349643
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer opens up about filmmaking, sex, drugs, and escaping his father’s shadow.
Despite its casual, just-shooting-the-breeze title, Douglas’ memoir is detailed and precision-engineered to entertain; as a filmmaker who won his first Oscar as a producer (for 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), he knows a successful story needs clarity and conflict to work. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas, he was well-acquainted with celebrity at an early age; witnessing his parents’ divorce, he spent much of his youth acting out. (He paid for college by selling weed by the suitcase-load.) After years of stalls and failures, he broke through on TV with the ’70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco. But small-screen work (along with his nepo-baby status) made breaking into big-screen roles harder until 1984’s Romancing the Stone made him a star and 1987’s Wall Street earned him a second Oscar. Douglas is candid about his industry struggles—like endless budget fights and betraying his father, who was promised the lead in Cuckoo’s Nest—and his reputation as a lothario. (Though married, he had an on-set affair with Kathleen Turner during Stone.) He’s also open about his alcohol and cocaine abuse, leading to a rehab stint, echoed in his son Cameron’s own struggles with addiction and recovery. He’s comfortable discussing controversies—the LGBTQ+ community’s protests of 1992’s Basic Instinct, his proto-MAGA character in 1993’s Falling Down—and plainly keeps an enemies list. But this story arc leaves him triumphant, with a loving wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his family, his health (after a cancer scare), and a late-career Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781538782224
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
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