A welcome study of political resistance by figures unknown to most readers outside Cuba.
Not all resistance to the Castro regime has been offshored to Miami, as this finely detailed study of one of its leading figures demonstrates.
“Oswaldo Payá was born ten days before Fulgencio Batista seized power in Cuba on March 10, 1952, establishing a brutish autocracy,” writes Hoffman, a Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporter. When Fidel Castro came to power, Payá’s family, like so many middle-class people of the day, cheered Castro on only to see their freedoms whittled away. The author offers a well-structured overview of predecessor generations who resisted Spanish colonial rule and then American occupation, committed to a democratic country governed on its own terms. “To change masters is not to be free,” instructed Cuban intellectual José Martí, whom those earlier rebels rediscovered. In American eyes, Cuba became an outlaw nation after Castro’s revolution, when it aligned itself with the Soviet Union. Enter Payá again, who courted trouble as a teenager protesting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. “Oswaldo Payá was no hippie,” writes Hoffman, “but in his own mind he was a rebellious outsider.” In time, he blossomed as both an engineer responsible for important technological advances in medical equipment and as a dissident, the author of a popular petition that issued demands for civil liberties to the Castro regime. Dogged by the secret police, Payá nonetheless struggled to build a united front of democratic resistance only to watch it splinter into factions, partly owing to his own stubborn insistence on strategic matters. “Oswaldo saw value in everyone working in the same direction,” writes the author, “but not in compromising his vision. He was strong-willed, and so were they.” Payá died in a mysterious car wreck soon after, in 2012. However, as Hoffman notes, his legacy lives on in the form of a new generation of homegrown opponents to Cuba’s totalitarian regime.
A welcome study of political resistance by figures unknown to most readers outside Cuba.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982191-19-1
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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