A tender and skillfully written account of deep joys and difficult challenges.
Morris’ story of identical twin sisters recounts a lifetime of loving care and hard choices.
From this book’s first sentences, readers will know they’re in the hands of a skilled storyteller: “The more time I spend on this earth, the more I see the impossibility of going through life without experiencing some sort of life-altering event—be it the death of a loved one, the diagnosis of serious illness, or a tragic accident. For my parents, it was the birth of their daughters.” Although the two infants looked the same, their birth experiences were very different. The author’s twin, Judy, had been deprived of oxygen because an umbilical cord had been wrapped around her neck. The babies developed differently afterward, and at the age of 9 months, Judy was diagnosed with cerebral palsy; despite early interventions to help her walk and communicate, she lived most of her life in a wheelchair with head support. Her attentive family members gauged her likes and dislikes by monitoring her smiles, cries, grimaces, and other body language. Eventually, the author married and had children of her own, and Judy continued to be cared for by their widowed mother and a series of healthcare aides. When Judy was in her 50s, her aging mother was unable to provide the care needed, and a doctor insisted that Judy be moved to a nursing home. The bulk of the book recounts the last two years of Judy’s life as she suffered a slow decline that the family was unable to stop. Morris offers an affecting story, and readers will gain considerable sympathy for families with disabled members; the book may also alert such families about the struggles that may come in the future. Although the author’s story is a deeply personal one, readers may wish that it had some more practical elements; these might have included the names of services or programs that could help other families navigate similar situations, as when the author wonders how she could have fought the doctor to keep Judy at home.
A tender and skillfully written account of deep joys and difficult challenges.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-1647425739
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2023
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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