Documentary survey of the last days of slavery and the Black troops who helped end it.
At the beginning, MacArthur fellow Willis, the director of the NYU Institute for African American Affairs and the Center for Black Visual Culture, observes that “the photograph became the mechanical visual evidence that slavery existed, as did its resistance.” Memorable images abound in the historical catalog of American photography. First in the images of Black soldiers are cartes de visite, in which many are depicted standing ramrod straight with rifles in hand or seated with thoughtful, resolute looks on their faces. Though most soldiers couldn’t afford it, they proudly sent them home nonetheless. One such posed photograph is less formal though no less thoughtful, depicting 65-year-old Nicholas Biddle, a Pennsylvania soldier wounded by a hurled brick while marching through pro-Confederate Baltimore—and thus earning the distinction of being the first soldier to be wounded in the Civil War. As Willis notes, thousands of Black soldiers served the Confederacy, mostly in ancillary positions. One she highlights was a young Mississippi man, enslaved from birth, who served alongside the son of his owner in battle until the hostilities ended, whereupon he was awarded a pension as a Confederate veteran. “The perplexing relationships between slave masters and enslaved soldiers reflect the mystery of the human condition in this period,” Willis writes. Otherwise, most of the photographs depicted free Black soldiers in Union uniforms, soldiers and sailors who fought in large numbers for the cause of abolition and national unity. That they had cause to do so is self-evident, though the point is driven home by the image of “Whipped Peter,” a Union private who, while enslaved, had been scourged to the extent that he had horrific permanent welts on his back, providing a powerful symbol demanding an end to enslavement. The carefully constructed text, often incorporating letters and diary entries, is a winning complement to this superb collection of documentary images.
Essential to any Civil War collection and a book that invites rereading.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4798-0900-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Categories: ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | HISTORY | UNITED STATES | AFRICAN AMERICAN | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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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 28, 2022
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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