A riveting account of an injured prison worker’s harrowing road to recovery.
In this memoir, a woman conquers a broken system that nearly crushed her.
Plante’s book could have been entitled Twenty Seconds Changed My Life Forever, which is how the young former prison worker depicts a horrific beating by an inmate that left her invisibly, yet indelibly, scarred. Few people under the age of 30 have experienced enough to write their life stories, but the attack and its aftermath eclipse what most folks may encounter if they live to be 100. Her vivid descriptions are in a gripping you-are-there style (The inmates “started walking themselves to their rooms. They, too, were all too familiar with the drill. Click, click, click, the doors locked behind them. Except that last door never clicked”). The engrossing work reflects the author’s courage and persistence in a recovery process so demoralizing that she contemplated suicide as she battled with traumatic brain injury, post-concussion syndrome, PTSD, and partial loss of vision and balance. From childhood, she had dreamed of working for a law enforcement agency. She was offered two positions with state prisons and chose the juvenile facility because she wanted to help misguided youth. One Saturday night while she was working in the high-risk male unit, an inmate, without warning, mercilessly pummeled her. A staff member paired to work with her stood behind the inmate, merely waving his arms. His inaction—and even more so, his indifference—struck a nerve in Plante and seemed to inspire the title of this illuminating book, as did her handoff from one medical provider to another. No one seemed interested in helping her until she was assigned to a case manager named Donna. Infuriated to discover that the proper diagnostic tests had never been ordered, Donna forced the issue. A surgeon finally made the correct diagnosis and relieved the author’s searing migraine headaches by removing a nerve in her head. Plante emerged on the other side and found work as a state revenue agent. (She is now a principal revenue agent.) The author met with her attacker, accepted his apology, and forgave him. Three years after the assault, she wrote her chilling story to throw a solid lifeline to other trauma survivors and to educate their caregivers. This stirring, instructive memoir should especially appeal to readers interested in criminal justice and traumatic brain injuries.
A riveting account of an injured prison worker’s harrowing road to recovery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0930-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2021
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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