A sharp, stirring account with emotionally and spiritually informative writing.
A wife and mother with a career in finance recounts turning to yoga when her life began to fall apart in this debut memoir.
In the opening of her book, Ferris describes her husband, Jim, waking her to watch the sunrise with their children on New Year’s Day. The author, a successful financial saleswoman with a condo on the Jersey shore, had what appeared to many to be a perfect existence. Yet Ferris acknowledges that she had a “spiritual hole” in her life left by the death of her preacher father some 30 years ago. Her marriage also was strained, a result of “years of misconnection.” When a friend suggested a yoga retreat in the Berkshires, the author was skeptical, anxious that all the attendees would be “thinner and hipper” than she was and that reiki and crystal yoga classes were a little “woo woo” for her tastes. Yet during one yoga session, Ferris experienced an “in-and-out-of-body experience” that made her rethink her preconceptions. The author’s life was then thrown into turmoil when she discovered her husband had been cheating on her. The memoir charts Ferris’ facing divorce proceedings, coping with parenthood, reentering the dating world, and coming to terms with the verbal and physical abuse she had faced as a child at the hands of her mother. The book is also about finding new love, dealing with loss, and recognizing the many ways the universe reconnects people to those with whom they share a bond. Ferris recalls her spiritual journey, including entering yoga teacher training, in her quest for inner peace.
The author has a keen descriptive eye that allows her to vividly capture her heightening sense of awareness: “When she cued us to stand in mountain pose, my gaze drifted outside. The sun was rising. Large feathery flakes fell through treebranch veins. It was mesmerizing. Had snow always looked like this?” But her writing rarely lingers on the abstract and can be cutting when necessary: “Her spicy perfume gave me an instant headache.” The frank memoir adopts a thoughtful four-part structure––opening with Avidya, the Sanskrit word for Ignorance, and moving through Bhakti (Love), Duhkha (Pain), and, finally, Shanti (Peace) to represent Ferris’ odyssey. She cleverly opens and closes the book with a sunrise, encouraging readers to reflect on how the significance of the event changed through the passage of time and experience. The volume often includes flashbacks to the author’s childhood, such as observing her father at the pulpit as a 4-year-old girl. These passages are too short, and the shift between past and present can feel unnecessarily erratic and distracting. Yet this minor flaw does not largely detract from a well-crafted memoir that shares pithy wisdom about yoga that sticks in the mind: “If we want to make changes in our lives, the mat is the place to practice. It is where transformation begins.” Written from the perspective of a former reiki skeptic, Ferris’ journey is an enlightening one that may offer hope and inspiration to those facing similar challenges.
A sharp, stirring account with emotionally and spiritually informative writing.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73675-790-1
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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
SEEN & HEARD
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