As elegant and moving as a grief memoir can be.
A deeply felt, searching examination of the feelings and memories provoked by the death of a best friend.
“Would I have been this person without you? Would I have been bold and fearless without you by my side, provoking me and laughing with joy when I succeeded at anything? I will never know, you were with me throughout my most formative years, you are so intrinsically linked to my molding that I cannot think about my fundamental traits…without also thinking of you." Carson and her best friend, Larissa, were a magical pair—not just tall and gorgeous, but also smart, funny, and very well-read Black models who shared a flat in London and went out to clubs, where people got in line to pay for their drinks. Their connection was intense, their love for each other radiant in the anecdotes and text exchanges included here. The decision to include the texts was inspired, since the friends' silly nicknames for each other ("shmoo" and "shmoomies,” "poo head," "poopoo," and more) and their many declarations of love ("You're my soulmate, do you know that?" "Of course I know that") brilliantly evoke the particular flavor of the friendship. Carson was married and living on the West Coast with a husband and baby at the time of Larissa's death at 32; at first, she was only told that she died in the bath. The author didn't know her friend was involved with heroin, so when that was revealed, a whole new set of painful, unanswerable questions emerged. "You know the obsessiveness—weeks spent poring over the minutiae of the days and hours prior to death, as if somewhere, hidden in plain sight, is the answer. Something you missed that could have prevented it all," she writes. So many of us fully understand this obsessiveness, and in sharing the specifics of hers, Carson strikes a deeply resonant chord.
As elegant and moving as a grief memoir can be.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781685890452
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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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