Despite a few flaws, this work tells a captivating refugee story.
A man lovingly renders his journey from war-torn Budapest to lean, uncertain times in England in this memoir.
This book starts with a bit of a MacGuffin. Decsy, told that his biological father was close to death, resolved to travel back to Hungary to find this man he had never met. But the bulk of the work then covers the author’s experiences before this revelation. After briefly establishing his life in 1989 when he got the news, showing the colorful but sad character his mother, Gita, had become and his work in a radio store, Decsy chronicles his childhood. As a boy, he was taught to love Stalin and the Red Army for defeating the Nazis and spreading Communist ideals. The author became a Little Drummer, part of a youth organization that encouraged loyalty to Stalin and gathered information on possible traitors. The boy soon learned to question those duties when he saw Gita and his stepfather, Julius, acting furtively and discovered the resistance. The Red Army was at first pushed out of Budapest but then returned to crush the city, forcing the author’s family to escape without Julius. In England, Decsy learned a new language and adjusted to British culture, never fully understanding why he had to leave the world he loved. He and his brother and sister got bounced around and were sometimes taken care of by the Roman Catholic Church. The narrative skips to his search for his biological father in the last 62 pages, finding him questioning the comfortable life he had established with his partner, Phoebe, and daughter, Petra, on the trip to Hungary. Decsy describes his experiences in rich detail: the layout of houses he lived in, how a priest he met while gazing at a stained glass window smelled, the skirts of the older woman who lived with his family in Budapest, how the members of a band he encountered resembled Hitler. He is honest about his failings and provides quite a bit of humor in what could have been a bleak account. The major thing lacking is his self-reflection about the trek to see his father. He doesn’t explore his compulsion to make the odyssey and devotes only a few pages to it before the engaging memoir abruptly ends with the dissolution of his relationship with Phoebe.
Despite a few flaws, this work tells a captivating refugee story.Pub Date: July 20, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-67-274342-4
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Brown Dog Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2020
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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