A heartfelt and moving saga of self-acceptance and reconciliation.
A gay father reaches out to his son to explain the breakup of their family in this epistolary memoir.
Elsasser-Chavez, a novelist, playwright, and high school English teacher in Los Angeles, frames his story in a series of letters to his teenage son, Travis, who cut off contact with him in 2019, after the author came out as gay and asked Travis’ mother for a divorce. Both events were difficult for the conservative Christian family to accept. Much of the book presents an agonizing account of Elsasser-Chavez’s unsuccessful, decades-long effort to deny his sexual orientation through Christian “conversion” efforts that included prayer, psychoanalysis, and aversion therapy that required him to sniff a jar full of dog feces while looking at pictures of attractive men. During his 23-year marriage, he notes, his unfulfilled romantic longing and his sense of sinfulness and shame led to depression, substance abuse, and suicide attempts, all of which traumatized his three sons. Elsasser-Chavez also revisits his failed attempts to break into Christian broadcasting and television as an actor, producer, and writer, and he offers shrewd analyses of pop culture, as when he notes “a staple Disney mantra: ‘Children: follow your heart, disobey authority, and all your dreams will come true.’” He also dispenses advice to Travis on everything from changing a tire to accepting “your feelings and emotions while learning an efficient way to rope them in.” Elsasser-Chavez writes in anguished, plangent prose about the battle between his sexual longings and antigay church doctrine: “In the Christian universe, being called a ‘sinner’ lessens the sting of the pronouncement because it just makes you one person [among billions] of other sinners….But homosexuals are ‘broken.’ Which implies damage that can never truly heal.” Equally captivating are his quiet, evocative depictions of family life: “Knocking on our adjoining wall to say ‘goodnight.’ You guys knocking back. Man, that kills me.” Elsasser-Chavez’s narrative is a richly textured coming-out story, and divorced parents will relate to his hard-won insights into wounded families.
A heartfelt and moving saga of self-acceptance and reconciliation.Pub Date: June 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781685625795
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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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