A smart, sharp-eyed assessment of youth, failure, success, and the criminal justice system.
In this memoir, Brownstone writes of his journey to becoming Canada’s first openly gay judge.
The author notes that he realized early on that he was gay, and in the Canada of his 1960s youth, courts were still sentencing gay people to life in prison. The Immigration Act, which forbade gay immigrants from entering the country, was only repealed in 1978. Harvey’s classmates knew that he was Jewish and sensed that he was gay, so they brutally bullied him. When he informed his mother, a tough-as-nails Holocaust survivor who built a retail clothing business after immigrating to Canada, that he was attracted to men, she severed ties with him completely. He was forced to take a job scrubbing toilets to pay his way through school; fortunately, the timely intervention of teachers and mentors who sensed his potential saved him from destitution. They helped him to secure scholarships, which allowed him to attend law school and pursue a career as a practicing attorney. Although the first years of his life included constant setbacks, he later enjoyed success upon success. In 1995, he became the first openly gay judge in Canadian history (and, remarkably, his mother attended and celebrated his swearing-in ceremony). He was the host of a popular TV series, penned a bestselling book, and officiated thousands of gay weddings, including that of American LGBTQ+ rights activists Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer in 2007. (Legal issues brought on by Thea’s death resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the “restrictive definition of marriage” in the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.)
Through it all, the author managed to maintain a sharp wit and a keen sense of human psychology, and his book is a joyous, clever triumph. Brownstone proves to be a gifted storyteller who peppers his memoir with choice anecdotes illustrating the vicissitudes of failure and success, as well as the absurdities of criminal law. He relates one notorious case in which a father who’d won $22,000 in a lottery tried to avoid having the funds seized for child support by giving the ticket to a friend to cash in—only to then learn that the friend owed $25,000 in child support himself. Brownstone’s observations about the law, drawn from his years on the bench, are sometimes fascinating. For example, he notes that many criminal lawyers secretly hope their clients will get arrested because “that’s how you make a living”; he also notes that acquittal often comes down to landing the right judge. But perhaps his best insight involves the source of his success: “A great number of famous people got their burning drive, ambition, and desperate need to succeed from parental loss or rejection,” he notes. “Rejection is a powerful motivator.” From his earliest days, Brownstone responded to prejudice, dismissal, and cruelty by resolving that one day his success would prove his antagonists wrong—and when he did succeed, many of those who had wronged him did, in fact, acknowledge their errors. A smart, sharp-eyed assessment of youth, failure, success, and the criminal justice system.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781770418783
Page Count: 232
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2026
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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