A startling, disturbing narrative that shows the continuing social costs of wrongful conviction and the drug war.
Gritty account of a music producer’s wrongful conviction for drug trafficking and his eventual legal triumph.
Wright’s overlong yet engrossing memoir (co-written with Sternfeld) encompasses a sharp exposé of mass incarceration and the quest for legal self-discovery, and the author shows how his success as a hip-hop promoter attracted the attention of a corrupt New Jersey prosecutor and his police minions. “I was at a nexus of all these people, the nucleus of the well-off, the famous, and the local hustlers,” he writes. “It put me on the radar of a joint drug unit that Middlesex County formed with neighboring Somerset County.” After acquaintances were pressured to implicate him, Wright was arrested in 1989 and convicted two years later under an ill-conceived “kingpin law,” which the author describes as “a conspiracy law with a laughably low burden of proof….As written, the statute gave a life sentence to someone for having a conversation that no one had to prove ever happened.” Yet the discovery of the prison law library gave him an unexpected new direction for dealing with his plight: “Educating myself in the law was my form of resistance.” This began with the seemingly reckless decision to represent himself. “Acting as your own lawyer, especially in a case this serious and complex, was close to unheard of,” he writes. At the notorious Trenton State Prison, Wright joined the Inmate Legal Association, worked on his own appeals, and won respect by providing aid to other inmates and forcing change in the abysmal treatment of mentally ill prisoners. In a dramatic climax, Wright chronicles how he elicited a courtroom admission of police malfeasance, which collapsed the case against him. Though the prose is sometimes repetitive, the author discusses the intricacies of his legal journey in clear, forceful terms, and the case’s complexities and Wright’s fight for justice (the prosecutor was eventually himself convicted) maintain suspense.
A startling, disturbing narrative that shows the continuing social costs of wrongful conviction and the drug war.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-25027-748-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
