Intriguing, refreshingly honest, and enlightening, despite some repetitive descriptions.
In this collection of essays, Flaugher reflects upon the 18 months she and her husband spent in Beijing, China, at the beginning of the 21st century.
China had not been the author’s original intended destination. She was about to execute a contract naming her Head of School for the International School of Quatar, and both she and her husband were set to leave Denver, Colorado, in September of 2001. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she applied, with mixed feelings, to head the International School of Beijing. The second interview was conducted in China, and soon afterward she was offered a three-year contract. In June of 2002, Flaugher and her husband arrived in Beijing to begin a new adventure in a country where they did not yet speak the language. Their spacious apartment was in a newly built residential complex; all of the residents were Chinese, and none spoke English. Her neighbors, per Flaugher, often viewed the couple with raised eyebrows as “laowai,” or “foreign devils” (“the Chinese were still quite suspicious of Americans”). She loved the work and made some lasting friendships with her co-workers, but navigating the many differences between her life in the U.S. and the customs of this very foreign land frequently proved challenging. The highlight was a school trip to Mongolia—they trekked into the Gobi Desert, and the author got to ride a Bactrian (two-humped) camel. Flaugher’s prose is lively and entertaining, though the book’s format—a collection of stand-alone essays—leads to a significant amount of reiteration. The entries about Mongolia are filled with fascinating tidbits about the Nomads, including their love and respect for camels, both domestic and wild. (At watering holes, the wild camels are given protective deference because they are endangered.) The details about the workings of the International school within the confines of totalitarian restrictions are highly informative, and her coverage of the Chinese government’s handling of the SARS epidemic provides a window into how it handled the Covid-19 crisis almost 20 years later.
Intriguing, refreshingly honest, and enlightening, despite some repetitive descriptions.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665772846
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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