A readable and wide-ranging consideration of McQueen’s work.
Francis offers a brief but comprehensive synopsis of film director Steve McQueen’s career.
Sir Steve Rodney McQueen—he was knighted for his contributions to cinema in 2020—was born in London in 1969, the son of a mother from Grenada and a father from Trinidad. He encountered extraordinary racial prejudice as a young man growing up in the suburbs of Ealing in the 1980s, but instead of becoming discouraged, these challenges “fuelled his determination to champion outsiders and underdogs.” Moreover, it led him to speak out candidly about the underrepresentation of Black people in British film. (“The fact that Black people in this country feel that there’s no space for them in the British film industry is a problem.”) The author, a television producer and scriptwriter, here leads an impressively concise but thorough tour of McQueen’s professional life, covering the totality of his directorial work in addition to his photography and sculpture. The book is short and dense—coming in at well under 200 pages, the text catalogues each artistic project in the spirit of summary. As a result, the book often reads like a narrated curriculum vitae or a series of encyclopedia entries. Quick considerations of a film’s “visual style,” for example, feel like little more than adumbrative footnotes. However, Francis’ writing is marvelously accessible, and the absence of a more rigorously critical approach is compensated for by the exhaustive discussion of McQueen’s extraordinary productivity. The author includes two extended interviews with McQueen—one is conducted by celebrated historian David Olusoga—in which the filmmaker’s indefatigable desire to create shines through lucidly. (“My only commitment – my only doctrine – is to not let the dust settle.”) This book is likely too light on analysis for either scholars or even enthusiasts who know McQueen’s films well. However, for the curious reader looking for a digestible overview of his work, this is an informative option.
A readable and wide-ranging consideration of McQueen’s work.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781913641177
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Supernova Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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