A canny blend of punkish attitude and discographical smarts that blasts boys-club assumptions about pop music.
A wide-ranging assortment of essays and reportage on rock, pop, country, and hip-hop, conscientiously putting women front and center.
The title of Hopper’s book (which revises and expands a 2015 edition) isn’t a brag but rather an air horn announcing a problem: Just as female musicians have been dismissed, marginalized, and abused by a patriarchal industry, Hopper is just one of many women music journalists who was told “it was perverse to tangle up music criticism with feminism or my personal experience.” So being “first” is as much a lament as an assertion, but the best pieces show how thoughtfully the author has used her position. Essays on Liz Phair, Kim Gordon, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Rey underscore how the negative “personas” applied to them are often used to obscure and undermine their talent. In one emotionally intense interview, Björk reveals how, more than four decades into her career, she’s had to prove she writes her songs. Hopper elevates underappreciated women-led acts like D.C. punks Chalk Circle and calls out misogyny in the system: Her landmark 2003 essay, “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t,” chastised the scene for confusing sad-boy sensitivity with proactive feminism, and she reports on women country artists’ oft-futile efforts to gain airplay. The author convincingly argues that staying silent on such inequities has consequences, a point underscored by an interview with journalist Jim DeRogatis on R. Kelly’s track record of sexual assault and music journalists’ turning a blind eye to it. Hopper is stronger as a reporter and cultural observer than a track-by-track reviewer; the collection is padded with reviews that reflect her wide range of tastes but are stylistically flat. However, as she points out in the fiery conclusion, the book exists in part to expose other female writers to what’s possible with diligence and a refusal to compromise. In that regard, it’s essential reading. Samantha Irby provides the foreword.
A canny blend of punkish attitude and discographical smarts that blasts boys-club assumptions about pop music.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-53899-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.
A brisk study of 20 of the Bard’s plays, focused on stripping off four centuries of overcooked analysis and tangled reinterpretations.
“I don’t really care what he might have meant, nor should you,” writes Smith (Shakespeare Studies/Oxford Univ.; Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, 2016, etc.) in the introduction to this collection. Noting the “gappy” quality of many of his plays—i.e., the dearth of stage directions, the odd tonal and plot twists—the author strives to fill those gaps not with psychological analyses but rather historical context for the ambiguities. She’s less concerned, for instance, with whether Hamlet represents the first flower of the modern mind and instead keys into how the melancholy Dane and his father share a name, making it a study of “cumulative nostalgia” and our difficulty in escaping our pasts. Falstaff’s repeated appearances in multiple plays speak to Shakespeare’s crowd-pleasing tendencies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a bawdier and darker exploration of marriage than its teen-friendly interpretations suggest. Smith’s strict-constructionist analyses of the plays can be illuminating: Her understanding of British mores and theater culture in the Elizabethan era explains why Richard III only half-heartedly abandons its charismatic title character, and she is insightful in her discussion of how Twelfth Night labors to return to heterosexual convention after introducing a host of queer tropes. Smith's Shakespeare is eminently fallible, collaborative, and innovative, deliberately warping play structures and then sorting out how much he needs to un-warp them. Yet the book is neither scholarly nor as patiently introductory as works by experts like Stephen Greenblatt. Attempts to goose the language with hipper references—Much Ado About Nothing highlights the “ ‘bros before hoes’ ethic of the military,” and Falstaff is likened to Homer Simpson—mostly fall flat.
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4854-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dishy, warm, and entertaining.
One of the stars of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills talks about real life.
Haitian American actor and podcast host Beauvais (b. 1966), whose TV credits include Housewives, NYPD Blue, Family Matters, and The Mentalist, makes her adult book debut (she has published several children’s books) with a disarmingly candid memoir, co-authored by Smith. Beauvais recalls growing up in a middle-class neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by warmth, color, family, and friends. Her mother, a nurse, immigrated to the U.S. first, then brought little Garcelle to join her in Massachusetts. Although she knew no English and was the only Black child in her school, she managed to thrive. When she was 17, she was offered modeling jobs in New York City, where she reveled in newfound freedom and independence. Besides working for Eileen Ford, she finagled her way to becoming a Playboy Bunny even though she was underage. Married at 22, she soon became a mother, but by the time her son was 3, the marriage ended. Fortunately, her career took off. Modeling led to acting: In the 1990s, she appeared in Models, Inc. and The Jamie Foxx Show; many other opportunities followed. “I am a woman who is proud of her success but hasn’t completely bought into it,” writes the author, who shares many juicy backstage tidbits: A weeklong gig on The View proved dismal because of the hostile atmosphere among the women on the show; and her co-stars on Housewives could lash out viciously: “I was caught off guard by how venomous” they could be, she admits. Beauvais is forthright about personal issues, including her first husband’s immaturity; the betrayal that led to her second divorce; her “angst, fear, helplessness, and worry” about her oldest son’s emotional problems and substance abuse; her experience with in vitro fertilization (and the birth of twin sons); beauty; spirituality; the plight of Black actresses; and sex.
Dishy, warm, and entertaining.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-309958-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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