Deeply moving and eye-opening, this memoir confronts the centuries of systemic bigotry that have led to Indigenous erasure.
Swenson tells the story of an Indigenous family’s struggle to keep their ancestral land in this memoir.
The story begins with the author’s mother lying on her deathbed. It had been years since Swenson had returned to her mother’s hometown of Warroad, Minnesota, where the author spent her summers as a child in the 1960s. The descendant of immigrant homesteaders, Swenson was deeply familiar with the town and the nearby Lake of the Woods, where most of the local Ojibway population resided. When she returned, however, she was met with the alarming reality of a new tribal casino on the land where a local Indigenous family had lived for generations. The Kakaygeesicks were descendants of an Ojibway spiritual leader and rightful owners of “Allotment 3,” where they had been caretakers for centuries. Swenson began to investigate how the family of a tribal leader and local icon could have been displaced, never guessing just how long, winding, and convoluted the path to the truth would be. The author presents the results of her years of research on Kakaygeesick (“He spoke low and slow. I didn’t understand a word, but felt his spirit enter me”) and the local Indigenous population of Warroad alongside the story of her own life. Her prose is clean, and she addresses the facts of the story with clarity and honesty—Swenson takes time to acknowledge her privileged upbringing and her family’s role in the displacement of the Warroad Indigenous population via the Homestead Act with refreshing self-awareness. However, the author also has a tendency to veer off into tangentially related stories, such as her experiences as a lifeguard at a women’s pool in Saudi Arabia. Such vignettes can be compelling and effective as explorations of race, gender, and the West’s preconceived notions about other countries, but they ultimately distract from the heart of Swenson’s story: Kakaygeesick, his descendants, and their struggle for recognition. Still, readers will undoubtedly gain a deeper understanding of the American genocide of Indigenous peoples and the insidiousness of the ideology of white supremacy that still exists today.
Deeply moving and eye-opening, this memoir confronts the centuries of systemic bigotry that have led to Indigenous erasure.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798896363187
Page Count: 280
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 20, 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
SEEN & HEARD
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