An intimate and moving account that also makes a rigorous call for change.
In this memoir, journalist Hight examines the life of his troubled brother and how society fails the mentally ill.
For more than a decade, the author conducted research and pored over the many documents left behind by his older sibling, Paul, who was shot by police in 2000. “For my brother,” Hight writes, “the battles of the mind were constant.” Hight begins his account with Paul’s childhood in the 1940s in Guthrie, Oklahoma. (Hight himself was born in 1958.) A tragic accident resulting in the death of Paul’s sister, Linda, led the family to become even more devout Catholics, and Paul set his sights on becoming “the perfect priest.” Against the backdrop of ’60s social unrest and the Catholic Church’s Vatican II reforms, Paul managed to achieve his goal and seemed poised to become a progressive, promising priest. By 1970, however, his parishioners had begun whispering to church officials: “Something’s wrong with father.” It would take years for the term “paranoid schizophrenia” to enter the family’s vocabulary, but it was clear that Paul’s mind was deteriorating, which caused him to be declared unable to perform his duties, and he was removed from the priesthood. This would be the first but far from the last time that an institution would fail him. From there, Hight mixes his own memories with meticulous investigation to relate the narrative of Paul’s many ups and downs, his time in mental institutions, and his encounters with law enforcement, which would eventually claim his life. Hight’s considerable talents as a journalist led him to unearth fascinating details in the history of the Catholic Church, Oklahoman mental institutions, and the use of deadly force by the Oklahoma City Police Department. These findings range from intriguing debate among psychiatrists about the effects of cigarettes on mentally ill patients to starkly differing accounts of the confrontation that left his brother dead.
At times, it feels as if the book loses sight of Paul and his struggles amid all the historical context, but Hight mostly balances this tendency with affecting stories; his account of finding Paul’s disturbing writings for the first time or reconstructing his brother’s memory of a particular rainbow are just two heartbreaking examples of many. The result is a deeply personal biography with tremendous scope: Paul is just as much at the whims of public policy as he is tormented by his hallucinatory demons. Major events, including tornadoes, the Oklahoma City bombing, and other crimes, occur, and their effects leave no room for Paul’s special needs. Hight presents a practical and persuasive analysis of the ways that institutions share information, and he gets across the urgency of reducing the stigma of adult mental illness. The emotional core of the book is found in the stories of family—the only institution that didn’t fail Paul. “The perception has been ingrained into our psyche...the psychotic killer who’s less than human,” Hight writes, “For me, that person was my brother.”
An intimate and moving account that also makes a rigorous call for change.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-937054-99-1
Page Count: 356
Publisher: The RoadRunner Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2020
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
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