Always illuminating, Harjo writes as if the creative journey has been the destination all along.
The U.S. poet laureate details her unlikely path to poetic renown.
The latest in the publisher’s Why I Write series could also be seen as an illumination of “how I write” and “why it matters.” Harjo, who previously chronicled her life in Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, offers 50 vignettes that serve as signposts and steppingstones, showing how she began her artistic “venture…as an undergrad student at the University of New Mexico, a single mother with two children (and sometimes three), who went to school full-time, starting out as a pre-med major with a minor in dance, and changing the first year to studio art, my original career intent.” That was a half-century ago, and readers will be fascinated to learn how poetry, performance, song, Native culture, and an unparalleled work ethic came together to inform her artistic journey. “I worked long hours with my research position at American Indian Studies, and my full-time slate of classes, and the day-to-day childcare….I’d stay up nights painting and drawing, and then poetry elbowed its way in, when I thought I had no more room,” she writes. “My long nights then became a tug-of-war between poetry, artwork, and figuring out how my little family would make it on nearly nothing.” Harjo’s tone is both modest and inspirational as she focuses on the process of writing poetry, or “catching light in the dark.” She describes her work as not necessarily a choice but rather a calling she could not resist pursuing. The author examines how her Native identity and legacy have informed her writing and how the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s shaped it, imbuing it with even stronger energy and urgency. She also describes poetry she first heard on the jukeboxes of the Southwest and how jazz became an important influence, as well.
Always illuminating, Harjo writes as if the creative journey has been the destination all along.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-300-25703-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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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