A timely reminder of the divine beauty found in everyday life.
Bowen’s spiritual memoir celebrates connecting with the Divine in our everyday lives.
In the book’s opening essay, “In the Beginning,” the author recalls a vision she had at church as a 15-year-old. Before her, surrounded by a “golden, shimmering light,” was Jesus, who she saw “with eyes that are different, my inside eyes.” This apparition, which she refers to as the “Presence,” was the first of many spiritual visions Bowen has experienced in her more than 80 years of life. While detailed descriptions of these mystical experiences take center stage, the book’s real strength lies in the author’s emphasis on connecting with her “Creator” through daily experiences with family, music, and poetry. The essay “Here Now,” for instance, begins with a reflection on the beauty of music, particularly the intertwining of the sacred with creative impulses, and how composers like Bach and Handel wrote their music for the “Glory to God Alone.” Heavily influenced by Christian mystics like Hildegard von Bingen, Bowen’s ecumenical spirituality includes references to thinkers outside the author’s faith, including Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön and Ojibwe novelist Richard Wagamese. The book is profoundly spiritual but never preachy, written in a welcoming style that will appeal to readers across the religious spectrum. The author blends her more esoteric musings with down-to-earth ruminations on her career as an occupational therapist and her familial role as a mother and wife. Another essay, “Thresholds,” survey’s Bowen’s conflicting emotions after being diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing a mastectomy. “I feel like I am on a roller coaster,” she tells her husband while on a run; “Sometimes I’m soaring, sometimes I’m terrified.” At just over 100 pages, the text strikes a successful balance between reveling in the simplicities of life and acknowledging the profound. The author of the 2002 genealogical memoir The Space Between (2002) in addition to academic textbooks, Bowen is a skilled writer whose prose manages to combine accessibility with elegance and a keen sense of esoteric mysticism born of a lifetime of spiritual contemplation and meditation.
A timely reminder of the divine beauty found in everyday life.Pub Date: March 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798891321540
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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