An often engaging remembrance of past pains and present realizations.
A dancer and choreographer navigates her body’s physical limits, her emotional turmoil, and her quest to keep a dream alive in this debut memoir.
Tatelbaum writes that she started ballet lessons in 1986, when she was 8 years old. She was never able to accomplish smooth landings after her pliés, however, because of her short Achilles tendons. This brought her additional heartbreak when her teacher, referred to only as Miss Lorraine, noted that she didn’t have the body to be a dancer. Still, the author remained determined to become the best performer she could be. Luckily for her, Lorraine hired Clea, a modern-dance teacher who exposed the 11-year-old girl to a new world of motion. When Tatelbaum turned 14, she expanded her knowledge further by taking classes at the Alvin Ailey school. Eventually, she graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, started a dance company, and became a successful choreographer. Things went well for her until she stopped getting callbacks, and she realized that she was stuck in a rut; she also felt unfulfilled in her career as a Pilates instructor. The memoir is split into three parts: The first describes the state that she found herself in when she was ready to give up, the second focuses on her background, and the third describes her later healing. Throughout, readers will easily sympathize with the exhaustion and constant pains that the author felt in her bones (“Ever since senior year at Tisch, my left hip had been snapping when I kicked my leg above ninety degrees”) and how she was still willing to go through it all to pursue her aspirations. The reader also gets a vivid glimpse into her emotional exhaustion when she describes her clients as ATMs, explicitly details her anger and resentment, and shows her despair when she asks her therapist, “How do I get out of here? Help me.” Tatelbaum never shies away from painful moments on her journey, and this adds a depth to her narrative that will keep readers invested.
An often engaging remembrance of past pains and present realizations.Pub Date: April 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-945060-46-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Motina Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2022
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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