A heartfelt, extensively intimate account of finding a deeper Christian calling in life.
A businessperson’s story of rediscovering her religious faith.
Gaulton shares with her readers an extensively detailed (and charmingly illustrated with many personal photos) account of her personal life in order to establish the context of a religious renewal. She was for years a high-flying, demanding executive for a company owned by Louis Vuitton. But, as she puts it, “God had bigger plans than I could ever imagine.” Before getting to those plans in detail, Gaulton tells readers her extended family history, from her grandparents, who were Japanese American citizens taken from their homes and put in internment camps during WWII, to her parents, who struggled to such an extent financially that Gaulton’s mother was constantly reminding her little daughter that the family was poor. Even while still a young girl, Gaulton was told by her exacting, critical parents that she must get a job to cover her own expenses, so she learned to become a bookkeeper. As she grew up, she moved out into the world, meeting the man who would become her husband, marrying him, and starting a family with him in California. Throughout these life changes, Gaulton’s religious faith continued to expand until, gradually, it took a central position in her life and priorities. “I knew that my life was starting to change,” she writes, “and I found myself asking Jesus to use me, over and over again.”
Gaulton writes all this with a warmly affectionate tone throughout (writing about the Queen Mary, one of the “Jesus cars” that always managed to turn up when the family needed one, for instance: “She was old but she had low mileage, though she always felt like she was on her last legs”). Her decision to open the book with both family history and a sharply drawn portrait of her own largely indifferent Methodist upbringing was a wise strategic move. By not positioning herself as a darkness-to-light conversion case, her evolution from a nominal to a passionate Christian seems organic and authentic.
Increasingly as the pages go by, we read how her personal religious faith began to fuel ministry outreach trips to many countries. These voyages, full of personalities and fascinating experiences (among the villagers of Tanzania, for instance, or with the Maasai people in Kenya), are very engagingly related. Gaulton meshes the many elements of her life with seamless skill so that by the time the book is in full swing, the central narrative feels entirely natural. “From my corporate work I possessed the skills and abilities that could help change lives,” she writes, “and from my mission work I had developed a broken heart for the poor.” It seems obvious that her book is aimed at a Christian target audience, and many of those Christian readers will find this story—of a Christian who actually rolls up her sleeves and goes out to help the poor precisely as Jesus did—very bracing, a reminder that such Christians exist and do a great deal of good in the world.
A heartfelt, extensively intimate account of finding a deeper Christian calling in life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-89367-395-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Ignite
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
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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