by Laurie Markvart ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2022
An often bold, if lengthy, memoir about wants, fears, and rock ’n’ roll.
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Singer and songwriter Markvart tells of grappling with anxiety while pursuing her music-making dreams in this debut autobiography.
Growing up in the tiny town of Waterloo, Wisconsin, in the 1970s, Markvart was drawn to music from an early age. Her mother owned every album ever recorded by Johnny Mathis, and she and the author would lip-sync along to pop hits and cast recordings of musicals. Her mom strongly encouraged her interest in becoming a singer. “Dream as big as you want,” the author recalls her mother saying. “You have a great voice, just like your grandfather. Keep practicing your piano. Someday you’ll be discovered and be famous like Elton John!” The author took these encouragements to heart, but life wasn’t quite as simple as pop songs made it seem. Markvart’s parents had a difficult marriage, the author says, complicated in part by her mother’s struggles with anxiety and bipolar disorder. In this memoir, Markvart tracks her decadeslong attempt to achieve her (and her mother’s) dream, from fronting a Minneapolis rock band as a teenager to auditioning for the touring company of Rent. She also writes of her struggles with her own mental health issues. Her prose is lively and confessional, as when she describes a time when she took a job working at a newspaper between gigs: “I showed up each day like an imposter in someone else’s dream…the corporate world of alabaster-colored walls and wood office desks was their life, dreams, hopes, and passions—not mine.” The book feels somewhat overlong at more than 400 pages, but Markvart’s storytelling chops are impressive as she deals candidly with issues of grief, mental illness, and the ups and downs of trying to make it as an artist. In the end, it’s also an engaging meditation on a daughter’s decadeslong quest to live up to her mother’s ambitions for her.
An often bold, if lengthy, memoir about wants, fears, and rock ’n’ roll.Pub Date: July 16, 2022
ISBN: 9798840231579
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton
BOOK REVIEW
by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton
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New York Times Bestseller
by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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