A heartfelt and fascinating collection of stories about people making their way to the United States.
Lax presents a narrative tapestry of American immigrant stories.
At the beginning of this book, the author, a librettist, relates a bit of her own personal history, describing how she discovered the world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism as a teenager and stayed in that world as a closeted gay woman for 30 years before coming out and losing her entire community. “I became an immigrant in my own country,” she writes, “blindsided with the acute desire of an outsider.” The themes of community and exile run throughout the immigrant stories she shares in these pages, in which she interviews people coming to America under all kinds of circumstances. She talks with a former Soviet Jewish refugee named Manya and experiences a sense of homecoming when entering Manya’s Jewish world: “Each of those homes had the same Hebrew books lined on the shelves, the same religious art, and always a photograph of the Rebbe on the wall,” she recalls. “Inside that home, the contentions of the secular world with its godlessness, its violence, and pessimism, its foreignness, fell away.” Some of the stories she gathers are rougher than others—none of them are more brutal than that of El Salvadoran refugee Luisa, who was sexually assaulted and trafficked by “coyotes” in her quest to reach a new home (according to the author, “El Salvador was the war we in the U.S. weren’t told we lost”). “There could not have been a clearer illustration of Luisa’s desperation to get to work, shelter, and safety,” Lax writes; “that was her definition of American freedom.”
The author is a remarkably empathetic interviewer, investing each chapter’s conversations with immediacy and heart. She allows her various subjects full dramatic range when telling their own stories, but she herself is nevertheless always present; when a Russian immigrant’s daughter is taught about Martin Luther King Jr. in public school, the woman is dismissive, asking how relevant such a figure could possibly be. “What did Martin Luther King have to do with us?” Lax asks. “What did he have to do with us, as Jews, or as Americans? Only everything.” Luisa’s story is the most powerfully written piece in the book, bringing forward overtly political elements of the immigration experience that Lax handles with non-confrontational sensitivity. The sheer crushing amount of bureaucracy these migrants face is depicted (and deplored) but never cheaply demonized. Lax employs prose that’s vivid (including plenty of reconstructed dialogue throughout) but not sensationalistic; immigrants who too often get lumped into the day’s news headlines as a monolithic entity are brought colorfully and individually to life as readers learn their histories, their hopes, and the many ways their new home strikes them. Despite the weightiness of the subject, Lax almost always finds a note of hope in the stories she tells. “This is a city of immigrants,” a transplanted Brahmin Indian tells her. “Everywhere I look, I see someone from somewhere else. That, I think, is what makes this country great.” In a time of political polarization on the subject of immigration, this book makes space for a much-needed deep breath.
A heartfelt and fascinating collection of stories about people making their way to the United States.Pub Date: March 28, 2024
ISBN: 9781804680179
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
