A poignant, occasionally steamy, memoir of self-discovery.
A debut memoirist recalls her life-altering journey from southern Appalachia to West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer.
“It was sleeting the day I decided to go to Africa, but it wasn’t the cold that drove me out of Tennessee,” writes Gambill in her characteristically literary prose. A 24-year-old in the late 1970s, the author watched as her peers left the mountains of Tennessee to get married or pursue careers in big cities. Her life was admittedly adrift, split between an unfulfilling job teaching psychiatric patients how to make clay pots and an on-again, off-again relationship with her former philosophy professor. Dissatisfied with the direction of her life, Gambill joined the Peace Corps. Sent to a Muslim enclave in the Gambia, the author experienced culture shock as she confronted the societal and religious differences between her home country and the West African nation. A born rebel, she not only taught local women nutrition and health, but also sex education (in a region where female genital mutilation was common) that included closed-door lessons on contraceptives. While her official Peace Corps duties shape the book’s narrative, what drives Gambill’s story is her competing romantic relationships with two men: her Wolof teacher in Jenoi and a Polish doctor working in the nation’s capital. The Gambia “changed [her],” she states; she poignantly describes its paradoxically welcoming and alienating mix of stifling tropical weather and cultural isolation, reveling in “the love, the lust…[and] the intertwined sounds of [the] Wolof and Fula” languages. While the book charts the author’s move from Tennessee to Africa, it’s really about the journey of internal self-discovery taken by a woman seeking her own identity and a path to becoming an acclaimed photographer. Gambill’s writing style is often poetic—the memoir reads like a novel, replete with sparky dialogue, inner monologues, and a narrative unafraid to embrace the complexities and erotic moments of romantic relationships. This material is balanced with scholarly research on the Gambia that provides readers with cultural and historical context.
A poignant, occasionally steamy, memoir of self-discovery.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9781627206334
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
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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