An intimate and illuminating glimpse into a parent-child relationship.
A daughter distills her mother’s correspondence into short, reflective entries in this collection.
In 2021, two decades after her mother Milly’s death, Dordal rediscovered 180 letters that her mom had written to her between 1989 and 2001. Intent on preserving the collection, Dordal began typing up the handwritten letters, but soon began “tinkering” with them, stripping away what she felt was unnecessary text. She was drawn to her mother’s observations about the passage of time, the natural world, and grief and loss, and writes that she felt as if she were in collaboration with her parent. The result is a series of “entries” whose forms lie somewhere between letters and poems. Dordal’s relationship with her mother was tested by her parent’s alcoholism; she writes of how she loved her “daytime mother,” but lost her at night to bourbon or vermouth. The entries meld everyday chitchat with profound hopes; in one instance, Milly tells of finishing Kathleen Norris’ 1996 book The Cloister Walk, adding “(I wish I could be that spiritual).” These moments, Dordal writes, helped her to recognize her mother’s “whole-hearted love” and to draw parallels to her own deepening relationship with God after she came out as a lesbian. The entries feature casual cultural and geographical references, as in one dated “August 1991”: “The chemical spill in the Sacramento River sounds terrible. / And now those oil tankers polluting the Olympic Rain Forest.” The distilled letter becomes a breezy verbal collage, displaying the sprezzatura of one of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems(1964). Other entries, such as the one dated “September 1991,” offer poetic fragments of sentiment that subtly denote the warmth of maternal care: “Your packages are in the mail. / I’m sure the cookies will be crumbs, / but they were sent with love.” Further entries carry bluntly moving confessions: “You were 10 when I started drinking, / maybe 9. I’ve put you through a lot of pain.” This touching work effectively approaches universal themes of motherhood, addiction, and illness, among others; readers will even sense the changing of seasons as it progresses.
An intimate and illuminating glimpse into a parent-child relationship.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2023
ISBN: 978-1625570536
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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