A charming, knockabout travelogue and meditation on the 1970s international yoga scene.
A debut memoir chronicles a young man’s journey to learn yoga and see the world.
Brandão was a 23-year-old yoga instructor in Brazil in 1976 when he decided to further his studies with a six-month training session at the Yoga Institute in Mumbai, India. The first part of his narrative is an atmospheric account of his voyage there on a cargo ship through rough weather—“Moving up to the top of a large wave….One has the impression that the hull will not be able to resist the impact and the ship will break in half”—and the dank monotony of maritime life. He was then bowled over by India’s color, bustle, and poverty; its chaotic streets full of vehicles and livestock; and its haughty, corrupt bureaucrats who hassled him endlessly about his travel documents. At the Yoga Institute, devoted to the teachings of founding guru Shri Yogendra, the author found an oasis of calm and learning. Brandão draws piquant thumbnails of students and teachers along with evocative scenes of yoga procedural. (“Seated on the floor with legs crossed and eyes closed, I feel my entire body expand and gain volume in an unusual way, as if I were turning into a giant that weighed tons.”) The final section of his memoir covers his ensuing overland trip by train, bus, and ferry from India to Wales, much of it an odyssey of grand sights, squalid accommodations, and gastrointestinal crises, including an emergency pit stop in Iran during which the bus drove off, leaving him stranded with no money, luggage, or passport. Writing in brisk, limpid prose based on his travel diaries, Brandão’s book keeps his picaresque adventures low-key. He’s raptly attuned to the physical and cultural adjustments he had to make as a stranger in strange lands, but he also enlarges his focus by twining in brief, digestible meditations on yogic philosophy. (“Attachment, that terrible killjoy, comes camouflaged in a great variety of guises and prevents our living to the full….We delude ourselves into believing that we are in control when, in reality, we are but passengers in transit through this life, and nothing actually belongs to us.”) The result is an exuberant and engaging fish-out-of-water story that’s a bit more thought-provoking than the norm.
A charming, knockabout travelogue and meditation on the 1970s international yoga scene.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72839-368-1
Page Count: 244
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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
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