A useful reminder of the importance of education in slowing the spread of an epidemic.
Clark, a former AIDS educator for the United Nations who is now a creative writer and teacher, recounts pursuing her careers while living with HIV.
The author tells her story of coming to grips with being HIV-positive and then devoting herself to UN Cares, the program she helped launch in 2008. In the years she spent working for the U.N., she devoted her time to educating people about HIV and how to prevent its spread in workshops worldwide, and much of her job consisted of pushing back against denial and misinformation. Along the way, she discovered the power of sharing her story to demonstrate that people living with HIV aren’t as “different” as some people think. A revelation that some readers may find surprising is that she opposes mandatory HIV testing: “It’s our job to educate [staff members, soldiers, or civilians] so they will go for testing of their own volition,” she told a U.N. colleague. “It is not our place to force them to. We simply cannot do that. It would be unethical.” Her story includes an account of her brief marriage to a man who initially hid his mental health problems. She also demonstrates the importance of care for organizational staff, including self-care, as she needed to seek treatment for worsening effects of the virus. The book includes a postscript about when she came down with Covid-19, early in the pandemic. Clark offers an important personal account over the course of this remembrance. However, it’s not without its limitations. Although she notes her privilege as a straight White woman, she doesn’t dig deeply enough into people’s incorrect assumptions about who can and can’t become HIV-positive. Also, her discussion of her brief marriage and foster motherhood sidetracks the narrative. Finally, the book’s subtitle suggests that Covid-19 is a bigger part of the memoir than it ultimately is. Still, this book is vital to understanding how willful ignorance by those in charge assisted the spread of AIDS.
A useful reminder of the importance of education in slowing the spread of an epidemic.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 9781950668113
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Northampton House Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
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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