A thoughtful chronicle of illness enlivened by celebrity anecdotes.
A radio personality looks back on her storied career and discusses her experience of suffering from chronic illness in this memoir.
Sometimes a celebrity memoir is all about the glitz and the glam, the hobnobbing with the who’s who of the media industry; Carter’s new memoir delivers on this front. She dishes on her run-ins with RuPaul, David Byrne, and a juicy fake kiss with pop star Pink among other celebrity encounters over the course of her career in television media and, especially, radio. These stories add spice to a memoir that is, ultimately, about growing up as a lesbian in the American South while suffering from chronic illness. Carter pieces together the events of her life chronologically, from a birth scene originally written in a screenplay format (a man, her father, is asked to make a “Sophie’s Choice” between saving his wife or his daughter: “M-my wife, of course”) to the near-present in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a child, the author suffered from mysterious gastrointestinal issues eventually diagnosed as “spastic colon” (what might now be diagnosed as IBS). As the narrative progresses and she grows older, the focus shifts to the challenges of balancing her kidney failure and dialysis with the work of talk radio. The book is also an account of coming out of the closet and navigating romantic relationships on top of all of the author’s health complications. Carter’s prose throughout is clear and well-balanced between moments of levity and sincerity. (A scene in which the author comes out to her father underneath the glow of a Wendy’s sign is particularly poignant.) While Carter’s memoir sometimes feels uneven, as the author doesn’t always manage the smoothest tonal shifts between her health episodes and her professional development, the work is valuable as a piece of well-wrought introspection and as a look at queer life in the 1990s and 2000s.
A thoughtful chronicle of illness enlivened by celebrity anecdotes.Pub Date: May 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798989407804
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Whanging Dude Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
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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