A thoughtful exploration of mental illness, wounded healers, and gayness in medicine.
Psychiatrist Myers’ memoir sums up his decadeslong career as a “doctors’ doctor.”
For many years, psychiatry and mental illness were stigmatized, especially among people in the medical profession. Myers started private practice in the 1970s, and “from the beginning I was referred and began to look after physicians” and their families, he says. This remembrance attempts to highlight a slow and difficult shift in the medical world from shunning doctors with psychiatric problems to helping and learning from them. The text often tackles depression and bipolar disorder, but it also looks into how the psychiatric profession shamefully addressed homosexuality, which was only taken off the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders list in 1973 and only fully reclassified in 1986. (The author notes that he later came out as gay at the age of 64.) One chapter also sums up the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, outlining how so many doctors with the virus were shunned, and highlights the mental health needs of those who tested positive for HIV. Myers’ text is clear and easy to follow, but it may not immediately grab lay readers; after all, it’s aimed, in part, at “the young reader, especially if you’re a medical student or early career physician.” Still, the work may call out to LGBTQ+ people, readers touched by suicide, or readers who have mental illnesses. When it focuses on multifaceted and heartbreaking stories of patients and Myers’ personal anecdotes, it truly shines; for instance, Myers tells of a meeting in 2008 with a former patient who’d made significant progress but had since relapsed: “what was so striking…is that he looked and sounded exactly like the medical student who had reached out to me decades earlier in 1973—just an older version of the same lost, frightened, despairing man.” Indeed, the memoir would have benefitted from more of the author’s vulnerability and inner turmoil; toward the end, he often takes to writing in bullet points. Overall, this is a successful account of Myers’ impressive career, but the stories are the star, not clinical accolades and professional takeaways.
A thoughtful exploration of mental illness, wounded healers, and gayness in medicine.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-66-370480-9
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2021
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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