An immersive and informative memoir of a girlhood in Samburu County.
Leparleen and Hendricks document a life caught between cultures in this debut memoir, the first in a series.
Leparleen is a Samburu, a member of the quasi-nomadic, Maa-speaking people who live on the lush highland rim of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. She grew up in the 1970s and 1980s during an era of transformation in Samburu society, a time when, in the words of co-author Hendricks, “the hammer hit the anvil: when great change came for a culture that had long been seen as, and indeed regarded itself as, unchangeable.” Leparleen’s father was the first in his clan to receive a modern education, which he parlayed into a position of local wealth and power. Because of this, his daughters, including the free-spirited and headstrong Leparleen, were sent to school in addition to learning the traditional ways of their people. (“Born with the word ‘why’ in your mouth,” Leparleen’s father said of her when she was a girl. “You’re destined for a beating in this culture.”) Leparleen documents her coming-of-age, which occurred quite early in a culture in which prepubescent sex, forced marriage, and female circumcision are common. In the years covered here, Leparleen’s most pressing problems were an abusive mother, debilitating sickness, and run-ins with Sudanese raiders. The memoir is composed in the third person, which presents Leparleen’s life—and life in her village—in frank, often humorous prose: “It is not possible to adequately describe the role of fashion in Samburu life: it is also not possible to fully illustrate the depth of their relationship with their cattle.” The reader learns much about the “butterfly people,” as the colorfully dressed Samburu are known, as well as the environment inside the traditional Samburu home, the manyatta. Leparleen’s father, who pops in and out of the narrative between “flings” with cars and his studies in America, provides a window into the wider world. Readers will no doubt anxiously await the next volume of Leparleen’s story.
An immersive and informative memoir of a girlhood in Samburu County.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9798992492903
Page Count: 286
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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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