A courageously frank, sometimes uneven hybrid of memoir and social history.
A writer reflects on the breakdown of her young marriage and the history of feminism, sexuality, and pleasure.
At 32, Willis Aronowitz, the sex and love columnist for Teen Vogue, decided to end her marriage. One of her chief complaints with the union was the “bad sex” of the title. In the wake of her divorce, she embarked on a journey to discover what good sex would look like for her as a young, liberated feminist living in the 21st century. These circumstances led the author to the “broader question of what cultural forces interfere with our pleasure, desire, and relationship satisfaction.” She turned first to the work of her late mother, the “early radical pro-sex feminist” Ellen Willis. The author narrates her mother’s life engagingly: her escape from a stifling early marriage, questioning of monogamy, and later marriage, on very different terms, to the author’s father, a “husky hedonist” who “had a reputation as a bed hopper and had trouble managing his often concurrent love affairs.” Pre-divorce, Willis Aronowitz often “cringed” at the thought of her late mother knowing that her daughter remained in an “unsatisfying partnership” out of fear of “stepping off the heterosexual conveyer belt” at an age when many of her peers were settling down and starting families. Alongside her personal experiences, the author digs into the cultural history of marriage and sexuality, mostly through the lens of feminism, with a focus on the developments of the 20th century. Near the end of the book, Willis Aronowitz describes a visit to an erotic massage therapist where she struggled to orgasm. At the time, she writes, she found it “impossible to parse out my own motivations from the din of characters in my head, ranging from girl bossy pep talks to radical feminist rallying cries.” While the author is skilled at synthesizing large swaths of social theory and her passion for the subject is clear, the historical sections are less compelling than the personal elements.
A courageously frank, sometimes uneven hybrid of memoir and social history.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18276-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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