An engaging and detailed portrait of a 20th-century woman and the communities she tended.
A biography focuses on a venerable woman who left her mark on Berkeley, California.
“Where did Jacomena Adriana van Huizen come from, and how did she become Jackie Maybeck?” Valois asks before launching into her story about the life of her close friend and sometime landlord. Born to Dutch immigrants, van Huizen arrived in California as a young child at the tail end of the gold rush, and her parents fell in love with the countryside east of Berkeley. The family became friendly with the Maybecks, introducing van Huizen to her future husband, Wallen, and future father-in-law, Bernard, a visionary architect who designed more than 150 distinctive buildings in the area. The Maybeck clan would rotate between Bernard’s different houses as it weathered cultural shifts, the Depression, and wars—with Jackie Maybeck and her husband eventually creating their own street named for their daughters: “Maybeck Twin Drive.” Valois documents every move, property, and mood of her subject throughout these changes, leading up to the moment that the author herself met Maybeck as a warm, welcoming widow devoted to art and her family’s properties: “My chore is the hill. I feel that I am the last of the Maybecks.” Valois’ careful selection of quotes from Maybeck’s contradictory, “Rashomon-like” diaries are deployed to great effect, furthering the vision of a charming woman anyone would love to know. (Most intriguing are the author’s interpretations of Maybeck’s lengthy story “Journey: Small Adventure” as a thinly disguised autofiction about time spent in Europe after World War II.) Valois is overly concerned with the details of who lived where and when at times, to the detriment of her biography’s main strength: the familial communities centered on Maybeck and her Berkeley homes. But the author’s deep respect for the woman shines through on every page. In the end, the account feels like a nostalgic conversation about a deeply loved, mutual friend.
An engaging and detailed portrait of a 20th-century woman and the communities she tended.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-116-8
Page Count: 265
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 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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