A shattering and heartfelt journey from heartache and hesitancy to confidence, self-acceptance, and joy.
An Indo-Guyanese queer poet recounts how he came to embrace his Hindu heritage and artistic leanings through his Guyanese grandmother.
The London-born child of Guyanese immigrants to Florida, Mohabir was the only one in his Christianized family to take an interest in their “Coolie Hindoo” past and Aji, the paternal grandmother who represented it. The author’s father insisted that the family “leave behind the backward ways” of colonial Guyana to travel to the U.S. But Mohabir was so intrigued by the languages Aji spoke (Guyanese Bhojpuri and Creole) and her songs that he began studying Hindi as a teenager and translating and transcribing his grandmother’s words. Later, he went to Varanasi to find the origins of Aji’s songs and study her language. His difference from his family not only manifested in his desire to recuperate a reviled past, but also in the life he led apart from his parents as an “antiman” (homosexual). Wanting to experience life more fully as a queer man, Mohabir went to New York via teaching fellowship and became more engaged in progressive politics and social justice issues. The author also engaged in relationships with other South Asian men, and, through a fellow activist who wrote poetry, he discovered what Aji’s songs had already instilled in him: a love of the written word. Then a cousin outed Mohabir to his parents, and he came face to face with one of his deepest fears: losing his family for being an antiman, who were deemed “laughable” and “unworthy of support.” After Aji died, relatives told him that she had loved and praised him for learning family traditions. Interwoven with Bhojpuri and Creole renderings of Aji’s songs and stories as well as Mohabir’s own interesting poetry, this distinctive memoir explores the complex, at times heartbreaking, intersection of identities and the tumultuous process of becoming an artist.
A shattering and heartfelt journey from heartache and hesitancy to confidence, self-acceptance, and joy.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63206-280-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
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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