A love letter to Black literary art that leaves you wanting more.
Essays for poets and poetry lovers framed by personal narratives and interviews with Black poets who have influenced the author in her life and career.
In her latest book, Bingham-Risher champions literacy, writing, and teaching as acts of love and social responsibility. The author emphasizes the work that spoke to her early on and led her to mentors like E. Ethelbert Miller, Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton, Natasha Trethewey, and a host of other significant writers who fueled her burgeoning career. She recounts her life through the lens of poetry, asking vital questions: What is the Black poet’s responsibility as a writer? To the community? To the self? Each interview offers something to ponder. Bingham-Risher recounts how poetry softened the blow of personal and political hardships, enriched her education, and “grew her up.” Some essays, like the ones linked with the author’s interviews with Patricia Smith and Tim Seibles, are cohesive and sharply rendered, while others are meandering. The author doesn’t deeply explore each topic she addresses; the narrative operates at a loosely associative level, the voice and persona of the narrator remaining somewhat elusive. Nearly every experience—e.g., marrying the love of her life, a chance meeting with children’s book author Eloise Greenfield, coping with personal losses—is expressed in the same register. This sometimes creates a static reading experience, and some chapters get bogged down or brush too lightly over important territory, including Black Lives Matter, the death of Sandra Bland, and the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The book is strongest when the personal narrative is sharper, as when Bingham-Risher writes about her daughter’s unique name, the tragic tale of a good friend who was killed by police in Phoenix, or her family’s biannual The Color Purple breakfast, a festive, all-day affair of cooking, mentoring, and honoring elders. Still, Bingham-Risher asks questions of poetry, community, and responsibility that will inspire both seasoned and aspiring poets and educators.
A love letter to Black literary art that leaves you wanting more.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1592-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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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